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which have perplexed the Learned of all ages, would be endless and useless.

A competent knowledge of Geography is to be had without treating it as a distinct science, and multiplying Masters to learn it. We may learn it, if I may say so, by the by, in reading of Histories, of Voyages, and even of Gazette’s, by observing on the Maps the positon of Countries of Towns, of Riviers, and of Mountains relatively to one another.

As to the mundane System and the use of the Sphere, the ordinary Preceptors, if they are what they ought to be, though they are no Astronomers, will be able to communicate as much knowledge as is requisite for men who are to be no Astronomers neither, and for whom it is sufficient to discover, in part at least, that infinite Wisdom and Power which appear in the immensity of God’s works.

Another degree of kind of knowledge which every Scholar should acquire, and which it is not every Master that can teach, must not be forgotten. It is that of the conduct of the understanding: the investigating truth through long trains of Ideas, and the deducing true consequences from propositions well laid and precisely defined on every subject. Nothing can be more necessary in Action as well as in Speculation; the discovery of those sources from which all our moral obligations flow, and the pursuit of these obligations in all the parts to which they extend, will be taught neither by Grothius, nor Puffendorf, nor Cumberland nor Clarke nor Wollaston nor Burlamague nor any of the books of Logick which are in use half so well and so distinctly as we may teach ourselves if we acquire the habit of employing our reason in a right method. and to acquire this habit nothing can contribute so effectivally as an application to the first elements of Geometry. He who is absorbed in Mathematicks may become useless in Society, but He who is not able to reason like a Mathematician