t may be in it selfe yet it wants not its adversaryes; Some with a great
deal of heat, plead that if this method acquiring the Languages, hath any
thing in it that is Curious by way of speculation, it is however uselesse
enough in relation to its practice, since _Custome_ and _Conversation_ only
(say they) is the great Master of Language, and that we must intirely relye
upon memory and the assiduity of constant and resolv'd industry.

Others confesse that it hath in earnest its advantages, but doubt much of
the possibility of its execution, hardly beleeving that the Languages have
in good truth such an accord and resemblance as I suppose they have, or
that there is a possibility for the witt of man now to discover it.

By way of reply to the first, I confesse that one thing I wonder at, is
that persons so knowing and ingenuous should so highly declare themselves
against the judgement in favour of the memory, I have a very great regard
to their qualitie and worth, but cannot submitt my selfe to their opinion,
The only way (as I imagine) to Learn the Languages, and that in what number
we please, to do it with ease without taediousnesse, confusion, trouble and
losse of time, and without the common hazard, of forgetting them with as
much ease as we acquire them with difficulty, and to be master of them all
in such a manner, as shall rellish nothing that is mean or not becomeing a
Rationall man, is in one word, to attribute more to the judging and
reflecting faculty then to the memory; for if the memory depend and relye
only upon the reflexions of the judgement, we have no reason to expect much
from its single Conduct, for however plausible it may appear, it will
always be slow, limited, confus'd, and faithlesse; its action is not
vigorous enough to take us off from those fatigues that distast our most
likely enterprizes, and its efforts to weak and Languishing in a little
time to execute a designe of so large a compasse as this; being so
determin'd as it is, it is impossible it should reduce so great a number of
Languages so distanc't in appearance one from another; If at any time it
seem extraordinary in an action, its Species are soon displac't by their
multitude, and when they are rang'd in the best order imaginable, they
continue not so long without being either effact by those that supervene or
disappearing of themselves, haveing nothing that can fixe and retaine them,
So that the Languages being of so vast an extent, th