[43] “Those philosophers whose ideas of being and knowledge are derived from body and sensation, have a short method to explain the nature of Truth.—­It is a factitious thing, made by every man for himself; which comes and goes, just as it is remembered and forgot; which in the order of things makes its appearance the last of all, being not only subsequent to sensible objects, but even to our sensations of them!  According to this hypothesis, there are many truths, which have been, and are no longer; others, that will be, and have not been yet; and multitudes, that possibly may never exist at all.  But there are other reasoners, who must surely have had very different notions; those, I mean, who represent Truth not as the last, but as the first of beings; who call it immutable, eternal, omnipresent; attributes that all indicate something more than human.”—­Harris’s Hermes, p. 403.

[44] Of the best method of teaching grammar, I shall discourse in an other chapter.  That methods radically different must lend to different results, is no more than every intelligent person will suppose.  The formation of just methods of instruction, or true systems of science, is work for those minds which are capable of the most accurate and comprehensive views of the things to be taught.  He that is capable of “originating and producing” truth, or true “ideas,” if any but the Divine Being is so, has surely no need to be trained into such truth by any factitious scheme of education.  In all that he thus originates, he is himself a Novum Organon of knowledge, and capable of teaching others, especially those officious men who would help him with their second-hand authorship, and their paltry catechisms of common-places.  I allude here to the fundamental principle of what in some books is called “The Productive System of Instruction,” and to those schemes of grammar which are professedly founded on it.  We are told that, “The leading principle of this system, is that which its name indicates—­that the child should be regarded not as a mere recipient of the ideas of others, but as an agent capable of collecting, and originating, and producing most of the ideas which are necessary for its education, when presented with the objects or the facts from which they may be derived.”—­Smith’s New Gram., Pref., p. 5:  Amer.  Journal of Education, New Series, Vol.  I, No. 6, Art. 1.  It ought to be enough for any teacher, or for any writer, if he finds his readers or his pupils ready recipients of the ideas which he aims to convey.  What more they know, they can never owe to him, unless they learn it from him against his will; and what they happen to lack, of understanding or believing him, may very possibly be more his fault than theirs.