Method is of advantage to a Work, both in respect to the Writer and the Reader.  In regard to the first, it is a great help to his Invention.  When a Man has plann’d his Discourse, he finds a great many Thoughts rising out of every Head, that do not offer themselves upon the general Survey of a Subject.  His Thoughts are at the same time more intelligible, and better discover their Drift and Meaning, when they are placed in their proper Lights, and follow one another in a regular Series, than when they are thrown together without Order and Connexion.  There is always an Obscurity in Confusion, and the same Sentence that would have enlightened the Reader in one part of a Discourse, perplexes him in another.  For the same reason likewise every Thought in a methodical Discourse shews [it [1]] self in its greatest Beauty, as the several Figures in a piece of Painting receive new Grace from their Disposition in the Picture.  The Advantages of a Reader from a methodical Discourse, are correspondent with those of the Writer.  He comprehends every thing easily, takes it in with Pleasure, and retains it long.

Method is not less requisite in ordinary Conversation than in Writing, provided a Man would talk to make himself understood.  I, who hear a thousand Coffee-house Debates every Day, am very sensible of this want of Method in the Thoughts of my honest Countrymen.  There is not one Dispute in ten which is managed in those Schools of Politicks, where, after the three first Sentences, the Question is not entirely lost.  Our Disputants put me in mind of the Cuttle-Fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the Water about him till he becomes invisible.  The Man who does not know how to methodize his Thoughts, has always, to borrow a Phrase from the Dispensary, a barren Superfluity of Words; [2] the Fruit is lost amidst the Exuberance of Leaves.

Tom Puzzle is one of the most Eminent Immethodical Disputants of any that has fallen under my Observation. Tom has read enough to make him very Impertinent; his Knowledge is sufficient to raise Doubts, but not to clear them.  It is pity that he has so much Learning, or that he has not a great deal more.  With these Qualifications Tom sets up for a Free-thinker, finds a great many things to blame in the Constitution of his Country, and gives shrewd Intimations that he does not believe another World.  In short, Puzzle is an Atheist as much as his Parts will give him leave.  He has got about half a dozen common-place Topicks, into which he never fails to turn the Conversation, whatever was the Occasion of it:  Tho’ the matter in debate be about Doway or Denain, it is ten to one but half his Discourse runs upon the Unreasonableness of Bigottry and Priest-craft.  This makes Mr. Puzzle the Admiration of all those who have less Sense than himself, and the Contempt of those who have more.  There is none in Town whom Tom dreads so much