He has no facility of
inculcating his speculations, of adapting himself to the
various degrees of intellect which the accidents of
conversation will present; but will talk to most
unintelligibly, and to all unpleasantly.
I was once present at the lectures of a profound
philosopher, a man really skilled in the science
which he professed, who having occasion to explain
the terms opacum and pellucidum, told us, after
some hesitation, that opacum was, as one might
say, opake, and that pellucidum signified pellucid.
Such was the dexterity with which this learned
reader facilitated to his auditors the intricacies of
science; and so true is it, that a man may know what
he cannot teach.
Boerhaave complains, that the writers who have
treated of chymistry before him, are useless to the
greater part of students, because they presuppose
their readers to have such degrees of skill as are not
often to be found. Into the same errour are all men
apt to fall, who have familiarized any subject to
themselves in solitude: they discourse, as if they
thought every other man had been employed in the
same inquiries; and expect that short hints and
obscure allusions will produce in others the same train
of ideas which they excite in themselves.
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