is the mother of
all science, we may call anticipation. The intellect, with a
dog-like instinct, will not hunt until it has found the scent.
It must have some presage of the result before it will turn its
energies to its attainment. The system of anatomy which has
immortalized the name of Oken, is the consequence of a _flash of
anticipation_, which glanced through his mind when he picked up,
in a chance walk, the skull of a deer, bleached by the weather,
and exclaimed--'_It is a vertebral column!_'"

"The man of science possesses principles--the man of art, not
the less nobly gifted, is possessed and carried away by them.
The principles which art _involves_, science _evolves_. The
truths on which the success of art depends lurk in the artist's
mind in an undeveloped state, guiding his hand, stimulating his
invention, balancing his judgment, but not appearing in regular
propositions." "An art (that of medicine for instance) will of
course admit into its limits, everything (_and nothing else_)
which can conduce to the performance of _its own proper work_;
it recognizes no other principles of selection."

"He who reads a book on logic, probably thinks no better when he
rises up than when he sat down, but if any of the principles
there unfolded cleave to his memory, and he afterwards, perhaps
unconsciously, shapes and corrects his thoughts by them, no
doubt the whole powers of his reasoning receive benefit. In a
word, every art, from reasoning to riding and rowing, is learned
by assiduous practice, and if principles do any good, it is
proportioned to the readiness with which they can be converted
into rules, and the patient constancy with which they are
applied in all our attempts at excellence."

"_A man can teach names to another man, but he cannot plant in
another's mind that far higher gift--the power of naming._"

"_Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and
efficient instrument in thinking._"

"The whole of every _science_ may be made the subject of
teaching. Not so with _art_; much of it is not teachable."

Coleridge's profound and brilliant, but unequal, and often somewhat
nebulous _Essay on Method_, is worth reading over, were it only as an
exercitation, and to impress on the mind the meaning and value of
_method_. Method is the road by which you reach,