expectations that may justly be raised from the different
methods followed in the acquisition of the art. Improve-
ments, unless in extraordinary instances of genius and sa-
gacity, are not to be expected from those who have acquired
all their dexterity from imitation and habit. One who has
had an education no better than that of an ordinary mechan-
ic, may prove an excellent manual operator; but it is only
in the well-instructed mechanician that you would expect to
find a good machinist. The analogy to vegetation above
suggested holds here also. The offset is commonly no
more than a mere copy of the parent plant. It is from the
seed only you can expect, with the aid of proper culture, to-
produce new varieties, and even to make improvements on
the species. "Expert men," says Lord Bacon," can execute
and judge of particulars, one by one; but the general coun-
cils, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from
those that are learned."

Indeed, in almost every art, even as used by mere practi-
tioners, there are certain rules, as hath been already hinted,
which must carefully be followed, and which serve the artist
instead of principles. An acquaintance with these is one
step, and but one step, towards science. Thus, in the com-
mon books of arithmetic, intended solely for practice, the
rules laid down for the ordinary operations, as for numera-
tion, or numerical notation, addition, subtraction, multiplica-
tion, division, and a few others, which are sufficient for all
the purposes of the accountant, serve instead of principles;
and, to a superficial observer, may be thought to supersede
the study of anything farther. But their utility reaches a
very little way, compared with that which results from the
knowledge of the foundations of the art, and of what has been,
not unfitly, styled arithmetic universal. It may be justly said
that, without some portion of this knowledge, the practical
rules had never been invented. Besides, if by these the par-
ticular questions which come exactly within the description
of the rule may be solved, by the other such general rules
themselves, as serve for the solution of endless particulars,
may be discovered.

The case, I own, is somewhat different with those arts
which are entirely founded on experiment and observation,
and are not derived, like pure mathematics, from abstract and
universal axioms. But even in these, when we rise from the
individual to the species, from the species to the genus, and
thence to the most extensive orders and classes, we arrive
though in a different way, at the knowledge of general truths,
which, in a certain sense, are also scientific, and answer a
similar purpose. Our acquaintance with nature and its laws
is so much extended, that we shall be enabled, in numberless
cases, not only to apply to the most profitable purposes the

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