"When he read James Wilkinson's book The Human Body in 1851, Thoreau was impressed. "Wilkinson's book," he wrote in his journal, "to some extent realizes what I have dreamed of, -a return to the primitive analogical and derivative sense of words. His ability to trace analogies often leads to a truer word than more remarkable writers have found.... The faith he puts in old and current expressions as having sprung from an instinct wiser than science, and safely to be trusted if they can be interpreted.... Wilkinson finds a home for the imagination.... All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our heads."