towards solving the great problems of being, came the man who was to take up the work with the same tools, the same method, that Aristotle had left off. Ah! that magnificent old heathen knew that it was to come. But why do I call him a heathen? Zounds, Conyers, if any man ever gave a leg to revealed religion, it was Aristotle!” Conyers was listening attentively. Bulstrode’s manner was grotesque, but his earnestness was extreme and moving. He picked up one of his books and caressed it. “This other man was Thomas Aquinas. I can’t help believing these two men to be now together in some happy region--perhaps in a garden--walking up and down, and in communion together. I daresay the Greek was a lean, eagle-eyed man, like ‘_It_’ in yonder--” Bulstrode looked over his shoulder at the library door--“and Thomas was a great, lumbering, awkward, silent creature. His fellow-students called him the ‘Dumb Ox,’ but his master said, ‘One day the bellowing of this ox shall shake the world.’ He was on the other side of the river, and he saw the beautiful bridge more than half way across, and he went to work boldly to build up to it. There were so many mists and shadows, that things on Aristotle’s side had huge, uncanny, misshapen figures to those on the opposite side. And there were quicksands, too, and sometimes it was hard to find a bottom. But this Thomas Aquinas found it, and behold! Magnificent arches spanning the mysterious river--a clear pathway forever from one side to the other, from the known to the unknown, from philosophy to the revealed religion.” All the time he had been speaking Conyers’s melancholy eyes, which had been fixed on him, gradually lightened, and when Bulstrode stopped they were glowing. “It is of comfort to me to hear you say that,” he said. “So it was to Meno when Aristotle said he believed in the immortality of the soul. Meno said, ‘I like what you are saying’; and the Greek answered pleasantly--ah, he was a pleasant fellow, this wise Aristotle--‘I, too, like what I am saying. Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident; but that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think we ought to inquire, than we should have been if we had indulged the idle fancy that there was no use in seeking to know what we do not know, that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight in word and deed to the utmost of my power.’” “But Aristotle acknowledges there were some things he said about the great question of which he was not ‘confident.’” “Yes, yes,” replied Bulstrode impatiently. “There are two voices in every soul--one doubting and dreading, the other believing and loving. You see, the other fellows--Hegel and the rest of the crew--are perfectly cocksure; they are certain of everything. But old Aristotle saw that something in the way of proof was wanting, and that great, silent Thomas Aquinas supplied the rest--that is, if there is anything in Aristotle’s method of reasoning.”