have copied all that I could see, it is nothing strange that I should guess those which I cannot see, would be absurd, without supposing such a ground for guessing. The notion that the discovery of the laws and causes of phenomena is a loose haphazard sort of guessing, which gives "plausible" explanations, accidental coincidences, casual "harmonies," laws, "in some measure analogous" to the true ones, suppositions "tenable" for a time, appears to me to be a misapprehension of the whole nature of science; as it certainly is inapplicable to the case to which it is principally applied by Mr. Mill. 52. There is another kind of evidence of theories, very closely approaching to the verification of untried predictions, and to which, apparently, Mr. Mill does not attach much importance, since he has borrowed the term by which I have described it, _Consilience_, but has applied it in a different manner (ii. 530, 563, 590). I have spoken, in the _Philosophy_[281], of the _Consilience of Inductions_, as one of the _Tests of Hypotheses_, and have exemplified it by many instances; for example, the theory of universal gravitation, obtained by induction from the motions of the planets, was found to explain also that peculiar motion of the spheroidal earth which produces the Precession of the Equinoxes. This, I have said, was a striking and surprising coincidence which gave the theory a stamp of truth beyond the power of ingenuity to counterfeit. I may compare such occurrences to a case of interpreting an unknown character, in which two different inscriptions, deciphered by different persons, had given the same alphabet. We should, in such a case, believe with great confidence that the alphabet was the true one; and I will add, that I believe the history of science offers no example in which a theory supported by such consiliences, had been afterwards proved to be false.