When, from results, we pass to the easiest method for attaining them, there seems but little to add to the extracts with which this note commenced. And if the object be clearly defined, the labour of the mental workshop need not be a severe discouragement. It is true that no man can take his Thought--the offspring of his inward Light--pull it to pieces, and reconstruct it, as he would deal with a thing of brass or iron. But every earnest ponderer may keep his prolific idea steadily in view, and hold conversations with himself respecting it. This is the well-known method by which Aristotle virtually obtains his conclusions before he finally proceeds to deduce them. From the same conception of Method, real thinking appears to Plato as a Dialogue without speech. And, doubtless, actual discussion between two or more living men would be the surest way of arriving at the goal of insight, provided those most uncommon of all endowments, common sense and common honesty, could be assured to the dialecticians.[13] Thus much, then, may serve as an illustration of the task we are attempting, and of the means by which we hope to accomplish it. If achieved, it will form a contribution to the great work thus characterised by the Rector of Lincoln College from the University pulpit, as reported in the _Oxford Undergraduates' Journal_ for October 26, 1871: "The Natural Theology of the last century is no longer found to be satisfactory in presence of the geological and biological sciences as they now stand. The answer that the sciences are wrong and the theologians are right does not admit of being discussed or refuted, for it is the answer of ignorance. The answer of the Catholic Church, which is to take refuge in its own authority, can only be practically tendered where there is an infallible living authority, as in the chair of S. Peter. It seems to be the business of the English Church especially--a Church which has never yet broken with reason or proscribed education--to fairly face these questions, to resume the Natural Theology of the past age, and to re-establish the synthesis of Science and Faith." E.--ON THE EFFECT OF CONSILIENT PROOFS. The expressive word "_Consilience_" has been adopted on the authority of Dr. Whewell and Professor Pritchard, both of whom employ it in preference to the commoner expression _convergence_. Upon the force of consilient proofs, Dr. Whewell writes thus:-- "The cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether different have _jumped together_, belong only to the best established theories which the history of science contains. And as I shall have occasion to refer to this peculiar feature in their evidence, I will take the liberty of describing it by a particular phrase, and will term it the _Consilience of Inductions_.