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word to express wlmt Mr. Lewes calls experimental reasoning, 
in contrast to that which is speculative and hypothetical. 
For instance, both parties begin with facts. In physical 
inquiry these facts are the outward phenomena of the visible 
world ; in religion they are the evidences, external and 
internal, historical in the one case, moral in the other, on 
which Christianity is believed to be a revelation from God. 
Both need to take care that they know all the facts bearing 
on the point under examination, or else all their subsequent 
conclusions will be vitiated. Having got their facts, both 
proceed to generalize from them, a law of nature being 
the result in one case, a revelation from nature's God the 
result in the other. In passing on from one stage to another, 
both embody their conclusions in technical propositions for 
the sake of convenience, and in turn embody these pro- 
positions in single words ; as when the man of science talks 
of gravity or electricity or chemical affinity, and the theologian 
talks of the Trinity, of faith, of justification, and so on. Thus 
both form a terminology of their own, each word of which is 
linked back by a connected chain with the original facts 
constituting the starting point of the inquiry, and which 
in both cases are equally liable to be corrected by fresh facts, 
if fresh facts are to be found, or by more accurate con- 
clusions from old facts, if there should be reason to modify 
the conclusions of the past. And lastly, the facts are equally 
worthy of confidence in both cases, when they have been 
once proved to be facts. The process of proof may be more 
difficult in one case than another ; although I see no reason 
to suppose the verification of a fact in history to be more 
difficult or to be surrounded with greater elements of error, 
than of a phenomenon in nature. But at all events, the 
facts once proved are as certain in the one case as in the 
other, and the conclusions to which they justly and necessarily 
lead, are as worthy of implicit acceptance. 
But while all this is true, it is insufficient for my present 
purpose. For there are such unlimited capabilities in our 
nature that special mental aptitudes for this or for that may 
either be possessed by natural gift or be developed by 
constant practice into a marvellous perfection. The fact is 
familiar in regard to the body. I have been told by a very 
eminent preparer of objects for the microscope that his eye 
from incessant practice has become actually microscopic, and 
that he can now detect defects with his naked eye which at 
one time he could own deal with by the aid of a powerful 
glass. The same thing is true of the mind. It may con- 
sequently be said that the man of science has developed a 
