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rating the gifts required for an accurate observation of nature 
or of depreciating the lifelong labours of the eminent men who 
have become distinguished in the annals of science. And yet, 
after all, this knowledge of facts is not the first stage of the 
process. It is but the collection of the materials, not the 
putting together the data out of which the fabric of ascer- 
tained scientific truth is to be constructed. Two processes 
still remain of the utmost delicacy and difficulty, and full of 
the possibilities of error. 
In the first place, the facts have to be generalized in the 
common truth represented by them, a truth equivalent to the 
facts ; and neither falling short of them on one side, or ex- 
ceeding them on the other. Thousands have failed in both 
ways, either drawing conclusions not justified by the facts, or 
failing to see the conclusion which is justified by them. The 
truth may be itself a fact, as, for instance, if it could be proved 
that the human race had existed on the earth for a period in- 
definitely longer than the Hebrew chronology. Or, it may be, 
what we call a law, that is, some uniform mode of the great 
Creators working. But, in any case, directly we pass from 
the facts to the conclusion to be founded on them, we pass 
from the province of the observer to the province of the 
reasoner. They are two separate powers, and may exist 
together or may not. 
But there is still one more process to be gone through 
before the investigation is complete, and this likewise belongs 
to the reasoner, not to the observer. The conclusion at 
which I suppose ourselves to have arrived in one branch of 
inquiry, has to be compared with conclusions arrived at 
in other branches, and to be adjusted into its proper place 
in the whole harmonious fabric of truth. First it has to be 
compared with the fixed conclusions arrived at in other 
branches of inquiry, for the purpose of ascertaining whether 
it is harmonious with them or not. For instance, suppose 
the conclusion which the scientific inquirer has arrived at 
to be the remote antiquity of man, his presence on the earth 
at past periods indefinitely distant. We must ascertain 
whether this conclusion can be held consistently with other 
conclusions in other branches. For as the Cosmos is but 
one, and ail its parts so intimately related that they can be 
distinguished but cannot be separated, so intimate is their 
action and reaction, so close and complicated the threads that 
hold all created things together, so true knowledge can onty 
be one. It must be consistent throughout. It is incon- 
ceivable that one and the same thing should be true in one 
branch of inquiry and untrue in another. No conclusion can 
