  Inductive theorem provers often diverge. This paper describes a simple
critic, a computer program which monitors the construction of inductive proofs
attempting to identify diverging proof attempts. Divergence is recognized by
means of a ``difference matching'' procedure. The critic then proposes lemmas
and generalizations which ``ripple'' these differences away so that the proof
can go through without divergence. The critic enables the theorem prover Spike
to prove many theorems completely automatically from the definitions alone.
