146 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART in 



studied will teach us rightly if we a little readjust the 

 formula in which Darwin summed up his results. 



Going back a step farther, from Spencer to Comte, 

 we cannot but be struck with the extraordinary close- 

 ness of discipleship manifested by Drummond. If 

 Comte started the process of naturalistic study of duty 

 under the flag of sociology, Drummond accepts the 

 whole programme. The appeal to history disappears ; 

 with all his varied culture that was not in Drummond's 

 line. But the appeal to biology stands ; the conception 

 of altruism as a synonym for virtue stands firm ; the 

 conception of sociology as an authoritative science, 

 growing out of biology, is accepted in so many words. 

 " Every earnest mind is prepared to welcome " sociology, 

 " not only as the coming science, but as the crowning 

 Science of all the Sciences, the Science indeed for which 

 it will one day be seen every other science exists. What 

 it waits for meantime is what every science has had to 

 wait for, exhaustive observation of the facts and ways 

 of Nature. Geology stood still for centuries waiting for 

 those who would simply look at the facts. . . . Sociology 

 has had its Werners ; it awaits its Huttons. The method 

 of sociology must be the method of all the natural 

 sciences. It also must go and see the world making, 

 not where the conditions are already abnormal beyond 

 recall, or where man, by irregular action, has already 

 obscured everything but the conditions of failure, but 

 in lower Nature which makes no mistakes, and in the 

 fairer reaches of a higher world, where the quality and 

 the stability of the progress are guarantees that the 

 eternal order of Nature has had her uncorrupted way." ] 



Most noteworthy perhaps, in comparison with Comte, 

 is the attempt to justify the definition of virtue as 



1 Ascent of Man, p. 57. 



