8 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



do the necessary work, but not here. We cannot 

 incorporate en passant a body of metaphysical prole- 

 gomena to ethics. We must be allowed to let our 

 point of view stand as an assumption. 



Looking at matters thus, although we seek to 

 learn from the theories reviewed, and especially from 

 the interesting and valuable details which they have 

 collected, yet our analysis will necessarily to a large 

 extent be hostile. 



First, we ask whether the various theories agree 

 with each other ? And on this Mr. Benjamin Kidd, 

 himself a sociologist, tells us that sociologists are 

 hopelessly divided in their attempts to furnish prac- 

 tical guidance. The science was to have been founded 

 by Comte fifty years ago and more ; Mr. Kidd seems 

 to think it still needs founding by a new recurrence 

 to biology. It is plain, therefore, that the appeal to 

 fact has not yet done for the study of society what 

 it promised to do. Neither theologians nor meta- 

 physicians could have been more hopelessly at issue 

 among themselves than the votaries of fact have been 

 and still are. Secondly, we ask whether each author 

 is so much as self -consistent ? Thirdly, we ask, 

 granted that we learn some fresh truth, is it taught 

 us authoritatively by science, whether by the science 

 of biology or by some other ? or has natural science 

 merely suggested parables to the moral judgment ? 

 These formal or logical tests pretty well clear the 

 ground. A remainder of our theories, however, is 

 overthrown (fourthly) by the final test, by the touch- 

 stone of the moral consciousness. 



Positively our argument can hardly be said to go 

 beyond this point, that if biological clues are to afford 



