36 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PARTI 



first and brilliantly successful book, Natural Law in 

 the Spiritual World. This book was criticised in a 

 pamphlet under the name of Biological Religion, by 

 one less widely known, but not less deeply loved in 

 life or lamented in death, Dr. Finlayson. 1 Drum- 

 mond of course appeals to the sharp modern doctrine 

 of biogenesis, with its denial of all forms of sponta- 

 neous generation or xenogenesis ; with its assertion of 

 life from life, and like from like. It is certainly curi- 

 ous that an age which has taken stock so heavily in 

 evolutionary speculations and the very men of 

 science who were pioneers in evolution and popular- 

 isers of its results should also have reaffirmed, on 

 the ground of fresh experiments, a view of life closely 

 associated with creationist doctrines. Drummond, 

 for one, appeals in his early work to biological 

 science, because he is a theological creationist. His 

 analogy is somewhat wire-drawn; his biology is of 

 the simplest, rarely going beyond the single point 

 named ; when it does go further, as in discussing 

 Degeneration or Parasitism, still extremely simple, 

 and not very consistent with the foundation doctrine 

 of biogenesis. The book really offers us Neo- 

 Calvinist religion, or even Neo-Gnostic, more truly 

 than biological religion ; but it shows the same con- 

 tempt for metaphysics and the same blind confidence 

 in empirical science which distinguish Comte and 

 many lesser sceptics. Its religious teaching is often 

 admirable, but the parable on which it is built mis- 

 leads the author, because he supposes it to be more 

 than a parable. Intellectually, the best feature in 

 the book is the determination to trace continuity 



1 The late minister of Rusholme Congregational Church, Manchester. 



