SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 29 



fancy, but science recognizes in it only another of 

 the protean forms in which force clothes itself. 

 We can evoke fire without the aid of fire, but the 

 fire called life man has not yet been able so to 

 evoke — probably never will be able. The nearest 

 he has as yet come to it is in producing many of 

 the organic compounds synthetically from inorganic 

 compounds — a triumph a few years ago thought to 

 be impossible. 



The barrier, then, between the organic and the 

 inorganic, upon which the scheme of theology of 

 Professor Drummond turns, is by no means a fixed 

 conclusion of science. Science believes that the 

 potencies or properties of life are on the inorganic 

 side, and that the passage has actually taken place 

 in the past or may still take place in the present. 



In working out his general thesis, our author 

 takes courage from the example of Walter Bagehot, 

 whose physical politic, he says, is but the extension 

 of natural law to the political world ; and from the 

 example of Herbert Spencer, whose biological soci- 

 ology is but the application of natural law to the 

 social world. But the political world of Walter 

 Bagehot and the social world of Herbert Spencer are 

 worlds which science recognizes ; they fall within 

 its pale ; their existence is never disputed. But 

 the spiritual world of Professor Drummond is a 

 world of which science can know nothing. It is to 

 science just as fanciful or unreal as the spiritual 

 world of Grecian or Scandinavian mythology, or as 

 the fairy world of childhood. 



