Genre:

Regular Feature, Abstract

Publications abstracted:

Booth 1890

Subjects:

Religion, Unbelief, Heredity, Materialism, Steam-power, Railways, Engineers, Discovery

    According to William Booth the 'injustice of our present social arrangements [...] is to the mass of men Atheism made easy' (496). Notes that Booth 'shudders while he admits that the more forbidding doctrines of Calvinism should have been to some extent rehabilitated by the favourite scientific doctrines of our day', especially those of heredity and automatism, and that he resolutely 'rejects the gospel of despair in its quasi-scientific dress' (497). Booth asserts that he has made a discovery in 'the philanthropic sphere' which is 'something analogous' to the 'discovery of the steam engine' and 'the engineer's parallel bars' in the sphere of transportation, and like these, it too will 'transform civilization' (499).