It is emphatically untrue to say that a single example in the present day, or for matter of that any number of examples, either goes or can go any way towards proving the adequacy of any non-religious formula.

For all such formulae have first to be further analysed before we know how far they are really non-religious; and secondly the religious element that will be certainly found existing in them will have, hypothetically, to be removed.
It would be well if the positive school would spend in this spiritual analysis but a little of that skill they have attained to in their analysis of matter.

In their experiments, for instance, on spontaneous generation, what untold pains have been taken! With what laborious thought, with what emulous ingenuity, have they struggled to completely sterilise the fluids in which they are to seek for the new production of life! How jealously do they guard against leaving there any already existing germs! How easily do they tell us their experiments may be vitiated by the smallest oversight! Surely spiritual matters are worthy of an equally careful treatment.
For what we have here to study is not the production of the lowest forms of animal life, but the highest forms of human happiness.

These were once thought to be always due to religion.

The modern doctrine is that they are producible without such aid.