668 JOHN FISKE. 



tries by a Member of the Philadelphia Bar.' I read it and read it, until 

 forbidden to read such a grewsome work, and then I read it all the 

 more." 



He also tells us that he had access to a few scientific books owned by 

 a strange character in Middletown, a sort of hermit ; a dabbler in biol- 

 ogy and geology, who led a solitary life ; immersed, apparently, in 

 studies and speculations concerning things far above his stage of culti- 

 vation. In the curious den — the library, workshop, and probably liv- 

 ing room also — of this friendly recluse, among stuffed birds, mounted 

 animals, strange creatures preserved in alcohol, specimens of fossil foot- 

 prints from the Connecticut sandstone, and a few books on the subjects 

 in which the owner was interested, the learned boy was admitted as a 

 privileged guest, and here he talked with his strange companion con- 

 cerning the surrounding objects, and from his host young Fiske bor- 

 rowed such of the books as he cared to read. 



The future author of " Outlines of a Cosmic Philosophy" and "Through 

 Nature to God," was at this time a teacher in the Sunday-school and 

 was active at prayer-meetings. What it cost him to reach the frame of 

 mind which could put forth these works is substantially set forth in 

 his Cosmic Philosophy. "A person," he says, "is educated in an 

 environment of Presbyterian theology, accepting without question all 

 the doctrines of Calvinism. By and by his environment enlarges. 

 Facts in science or in history, methods of induction, canons of criticism 

 present themselves to his mind as things irreconcilable with his old 

 creed. Hence painful doubts, entailing efforts to escape by modifying 

 the creed to suit new mental exigencies. Hence eager study and fur- 

 ther enlargement of the environment, causing fresh disturbance of 

 equilibrium and renewed doubt, resulting in further adaptation. And 

 so the process continues, until, if the person in question be sufficiently 

 earnest and sufficiently fortunate, the environment enlarges so far as to 

 comprehend the most advanced science of the day, and the process 

 of adaptation goes on until an approximate equilibrium is attained 

 between the order of conception and the order of phenomena, and 

 scepticism, having discharged its function, exists no longer, save in 

 so far as it may be said to survive in the ingrained habit of weigh- 

 ing evidence and testing one's hypotheses." Elsewhere, and this time 

 speaking in the first person singular, he refers to his early religious 

 opinions as being based upon the fear of the " burning hell with which 

 my childish imagination had been unwisely terrified." 



He entered the sophomore class at Harvard in 1860 at the age of 



