676 JOHN FISKE. 



more than a mere exposition of Spencer's doctrine. Fiske not only 

 made clear that which was confused, but he added new propositions. 

 Among these was his chapter on the prolongation of human infancy, 

 a doctrine of great significance and a contribution of importance to the 

 general argument. Its value was recognized by his fellow evolutionists, 

 and he himself repeatedly referred to it in his works, claiming with 

 evident pride it was his and his alone. Most of his biographers find 

 in his later works devoted to religious topics a softened tone which they 

 attribute to a change of views. He himself maintained that he was 

 consistent. Perhaps he was affected and made less aggressive by the 

 change of opinion then going on. There can be no doubt that the public 

 of to-day can read the vigorous attacks of the young evolutionist upon tra- 

 ditional faiths and ingrained prejudices with less feeling than was provoked 

 by them when they were first delivered. On the other hand Fiske may 

 have been unconsciously borne upon the wave of scholarship whose 

 " philosophical, idealistic trend," according to Professor Munsterberg, is 

 " only swelling to-day, but whose highest point may be ten or twenty years 

 hence." At any rate such a sentence as tins — "I believe in the immor- 

 tality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable 

 proofs of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness 

 of God's work " — could not have found place in the pages of Cosmic 

 Philosophy. Fiske may not have changed his doctrines, but he cer- 

 tainly modified his manner of expressing them. He combined, accord- 

 ing to Professor Royce, " the child's love of the unseen and mysterious 

 with the modern sceptical student's scorn for superstition." These 

 characteristics pervade both his early and late works. 



Fiske quotes from Humboldt, " Nous avons considere le style corame 

 expression de caractere, comme reflet de I'interieur de I'homme." 

 There can be no doubt that F'iske's publications reveal the personality 

 of the author to the reader. We can easily see, through the lines, the 

 image of the good-natured, straightforward, genial man, whose intel- 

 lectual honesty leads him to say what he thinks, and whose sense of 

 liunior impels him to enliven with a jest even those pages which are 

 devoted to the most abstruse subjects. The weary student of philos- 

 ophy experiences relaxation from the strain upon his attention consequent 

 upon his effort to follow the argument, when he is told that '• the 

 waves of motor energy which the human organism absorbs in wliifFs of 

 tobacco smoke are but a series of pulsations of transformed sunlight." 

 The reader, perplexed by the abstruse speculations quoted from some 

 learned philosopher, finds relief in the assertion that the troublesome 



