SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 269 



centripetal, or vice versa. " For strong and resolute men and women," 

 we are told, " an Eden would be but a fool's paradise." This is not com- 

 plimentary to our first parents in their primitive condition of innocence, 

 and it puts the curse pronounced upon them in a somewhat equivocal 

 light. There is also quite a rehabilitation of the " serpent," who, it 

 seems, knew quite well what he was talking aboixt and gave excellent 

 advice. We wonder whether Mr. Fiske is really of opinion that it helps 

 us to solve any of the practical problems of life to be told that without 

 evil there could not be good. Men have known for centuries that it is 

 good to fight evil, though what evil is essentially they have often been in 

 doubt. Upon the latter point Mr. Fiske does not in the least attempt 

 to enlighten us; and yet it should be rather a more hopeful enterprise 

 to attempt to show us what is specifically evil and ought therefore to 

 be resisted, than to vindicate evil in general as the indispensable con- 

 dition of good, and something, therefore, which God was justified in 

 making. 



The second division of the book deals with The Cosmic Roots of Love 

 and Self-Saerifice. We can not see that these roots are traced further 

 back than the mother's affection for her offspring. Mother's love is 

 doubtless an old story in the world by now, and perhaps as good a story 

 as earth has to tell ; but it seems to us that the " cosmic " character of it 

 is not very apparent. We may believe that it was destined to come in 

 the fullness of time, but this can be said equally of all that exists. " I 

 think it can be shown," says Mr. Fiske, " that the principles of morality 

 have their roots in the deepest foundations of the universe; that the 

 cosmic process is ethical in the profoundest sense; that, in that far-off 

 morning of the world when the stars sang together and the sons of God 

 shouted for joy, the beauty of self-sacrifice and disinterested love formed 

 the chief burden of the mighty theme." All we can say in regard to this 

 is that Mr. Fiske has not sho"wn it. He has shown just what we all knew 

 before — that love exists in the world, that it antagonizes selfishness, and 

 that human beings are endowed with a moral and religious sense — but 

 he has not made it plain that the meaning of the universe is to be found 

 in these (as we regard them) higher developments. He has himself ac- 

 knowledged that, on a broad view of the world-wide struggle for life, 

 there are no moral elements to be seen. 



Religion, as we hold, is its own justification. There is more of re- 

 ligion in one verse of the Psalms than in all the Theodicies that ever 

 were written. " As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my 

 soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God." 

 Here is the whole essence of the matter — the affinnation of the human 

 heart that there is something or some one beyond and above the mesh of 

 circumstance and fact in which our lives are involved ; something or some 

 one who authenticates all that is good, and everlastingly condemns what 

 is evil; something or some one to which or to whom the soul gravitates 

 as to nothing else in the universe. When this affirmation is strong, re- 

 ligious life is strong; when it is weak, religious life is weak; should it 

 cease entirely, then religion is dead. The book Mr. Fiske has given us 

 is interesting from first to last — all his books are interesting — but it 

 does not increase our knowledge, nor does it add to our knowledge faith. 



