FROM PASSIVE TO ACTIVE ADAPTATION 21$ 



the importance of religion in life and the conscious endeavor of 

 the individual to conform his life to the divine will. Fiske 

 was a bitter opponent of such teachings as those of Haeckel and 

 Ward that minimize the importance of man's place in nature, 

 for he looks upon humanity as the flower of cosmic evolution up 

 to man, and the perfection of humanity as the goal of social 

 progress. " Once dethrone humanity," he says, " regard it as 

 a mere local incident in an endless and aimless series of cosmical 

 changes, and you arrive at a doctrine which, under whatever 

 specious name it may be veiled, is at bottom neither more nor 

 less than atheism. On its metaphysical side, atheism is the 

 denial of anything psychical in the universe outside of human 

 consciousness." x 



Of greatest importance to the present subject is his discussion 

 of the change in the cosmic process with the evolution of man. 

 " When humanity began to be evolved," he says, " an entirely 

 new chapter in the history of the universe was opened. Hence- 

 forth the life of the nascent soul came to be first in importance, 

 and the bodily life became subordinated to it. Henceforth it 

 appeared that, in this direction at least, the process of zoological 

 change had come to an end, and a process of psychological change 

 was to take its place. Henceforth along this supreme line of 

 generation there was to be no further evolution of new species 

 through physical variation, but through the accumulation of 

 psychical variations one particular species was to be indefinitely 

 perfected and raised to a totally different plane from that on 

 which all life had hitherto existed. Henceforth, in short, the 

 dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, 

 but the progress of civilization. . . . 



" In the human organism physical variation has well-nigh 

 stopped, or is confined to insignificant features, save in the gray 

 surface of the cerebrum. The work of cerebral organization is 

 chiefly completed after birth as we see by contrasting the smooth, 

 ape-like brain surfaces of the new-born child with the deeply 

 furrowed and myriad-seamed surface of the adult individual 



1 Destiny of Man, pp. 12, 13, yet cf. Cosmic Philosophy, ii, p. 230, where he 

 points out the value of skepticism. 



