INTRODUCTION 



polemic which now takes up so much of the 

 text of the " Cosmic Philosophy/' — could 

 hardly have seemed to out author so neces- 

 sary, had he rewritten his book' about 1900. 

 And so he would probably have retained it 

 only in an abbreviated form, and thus space 

 might have been won for a study of the newer 

 aspects of the evolutionary literature. More- 

 over, the advances of the special sciences have 

 now decided some matters that, when Fiske 

 wrote in the years about 1870, were still doubt- 

 ful, and have corrected some current views 

 that he then accepted. The publication of the 

 later portions of Spencer's " Synthetic Philoso- 

 phy " have also made clear the position of the 

 teacher whom Fiske was expounding, in regard 

 to topics which had to be treated without such 

 guidance in the original edition of the " Cos- 

 mic Philosophy." And of all these additional 

 sources of light our author would have been glad 

 to take account. Most of all, however, Fiske 

 would have desired to restate, to supplement, 

 and in some important respects to modify, the 

 opinions which, in the " Cosmic Philosophy," 

 he advances as his own regarding the problems 

 of Religion. " The Idea of God," " The Des- 

 tiny of Man," and " The Everlasting Reality 

 of Religion," — these well-known titles of his 

 later philosophical essays all emphasize aspects 

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