INTRODUCTION 



of philosophical doctrine upon which his thought 

 had fixed itself with notable eagerness as the 

 years went on. He had indeed been keenly 

 disappointed, when he began to state the results 

 of these later reflections, to find that some of 

 his critics regarded them as 'involving an essen- 

 tial change of his former methods and princi- 

 ples of philosophizing. This interpretation he 

 repudiated.^ Yet he admitted, from the begin- 

 ning of the utterance of these later teachings, 

 that his " views of the doctrine of evolution 

 and its implications " had undergone " develop- 

 ment " and " enlargement " " since the publica- 

 tion of the * Cosmic Philosophy.' " By 1885 

 he had become, he said, " aware of a shortcom- 

 ing in the earlier work." " That shortcoming 



^ See the Preface to The Idea of God, written in Septem- 

 ber, 1885 : ** When," says Fiske (loc. cit. p. xviii), speak- 

 ing of his Concord lecture on *'The Destiny of Man," 

 ** that address was published, a year ago, I was surprised to 

 find it quite commonly regarded as indicating some radical 

 change of attitude on my part, — a conversion, perhaps, 

 from one set of opinions to another." Fiske hereupon de- 

 clares that the argument in The Destiny of Man was *< based 

 in every one of its parts upon arguments already published in 

 the Cosmic Philosophy and in the Unseen World.'''' He 

 adds that none of his friends "who had studied the earlier 

 books had detected any such change of attitude ; it was only 

 people who knew Httle or nothing about me, or else the news- 

 papers." 



^ xxiii 



