INTRODUCTION 



Meanwhile he had become a follower of 

 Herbert Spencer. Fiske has himself told us, 

 in his address upon E. L. Youmans/ that he 

 had become acquainted for the first time with 

 Spencer's philosophical plans in February, 

 i860, that is, some months before his own en- 

 trance into Harvard. " I first became aware," 

 says Fiske, " of Spencer's existence through a 

 single paragraph quoted from him by Lewes, 

 and in that paragraph there was immense fas- 

 cination. I had been steeping myself in the 

 literature of modern philosophy, starting with 

 Bacon and Descartes, and was then studying 

 Comte's ' Philosophie Positive,' which inter- 

 ested me as suggesting that the special doctrines 

 of the several sciences might be organized into 

 a general body of doctrine of universal signifi- 

 cance. Comte's work," continues Fiske, " was 

 crude, and often wildly absurd ; but there was 

 much in it that was very suggestive. In May, 

 i860, in the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, 

 I fell upon a copy of that same prospectus 

 of Spencer's works, and read it with exulting 

 delight ; for clearly there was to be such an 

 organization of scientific doctrine as the world 

 was waiting for." The consequence was that 

 Fiske, even as a college student, was an eager 

 reader of Spencer's earlier works ; and from 

 ^ See A Century of Science, chap. iii. 

 xxxiv 



