INTRODUCTION 



of evolution, as he later did, to the problems 

 of Ethics, of Religion, and of human history, 

 unless we see what it was about the new the- 

 ories of Spencer^ and of the other evolutionists, 

 that attracted Fiske to the study of the subject 

 early in the sixties, while the whole matter was 

 still a novelty and while our thinker himself 

 was hardly more than a boy. It is needful to 

 point out at once what I suppose to have been 

 the chief reason why Fiske became so early 

 and so enthusiastic an evolutionist, and what 

 it was about Spencer's doctrines which made 

 Fiske so long willing to be regarded by the 

 public as in the main simply a disciple and ex- 

 positor of the new doctrine of evolution as 

 Spencer taught it. 



6. Disciples and partisans, in the world of 

 religious and of philosophical opinion, are of 

 two sorts. There are, first, the disciples pure and 

 simple, — people who fall under the spell of a 

 person or of a doctrine, and whose whole intel- 

 lectual life thenceforth consists in their partisan- 

 ship. They expound, and defend, and ward off 

 foes, and live and die faithful to the one formula. 

 Such disciples may be indispensable at first in 

 helping a new teaching to get a popular hearing, 

 but in the long run they rather hinder than help 

 the wholesome growth of the very ideas that they 

 defend ; for great ideas live by growing, and a 

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