INTRODUCTION 



mankind and their doings, and would have de- 

 sired to win some notion of the unity of the 

 entire process. It was this interest, however, that 

 turned him in the direction of the new doctrine 

 of evolution when it first came into sight. This 

 doctrine, with its generalizations regarding the 

 animal origin of man, regarding the connection 

 between man and all nature, regarding the pre- 

 sence of one set of laws throughout animate and 

 inanimate nature, promised to give unity to his 

 studies of human history, promised to define the 

 right method for comprehending the laws of his- 

 tory, and bade fair to throw light upon the 

 questions of human destiny so far as these ques- 

 tions could become accessible to our intelligetce. 

 Darwin reached his doctrines as a naturalist. 

 Spencer came to formulate his philosophy under 

 the combined influence of the motives of a lib- 

 eral social reformer and a comparative student 

 of various natural sciences. But Fiske came to 

 the doctrine of evolution as an ardent lover of 

 human history, who above all longed to read the 

 secret of how man came to believe, to aspire, to 

 build up, and to transform, in the fashion that, 

 in his religious, in his artistic, in his political, and 

 in his moral activities, man has always followed.^ 



^ The reviewer in the Popular Science Monthlyy in the 

 article above cited (Jan., 1875, p. 367), expresses his own 

 view of Fiske' s relation to the doctrine of evolution as fol' 



xl 



