INTRODUCTION 



have indicated that Fiske has thoughts of his 

 own which are not wholly identical with the 

 thoughts about religion, and about our rela- 

 tions to ultimate reaHty generally, with which 

 Spencer opens the " First Principles." It is 

 meanwhile obvious that Fiske is not at all 

 clearly conscious of any conflict of opinion 

 whatever between Spencer's views and his own. 

 Moreover, in the more polemical parts of his 

 discussion, we have frequently found him using, 

 against the partisans of current religious tradi- 

 tion, expressions which seem to indicate a sense 

 that in philosophy the former things have passed 

 away, and all things religious and metaphysi- 

 cal have become new. But we may well sus- 

 pect whether in Fiske's case this is the whole 

 story. One or two passages which we have 

 passed over in the foregoing exposition indi- 

 cate, from time to time, to the watchful reader, 

 a view about the nature of religion, as what 

 Fiske calls " an emotional attitude," towards 

 the ultimate reality, — a view 'that faintly sug- 

 gests already a consciousness such as Schleier- 

 macher emphasized in his " Reden ueber die 

 Religion." We turn with interest, therefore, 

 to those chapters in which Fiske announces 

 that he will deal with the relation of the cos- 

 mic philosophy to the problems " concerning 

 God and the Soul." 



Ixxxviii 



