INTRODUCTION 



had already indicated the very features of doc- 

 trine which he later made increasingly promi- 

 nent. His own citations, in this connection, 

 from the " Cosmic Philosophy " point out pas- 

 sages in the closing chapters of the book where 

 he had given utterance to what proved to be 

 germinal thoughts. We may well emphasize 

 at just this place what these thoughts were. 

 We have not had occasion to make so much of 

 them in our exposition as Fiske himself later 

 came to do — for as a fact, it is doubtful 

 whether any reader who had before him the 

 " Cosmic Philosophy " only would be able of 

 himself to see the passages in question in the 

 perspective in which Fiske later viewed them. 

 In the chapter (Part III., chapter ii.) on "An- 

 thropomorphic Theism " there occurs one sen- 

 tence in which Fiske, while using a sort of 

 indirect discourse, refers to " the wondrous pro- 

 cess of evolution as itself the working out of a 

 mighty teleology, of which our finite under- 

 standings can fathom but the scantiest rudi- 

 ments." This sentence, in its original context, 

 can hardly have impressed very deeply any 

 early reader of Fiske's book. It occurs side 

 by side with the assertion that no anthropomor- 

 phic teleology can be tolerated, either as a sci- 

 entific or as a philosophical hypothesis. The 

 teleology here in question must therefore ap- 

 ciii 



