INTRODUCTION 



studying the phenomenal process of evolution 

 in nature we get, first, the impression (Fiske is 

 accustomed to say the almost or quite convin- 

 cing proof) that this process possesses in the 

 strictest sense Unity, and constitutes a single 

 Whole. But what this whole means we of 

 course cannot see so long as we merely observe 

 the extra-human phenomena. When we come 

 to consider, however, the case of man, we do 

 find a meaning in the process. The close rela- 

 tion of this discoverable meaning to the natural 

 phenomena themselves is suggested to Fiske by 

 the very considerations that he had embodied 

 in his theory of the significance of infancy. The 

 wiliness of nature in teaching man the highest 

 morality through devices which appeal to his 

 most fundamental and in some respects most 

 physical passions, — this later seemed to him a 

 proof that the natural process of evolution had 

 about itself something closely akin to higher 

 meanings, even when the phenomena, taken as 

 they first presented themselves, appeared most 

 remote from anything ethically significant. In 

 the case of primitive man, nature hid devices 

 of profoundly spiritual significance beneath the 

 appearance of an appeal to merely elemental 

 desires. Seeming to intend only the preser- 

 vation of the stock, nature furnished the race 

 with the brain that was to make man's aspira- 

 cvi 



