INTRODUCTION 



cer, and makes the essence of religious emotion 

 very largely consist in the Sense of Mystery. 

 But the sense of mystery does not characterize 

 positive adjustments, in so far as they are posi- 

 tive. The earliest possessors of the sensitive 

 pigment-spots responded to light, not in so far 

 as it was nothing in particular, nor yet in so far 

 as it was a mere mystery, but in so far as it 

 meant something to them, — meant, namely, the 

 vitally important difference between shadow and 

 brightness, a difference by means of which they 

 escaped from foes, and found food and com- 

 fort. And the function of responding to the 

 light is to be estimated, not in terms of that 

 vagueness which is common to the highest and 

 the lowest creatures that can see, but in terms of 

 that higher perfection of discrimination towards 

 which the whole evolutionary process has been 

 tending. Just so, for the later Fiske, the reli- 

 gious function ought to be interpreted not in 

 terms of that dimness of mind which recurs 

 whenever we lapse into a sense of the mystery 

 of things, but in terms of that positive interest 

 which makes our highest aspirations at least in 

 some respect definite, and at least in some re- 

 spect disposed to assert themselves in terms of 

 a differentiated conception of God. 



In consequence of this change of attitude, 

 Fiske distinctly asserts in his latest period that 

 cxi 



