INTRODUCTION 



if evolution means anything, then this function 

 of religious adjustment must throw an actual 

 light, dim though that light may still be, upon 

 our concrete relations to the unknown. While 

 he still insists, to the end, that the truth of our 

 religious opinions is incapable of scientific de- 

 monstration, he does also insist upon what the 

 original Spencerian argument would seem to 

 have excluded altogether, namely, the probabil- 

 ity that our fundamental rehgious hopes are well 

 founded, and that we have been, throughout the 

 religious development of humanity, in actual 

 relation to an unseen Power that deserves, in a 

 much more positive sense than Fiske had ori- 

 ginally recognized, the name Spiritual. 



(4) In consequence of all these considera- 

 tions, Fiske is finally disposed throughout his 

 later period to the assertion of an " Idea of 

 God " which comes much nearer to being what 

 historical usage would call theistic than had 

 been the Deity of which the " Cosmic Philoso- 

 phy " spoke. While the " Cosmic Philosophy" 

 had permitted us (by way of employing purely 

 symbolic terms with a full consciousness of their 

 utter inadequacy) to define the inscrutable real- 

 ity as " quasi-psychical," just in order to distin- 

 guish our views from Materialism, the later 

 writings of Fiske at length declare without hes- 

 itation that the religious consciousness requires 

 cxii 



