INTRODUCTION 



correspond to our highest aspirations. If one 

 wonders why Fiske, after all the vigorous po- 

 lemic that we have found in the " Cosmic Phi- 

 losophy " against efforts to transcend our hope- 

 lessly limited human powers, should still feel 

 interested in defending the thesis that certain 

 definite opinions about a spiritual world might 

 after all be true, we find our author justifying 

 his attitude in words that are decidedly charac- 

 teristic of his personality, even if they seem in a 

 somewhat singular contrast to his more polemic 

 moods. " We must think," he says, " with the 

 symbols with which experience has furnished 

 us ; and when we so think, there does seem 

 to be little that is even intellectually satisfying 

 in the awful picture which science shows us, 

 of giant worlds concentrating out of nebulous 

 vapour, developing with prodigious waste of 

 energy into theatres of all that is grand and 

 sacred in spiritual endeavour, clashing and ex- 

 ploding again into dead vapour-balls, only to 

 renew the same toilful process without end, — 

 a senseless bubble-play of Titan forces, with 

 life, love, and aspiration brought forth only to 

 be extinguished. The human mind, however 

 ' scientific ' in its training, must often recoil 

 from the conclusion that this is all ; and there 

 are moments when one passionately feels that 

 this cannot be all. On warm June mornings in 

 cxiv 



