INTRODUCTION 



mood which I have above tried to depict, this 

 feeling, or any other which is merely self-re- 

 garding, is lost sight of in the feeling which as- 

 sociates a future life with some solution of the 

 burdensome problem of existence. Had we 

 but faith enough to lighten the burden of this 

 problem, the inferior question would perhaps 

 be less absorbing. Could we but know that our 

 present lives are working together toward some 

 good end, — even an end in no wise anthropo- 

 morphic, — it would be of less consequence 

 whether we were individually to endure.** 



I have been led to quote at length this pas- 

 sage, not only for its intrinsic interest in the pre- 

 sent context as a document indicative of the 

 transition-stage through which Fiske's mind 

 was now passing, but because I chance to asso- 

 ciate it with my own first personal acquaintance 

 with Fiske. In the summer of 1877, when as 

 a student I chanced to be for a few weeks in 

 Cambridge, and to be introduced by Professor 

 James to our author, I met him one evening 

 at his own house in company with Professor 

 Paine. The conversation turned a good deal 

 upon music, and it was in the course of a dis- 

 cussion of Beethoven that Fiske referred to 

 this very passage in " The Unseen World " as 

 expressing his own present attitude, and as a 

 passage of which the music that was at the mo- 

 cxvi 



