INTRODUCTION 



lected in "Through Nature to God." The 

 Phi Beta Kappa address of June, 1895, ^^ 

 " The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-Sacri- 

 fice," is a restatement of the teleological in- 

 terpretation of the evolutionary process, — a 

 restatement whose eloquence and literary beauty 

 can be doubted by no one. This paper and 

 that on " The Mystery of Evil " form a trans- 

 ition to Fiske*s final view of the religious pro- 

 blems. " The Mystery of Evil " is a deliber- 

 ate study of a problem which the " Cosmic 

 Philosophy " had as deliberately refused to 

 consider. The third and most important dis- 

 cussion of the book, that on " The Everlasting 

 Reality of Religion," presents an argument 

 which had come to Fiske's mind as " wholly 

 new." With this supposed novelty we are not 

 here concerned. The argument expands the 

 thought which we have already summarized in 

 our general account of Fiske's later religious 

 development, — the thought that the religious 

 consciousness of humanity, as a positive adjust- 

 ment to an unseen world, must be interpreted 

 (in harmony with evolutionary principles) as a 

 positive adjustment to a reality whose deeper 



man must believe, just because he finds that the process of 

 evolution is teleological, and just because, in addition, the deep- 

 est instincts of our nature demand this interpretation. To this 

 result Spencer could not have assented. 

 cxxxii 



