COSMIC THEISM 



be made upon it. I do not refer to the diffi- 

 culty of ascribing godhood to a product of evo- 

 lution, neither is it necessary to insist upon the 

 marvellous shading-ofF of collective apehood 

 into Deity which must puzzle the Comtist 

 who stops to confront his theory with the con- 

 clusions now virtually established concerning 

 man's origin ; though beneath the cavil and sar- 

 casm which cannot be kept from showing it- 

 self upon the surface of such objections, there 

 lies just scientific ground of complaint against 

 the Comtean hypothesis. The criticism to which 

 I refer is one the force of which must be ac- 

 knowledged even by those who have not yet 

 learned to estimate the resistless weight of the 

 evidence by which the development theory is 

 supported. However grand Humanity may be 

 as an object of contemplation, it is still finite, 

 concrete, and knowable. It has had a begin- 

 ning ; in all probability it is destined to have an 

 end. We can no longer, since the Copernican 

 revolution, regard it as the chief and central phe- 

 nomenon of the universe.^ We know it but as a 

 local assemblage of concrete phenomena, mani- 

 fested on the surface of a planet that is itself 

 a lesser member of a single groups among innu- 



^ [Contrast the reinstatement of human evolution in a cen- 

 tral position in our whole conception of evolution in Fiske's 

 later works. See Introduction, III., for the evolution of 

 Fiske's later views.] 



243 



