FROM PASSIVE TO ACTIVE ADAPTATION 215 
the importance of religion in life and the conscious endeavor of 
the individual to conform his life to the divine will. Fiske 
was a bitter opponent of such teachings as those of Haeckel and 
Ward that minimize the importance of man’s place in nature, 
for he looks upon humanity as the flower of cosmic evolution up 
to man, and the perfection of humanity as the goal of social 
progress. ‘“‘ Once dethrone humanity,” he says, “ regard it as 
a mere local incident in an endless and aimless series of cosmical 
changes, and you arrive at a doctrine which, under whatever 
specious name it may be veiled, is at bottom neither more nor 
less than atheism. On its metaphysical side, atheism is the 
denial of anything psychical in the universe outside of human 
consciousness.” 4 
Of greatest importance to the present subject is his discussion 
of the change in the cosmic process with the evolution of man. 
“When humanity began to be evolved,” he says, “‘ an entirely 
new chapter in the history of the universe was opened. Hence- 
forth the life of the nascent soul came to be first in importance, 
and the bodily life became subordinated to it. Henceforth it 
appeared that, in this direction at least, the process of zodlogical 
change had come to an end, and a process of psychological change 
was to take its place. Henceforth along this supreme line of 
generation there was to be no further evolution of new species 
through physical variation, but through the accumulation of 
psychical variations one particular species was to be indefinitely 
perfected and raised to a totally different plane from that on 
which all life had hitherto existed. Henceforth, in short, the 
dominant aspect of evolution was to be not the genesis of species, 
but the progress of civilization. . . . 
“In the human organism physical variation has well-nigh 
stopped, or is confined to insignificant features, save in the gray 
surface of the cerebrum. The work of cerebral organization is 
chiefly completed after birth as we see by contrasting the smooth, 
ape-like brain surfaces of the new-born child with the deeply 
furrowed and myriad-seamed surface of the adult individual 
1 Destiny of Man, pp. 12, 13, yet cf. Cosmic Philosophy, ii, p. 230, where he 
points out the value of skepticism. 
