ingly successful attack on materialistic or utilitarian systems, which, one might have feared, would become more influential in America than they ever have done. It has maintained that the "essentials of human nature," the "nature of first principles " in the world, are soluble. It has, it thinks, found and demonstrated God, freedom, immortality, as mentioned in its Novalis motto. To quote once

more the confident words of its editor:

A sacred college of agnostics that should undertake to place on its Index Prohibitory any or all questions relating to God, freedom, or immortality, must base its action either on the fact that its limited investigation has hitherto been unsuccessful in finding a solution, or on the fact that its investigation has discovered necessary limits in the nature of human knowledge. The mere fact of such a want of success on the part of the agnostic does not justify him in pronouncing any thing either unknown or unknowable. It warrants only the modest attitude of the sceptic who affirms his own present ignorance. What man has a right to affirm besides his own ignorance the ignorance of all men? An affirmation of necessary ignorance is still more unwarranted. Modern agnosticism rests chiefly on metaphysical grounds which profess to have discovered the inherent incommensurableness of the infinite or absolute with human capacity for cognition. Such discovery implies acquirements in ontology, a knowledge of the nature of the infinite and absolute, for purposes of comparison, that are utterly destructive of the agnostic hypothesis. The worst possible basis for agnosticism is the metaphysical one. But if the metaphysical basis is removed, there is left only the simple individual fact that such and such gentlemen have not succeeded thus far with the efforts that they have chosen to make in reaching certitude regarding freedom, immortality, etc.

To individual cases of doubt and uncertainty it is possible to oppose other individual cases of knowledge and certainty. Doubt and knowledge, however, are alike uninstructive to the one who does not investigate the occasion of the doubt or verify the supposed knowledge for himself.

b. 1842.

It is too soon to estimate critically, or with any attempt at final judgment, the writings of John Fiske, John Fiske, a man whose maturest work, perhaps, yet remains to be done. But notwithstanding the undesirableness of the discussion, in these pages, of many names like his own, our record of the short and comparatively unimportant list of American philosophical writings would be incomplete without a glance, if no more, at two or three of Fiske's books. His lectures on American history, his studies in folk-lore, his writings on Darwinism, education, and miscellaneous topics, may well be passed by, to be estimated more accurately in future years. But the trend of his distinctly philosophical work, which includes careful consideration of much-discussed contemporary writing in physics, physiology, and ethnology, is such as to call for notice here. Fiske is the chief Amer

ican Spencerian. His two-volume work called "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy" presents Herbert Spencer's system, in its nature and tendency, with a fulness and clearness hardly to be matched, so far as the reader's convenience is concerned, in the more elaborate writings of Spencer himself. It also contains much original matter, which, in the departments of psychology and sociology, partly anticipated some of Spencer's later work.

Fiske

followed Spencer in vigorous destructive criticism of the "Positive Philosophy," that preposterous compound of atheism and Romanism. Indeed, he claims that, by Spencer and his fellow-workers, “a system of philosophy has been constructed, out of purely scientific materials and by the employment of scientific methods, which opposes a direct negative to every one of the theorems of which Positivism is made up." Again: Again: "Mr. Spencer's philosophy is a system which, without making appeal to data that are ontological or to agencies that are extra-cosmic, brings all known truths concerning the coexistence and succession of phenomena into relation with one another as the corollaries of a single primordial truth, which is alleged of the omnipresent Existence (ignored by Positivism) whereof the phenomenal world is the multiform manifestation."

These utterances are in the preface to "Cosmic Philosophy," utterances followed by such similar statements as: "The hostility between Science and Religion, about which so much is talked and written, is purely a chimera of imagination. Putting the case into other language, it may be said that to assert a radical hostility between our Knowledge and our Aspirations, is to postulate such a fundamental viciousness in the constitution of things, as the evolutionist, at least, is in no wise bound to acknowledge. That Faith which makes the innermost essence of religion is indestructible. Were it not for the steadfast conviction that this is so, what could sustain us in dealing with questions

so mighty and so awful that one is sometimes fain to shrink from facing their full import, lest the mind be overwhelmed and forever paralyzed by the sense of its own nothingness."

Mr. Fiske wrote thus in 1874, and the several chapters of his work elaborated these positions, among many others. In 1884 and 1885 appeared the two other books to be mentioned here: "The Destiny of Man, Viewed in the Light of his Origin"; and The Idea of God as Affected by Modern Knowledge." In the former the author applied the evolutionist's arguments, in which he implicitly believes, to the proof of personal immortality. The book was first delivered as lectures in that curious heterogeneous compound of wisdom and eccentricity, the Concord Summer School of Philosophy. The argument is that man is and must remain the highest product of evolution on earth; that the brain and its powers were evolved preponderatingly; and that with the increased strength of the brain came spirituality and morals, to gain until "peace and love shall reign supreme. The dream of poets, the lesson of priest and prophet, the inspiration of the great musician, is confirmed in the light of modern knowledge. And as we gird ourselves up for the work of life, we may look forward to the time when in the truest sense the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever, King of kings and Lord of lords." In the latter book Mr. Fiske follows the line of discussion further, and applies it to questions of theism in gen

66

eral, and the regulation of the universe. He rejects the Augustinian, Calvinistic, or other united and accurately-defined doctrines of God's existence, and finds that the immanence of the Great Cause is like the Force of the physicists. The mind of man, with its developed moral nature, mirrors and leads to the vastly different but similar mind of God, of which it is a type. Evolution and destiny, as viewed by Mr. Fiske, are the real thing of which foreordination and a scheme of salvation were imperfect definitions.

It

Since 1870 or 1880, in America, there has been a marked increase of strength of theistic and spiritual belief and argument, among scientific men, students of philosophy, religious "radicals," and others. is true that "orthodoxy" or "evangelicalism" has not included any increased number of high intellects within its pale. Contemporary American literature and thought is, to a considerable extent, outside of the limits of the Trinitarian bodies, and not to be accounted orthodox by Roman Catholic, High Church," Calvinistic, or "Reformed" standards. It is not hostile to Christianity; to the principles of its Founder it is, for the most part, sincerely attached; it complains of no priestcraft, which, in America, has so little power over the best mind that it is not even, as in France to Victor Hugo, an aggravation; it complains now of no overbearing clerical conservatism, it simply lets modern denominations do their work, accepting what is good and permanent, and ignoring what it deems transient. But, on the other hand, material