Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/685

667 endless multitude of phenomena. We begin to catch glimpses of the meaning and dramatic purpose of things; at all events we rest assured that there is such a meaning … From man's origin we gather hints of his destiny, and the study of evolution leads our thoughts through Nature to God" (pp. xi, xii).

The book falls into three essays written with Mr. Fiske's usual grace and vigor, and entitled respectively, "The Mystery of Evil," "The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-Sacrifice," and "The Everlasting Reality of Religion." The first paper, while containing nothing that is distinctly new or original, presents very clearly and ably the view that evil, without ceasing to be profoundly real, is only relative to good. It is the characteristic of a lower stage of living as looked at from a higher state; moreover, if evil were not there to be overcome, no progress would be possible; we should have nothing but moral stagnation and death. The essay on 'the cosmic roots of love and self-sacrifice,' was intended, as the author tells us in his preface, as an answer to Huxley's famous Romanes lecture on Ethics and Evolution. Instead of finding with Huxley (to whose memory this volume is dedicated) that there is an essential antagonism between the cosmic process and ethical progress, Mr. Fiske, holding fast to his monistic faith, maintains that the cosmic process rightly understood includes the ethical progress of society, or rather that the latter is the goal toward which the former tends. "The moral sentiments, the moral law, devotion to unselfish ends, 'disinterested love,' nobility of soul, these are Nature's most highly wrought products, latest in coming to maturity; they are the consummation toward which all earlier prophecy has pointed" (p. 130). But Mr. Fiske does more than assert the unity and continuity of the evolutionary process in this essay; he also traces the salient points in the development of the ethical out of the natural. The factor to which the author attaches most importance, and which he believes has most profoundly modified the original form of the principle of natural selection, is the enormous increase of the period of infancy in the human race, and the consequent prolongation of the period when parental care is necessary. As a result of this fact, we find that the possibilities for rapid progress on the part of the individual are greatly extended, language is developed, and, at the same time social groups are formed based on the more or less permanent family relationships. This factor, as is well known, was pointed out by Mr. Fiske many years ago, and is his own special contribution to the evolutionary doctrine. It is doubtful, however, if the enormous influence of the lengthening of the period of infancy, and of the other facts which it involves, has yet been generally appreciated.

The third paper seems to me much less carefully reasoned than the second. Mr. Fiske finds that the three postulates of religion are, a quasi-human God, an undying human soul, and the ethical significance of the unseen world. To take away any of these, he maintains, would be to rob religion of that which is most vital to it. In support of the reality and