By JOHN FISKE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1886 Copyright, 1885, By JOHN FISKE . All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. To MY WIFE, IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE SWEET SUNDAY MORNING UNDER THE APPLE-TREE ON THE HILLSIDE, WHEN WE TWO SAT LOOKING DOWN INTO FAIRY WOODLAND PATHS, AND TALKED OF THE THINGS SINCE WRITTEN IN THIS LITTLE BOOK, I now dedicate it . Ἀργύριον καὶ χρυσίον οὐχ ὑπ

But out of the chaos of vagueness in which this unhappy word has been immersed it is perhaps still possible to extract something like a definite meaning. In the broadest sense there are three possible ways in which we may contemplate the universe. First , we may regard the world of phenomena as sufficient unto itself, and deny that it needs to be referred to any underlying and all-comprehensive unity. Nothing has an ultimate origin or destiny; there is no dramatic tendency in the succession of e

The difficulty which here besets Margaret must doubtless have been felt by every one when confronted with the thoughts by which the highest human minds have endeavoured to disclose the hidden life of the universe and interpret its meaning. It is a difficulty which baffles many, and they who surmount it are few indeed. Most people content themselves through life with a set of concrete formulas concerning Deity, and vituperate as atheistic all con ceptions which refuse to be compressed within the

It is only within the present century that the vastness of the changes thus beginning to be wrought has become apparent. The scientific achievements of the human intellect no longer occur sporadically: they follow one upon another, like the organized and systematic conquests of a resistless army. Each new discovery becomes at once a powerful implement in the hands of innumerable workers, and each year wins over fresh regions of the universe from the unknown to the known. Our own generation has b

[A] See note A at the end of the volume. In all this personification of physical phenomena our prehistoric ancestors were greatly assisted by that theory of ghosts which was perhaps the earliest speculative effort of the human mind. Travellers have now and then reported the existence of races of men quite destitute of religion, or of what the observer has learned to recognize as religion; but no one has ever discovered a race of men devoid of a belief in ghosts. The mass of crude inference which

But there was another cause, besides scientific generalization, which led men's minds toward monotheism. The conception of tutelar deities, which was the most prominent practical feature of ancestor-worship, was directly affected by the political development of the peoples of antiquity. As tribes were consolidated into nations, the tutelar gods of the tribes became generalized, or the god of some leading tribe came to supersede his fellows, until the result was a single national deity, at first

Great as was the service which these views of Athanasius rendered in the fourth century of our era, they are scarcely to be regarded as a permanent or essential feature of Christian theism. The metaphysic in which they are couched is alien to the metaphysic of our time, yet through this vast difference it is all the more instructive to note how closely Athanasius approaches the confines of modern scientific thought, simply through his fundamental conception of God as the indwelling life of the u

I must not be understood as ignoring the fact that this lower species of theism has been entertained by some of the loftiest minds of our race, both in ancient and in modern times. When once such an ever-present conception as the idea of God has become intertwined with the whole body of the thoughts of mankind, it is very difficult for the most powerful and subtle intelligence to change the form it has taken. It has become so far organized into the texture of the mind that it abides there uncons

In this connection it is worth while to state explicitly what is the true province of scientific explanation. Is it not obvious that since a philosophical theism must regard divine power as the immediate source of all phenomena alike, therefore science cannot properly explain any particular group of phenomena by a direct reference to the action of Deity? Such a reference is not an explanation, since it adds nothing to our previous knowledge either of the phenomena or of the manner of divine acti

If we could cross-question all the men and women we know, and still more all the children, we should probably find that, even in this enlightened age, the conceptions of Deity current throughout the civilized world contain much that is in the crudest sense anthropomorphic. Such, at any rate, seems to be the character of the conceptions with which we start in life. With those whose studies lead them to ponder upon the subject in the light of enlarged experience, these conceptions become greatly m

In its best days, however, there was a serious weakness in the argument from design, which was ably pointed out by Mr. Mill, in an essay wherein he accords much more weight to the general argument than could now by any possibility be granted it. Its fault was the familiar logical weakness of proving too much. The very success of the argument in showing the world to have been the work of an intelligent Designer made it impossible to suppose that Creator to be at once omnipotent and absolutely ben

That such a change in our conception of the universe marks the greatest revolution that has ever taken place in human thinking need scarcely be said. But even in this statement we have not quite revealed the depth of the change. Not only has modern science made it clear that the varied forms of Nature which make up the universe have arisen through a process of evolution, but it has also made it clear that what we call the laws of Nature have been evolved through the self-same process. The axiom

The point is of vital importance to theism. As Kant has well said, "the conception of God involves not merely a blindly operating Nature as the eternal root of things, but a Supreme Being that shall be the author of all things by free and understanding action; and it is this conception which alone has any interest for us." It will be observed that Kant says nothing here about "contrivance." By the phrase "free and understanding action" he doubtless means much the same that is here meant by ascri

The case becomes still more striking when we have to deal with conceptions of the universe, of cosmic forces such as light and heat, or of the stupendous secular changes which modern science calls us to contemplate. Here our conceptions cannot even pretend to represent the objects; they are as purely symbolic as the algebraic equations whereby the geometer expresses the shapes of curves. Yet so long as there are means of verification at our command, we can reason as safely with these symbolic co

Still further striking confirmation is found in the marvellous disclosures of spectrum analysis. To whatever part of the heavens we turn the telescope, armed with this new addition to our senses, we find the same chemical elements with which the present century has made us familiar upon the surface of the earth. From the distant worlds of Arcturus and the Pleiades, whence the swift ray of light takes many years to reach us, it brings the story of the hydrogen and oxygen, the vapour of iron or so

The glorious consummation toward which organic evolution is tending is the production of the highest and most perfect psychical life. Already the germs of this conclusion existed in the Darwinian theory as originally stated, though men were for a time too busy with other aspects of the theory to pay due attention to them. In the natural selection of such individual peculiarities as conduce to the survival of the species, and in the evolution by this process of higher and higher creatures endowed

Max Müller has much more plausibly suggested that God was formerly a heathen name for the Deity, which passed into Christian usage, like the Latin Deus . (Science of Language, 6th ed. II. 317.) Following this hint, I suggested, several years ago (North Amer. Review, Oct. 1869, p. 354), that God is probably identical with Wodan or Odin , the name of the great Northern deity, the chief object of the worship of our forefathers. This relation of an initial G to an initial W is a very common one; as

[3] C. P. i. 157, 177-179. [4] M. M. 18-21, et passim . [5] M. M. 220. [6] M. M. 232. [7] M. M. 236; E. E. 251. [8] A. P. I. 78, 81. [9] U. W. 10. [10] D. M. 104-107. [11] E. E. 262. [12] M. M. 236. [13] C. P. ii. 383. [14] U. W. 118. [15] D. 5-8; C. P. ii. 283. [16] C. P. ii. 428. [17] C. P. ii. 428. [18] C. P. i. 183; ii. 449. [19] M. M. 122. [20] C. P. ii. 405. [21] C. P. ii. 381-410. [22] E. E. 327-336. [23] C. P. ii. 449. [24] D. M. 113; cf. C. P. ii. 406. [25] D. 103. [26] D. M. 77-95; A.