Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/250

232 Later Philosophy sophy was precisely that which made that philosophy so popu- lar, the easy way in which it could serve as a universal key to open up a comprehensive view on every subject of human in- terest. Despite his services to popular science, Fiske was not himself a scientific investigator. His knowledge of biology was second-hand, neither extensive nor very accurate, and even less can be said about his knowledge of physics. But he was widely read in history, in -which he was always primarily interested. The evolutionary philosophy appealed to him above all as a clue to the tangled, complicated mass of facts that constitutes human history. Like Buckle, Fiske wanted to eliminate the mar- vellous or catastrophic view of history and reduce it to simple laws. In his historic writings, however, he does not seem to have used the evolutionary philosophy to throw new light on past events, and in his actual historic representation his dramatic instinct gave full scope to the part of great men, to issues of battles, and to like incidents. ' V ' The extent to which Fiske as a philosopher was dominated by traditional views is best seen when we ask for the ethical and political teaching of his evolutionary philosophy. Only a few pages of the Cosmic Philosophy are devoted to this topic, and the results do not in any respect rise above the common- place. He naively accepts the crude popular analysis which makes morality synonymous with yielding to the "dictates of sympathy" instead of to the "dictates of selfishness." The conception of evolution as consisting of slow, imperceptible changes— thus ignoring all saltations_orjnutations — is made to support the ordinary conservative aversion for radical change. The philosophy of Voltaire and the encyclopaedists is sweepingly condemned as socially subversive; and against Comte it is maintained that society cannot be organized on the basis of scientific philosophy, not even the evolutionary philosophy. Statesmen should study history, but men cannot be taught the higher state of civilization ; they can only be bred in it. Just how the latter process is to take place we are not told. Fiske left nothing of a theory of education." He belittles the im- 1 portance of social institutions and concludes by making social f ' For his historical writings see Book III, Chap. xv. " His important apergu as to the significance of prolonged infancy as the basis of civilization relates to his theory of social and moral evolution.