He was admitted to Harvard without examination, for his fame had preceded him. Students and professors alike looked at him in wonder.
At Cambridge, as if to keep good his record, he studied thirteen hours a day, for twelve months in the year. He ranged through every subject in the catalog, and all recorded knowledge was to him familiar.
Prophecies were freely made that he would eclipse Sir Isaac Newton and Humboldt. But there were others who had a clearer vision.
John Fiske made a decided success in life and left his personality distinctly impressed upon his time, but it is no disparagement to say of him that Autumn did not fulfil the promise of Spring. And Fiske himself in his single original contribution to the evolution crusade explains the reason why.
Professor Santayanna of Harvard once said that John Fiske made three great scientific discoveries, as follows:
1. As you lengthen a pigeon's bill, you increase the size of its feet.
2. White tomcats with blue eyes are always deaf.
3. The extent of mental development in any animal is in proportion to its infancy or the length of time involved in its reaching physical maturity.
Waiving Numbers One and Two as of doubtful value, Number Three is Fiske's sole original discovery, according to his confession. Further, Huxley quotes Fiske on this theme, and adds, "The delay of adolescence and the prolonging of the period of infancy form a subject, as expressed by Mr. Fiske, which is worthy of our most careful consideration."
Rareripes fall early. John Fiske's name was coupled, as we have seen, with those of Newton and Humboldt. Newton died at eighty-six, Humboldt at ninety. These men developed slowly: the hothouse methods were not for them. Fiske at twenty knew more than any of them did at forty. Fiske at twenty-five was a better man mentally and physically than he was at thirty-five. At forty he was refused life-insurance because his measurement east and west was out of proportion to his measurement north and south.