IMPORTANT BOOKS
BY
JOHN FISKE.
OUTLINES OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY, based on the Doctrine of Evolution. With Criticisms on the Positive Philosophy. 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 465, 523, $6.00.
Mr. Darwin, after reading this work, wrote as follows to Mr. Fiske:—
"You must allow me to thank you for the very great interest with which I have at last slowly read the whole of your work.... I never in my life read so lucid an expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are; and I think that I understand nearly the whole, though perhaps less clearly about cosmic theism and causation than other parts. It is hopeless to attempt out of so much to specify what has interested me most, and probably you would not care to hear. It pleased me to find that here and there I had arrived, from my own crude thoughts, at some of the same conclusions with you, though I could seldom or never have given my reasons for such conclusions."
This work of Mr. Fiske's may be not unfairly designated the most important contribution yet made by America to philosophical literature.... His theory of the influence of prolonged infancy upon social development (Part II., chap. xxii.) entitles Mr. Fiske's work to be considered a distinctly important contribution to the theory of the origin of species, and of the origin of man in particular.—Academy (London).
His most important suggestion, that of the influence of the long period of feeble adolescence upon man's social development, is, we think, a permanent contribution to the development theory.—Nation (New York).
He recognizes Mr. Spencer as his teacher and guide; but he has moulded the doctrines of his master into a popular form, surrounded them with fresh and vivid illustrations, pointed out their bearing upon great practical questions of the day, and amply supplied the reader with materials for forming an intelligent judgment with respect to their merits. Mr. Fiske is himself a thinker of rare acuteness and depth; his affluent store of knowledge is exhibited on every page; and his mastery of expression is equal to his subtlety of speculation.—George Ripley, in Tribune (New York).
Mr. Fiske's work ... is the first important contribution made by America to the evolution philosophy, ... and is well worth the study of all who wish to see at once the entire scope and purport of the scientific dogmatism of the day.—Saturday Review (London).
The author asserts that a system of philosophy has been constructed, out of purely scientific materials, ... which opposes a direct negative to every one of the theorems of which Positivism is made up.—Scotsman (Edinburgh).