Spencer would not go out of reach of experiment—at least collateral experiment, but Fiske went into intuition freely. Spencer avoided the labyrinth altogether, Fiske went into it boldly, but always kept within reach of the clue of experience.
But those who do not already know the contrary, should not infer from this that Spencer ignored the field of Ethics. Quite the reverse: he made probably the most important scientific contributions to that field yet made, in tracing the evolution of the conduct of sentient beings from its first manifestations in reflex action, in the avoidance of danger, and the procuring of food, through the seeking of mates, the care of offspring, the forming of groups, up to the highest development of personal and social relations and the moralities therein involved.
But for one person who has read Spencer’s Ethics, a hundred, probably a thousand, have read his work in the unmoral fields, and tens of thousands have their ideas of Evolution restricted to the fields explored by Darwin and Hæckel, and in those fields it is the brute and the Prussian that survive. But civilization grows in other fields.
Although Fiske was as thoroughly convinced of Evolution as Spencer was, he did not stop at its demonstration within the limits which Spencer imposed upon himself, but followed it into the fields of the spirit, as illustrated by the titles of some of his essays: The Idea of God, Through Nature to God, Life Everlasting, The Origin of Evil, The Unseen World.
When, in the fifties and sixties, Science abolished the anthropomorphic limitations of the Creator, it did not stop there, but abolished, for the time being, all the anthropomorphic qualities, including those that have not necessarily any limitations at all. While the universe, despite frequent inadequacy, disproportion and catastrophe, still abounds in obvious beauty and happiness, Science for a time shut its eyes to beneficence, and denied benevolence and even purpose. Fiske did more than anybody else has yet done to restore them—to show that they are corollaries of Evolution. He said, in his Cosmic Philosophy: “The process of evolution is itself the working out of a mighty Teleology of which our finite understandings can fathom but the scantest rudiments.” He did more just there than any modern philosopher, perhaps than any philosopher, to show that this teleology is beneficent, and so to restore the attitude of mind which it may not yet be too late to call Faith in God and Immortality.
This attitude of mind, however, has received some impetus from new phenomena now open to Psychical Research, but hardly yet as much new impetus as the old one Fiske gave it with more limited materials.
The following passages indicate in brief what Fiske gave at length in his Idea of God, Destiny of Man, Origin of Evil and kindred writings. Contrast them with the quotation from Spencer a page or two back: This is the closing passage of The Unseen World.
“We must think with the symbols with which experience has furnished us; and when we so think, there does seem to be little that is even intellectually satisfying in the awful picture which science shows us, of giant worlds concentrating out of nebulous vapour, developing with prodigious waste of energy into theatres of all that is grand and sacred in spiritual endeavour, clashing and exploding again into dead-vapour balls, only to renew the same toilful process without end—a senseless bubble-play of Titan forces, with life, love, and aspiration brought forth only to be extinguished. The human mind, however ‘scientific’ its training, must often recoil from the conclusion that this is all; and there are moments when one passionately feels that this cannot be all. On warm June mornings, in green country lanes, with sweet pine odours wafted in the breeze which sighs through the branches, and cloud-shadows flitting over far-off blue mountains, while little birds sing their love-songs and golden-haired children weave garlands of wild roses; or when in the solemn twilight we listen to wondrous harmonies of Beethoven and Chopin that stir the heart like voices from an unseen world; at such times one feels that the profoundest answer which science can give to our questioning is but a superficial answer after all. At these moments, when the world seems fullest of beauty, one feels most strongly that it is but the harbinger of something else—that the ceaseless play of phenomena is no mere sport of Titans, but an orderly scene, with its reason for existing in
One far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.”