The conceptions of the Universe generally held at the time when Fiske was in college were fragmentary and chaotic, each phenomenon or each group of phenomena being, like language, a special creation of an anthropomorphic God, turning out different jobs piecemeal like a man. The conception of one power behind all had been a dream of not a few philosophers and poets, but as a fact comprehensible by the average mind, it was not known until the discovery of the Conservation of Force about 1860. About the same time was discovered the unity of all organic life, in its descent from protoplasm, and the identity of its forces with those of the inorganic universe. The nebular cosmogony, the persistence of force and the biologic genesis, united together, showed the power evolving, sustaining and carrying on the entire universe known to us, to be _one_, and constantly acting in unified process; and that every detail--from the most minute known to the chemist, physicist and biologist, up to the greatest known to the geologist and astronomer, and including all known to the psychologist, economist, and historian--was caused by a previous detail. It having been established that the same causes always produced the same results, these uniformities were recognized as Laws, and it was also recognized that conduct in conformity with these laws produced good, and conduct counter to them produced evil. It became plain, too, to all normal minds, that the only conceivable object of these processes was the production of happiness, and that all records of them proved that they tend not only to produce happiness, but to increase it. These facts rendered entirely superfluous all the previous imaginings of anthropomorphic deities issuing commands, to obey which was good, and to disobey which was bad. For all that, was substituted a beneficent Power transcending man's complete comprehension, but with infinitely greater claims to gratitude and reverence, and sanctions for morality infinitely more intelligible and authoritative. These great discoveries were at once grasped by Fiske's great intelligence, and welcomed with enthusiasm. To their dissemination he mainly devoted his next twenty years, and to their illustration in the origins and foundation of our national commonwealth, the rest of his career.