The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918Various
History
The Unpopular Review, Number 19: July-December 1918
Various
American periodicals
The paradoxical student of Bergson, who did not see these flowers, has
since grown to a better realization of them, and of the Law of
Evolution. He lately said that he was tracing the course of thought from
Plato to Christ, and when his companion remarked: "Oh! You're writing on
the evolution of the Christian religion," he admitted the soft
impeachment. But what Bergson did not do for him, has been partly done,
though indirectly, as the same thing has been done for the world more
than by any other man, by Fiske.
President Butler once said that Philosophy begins where Spencer left
off. But he did not say, and could not justly say, that it begins beyond
regions whither Spencer pointed the way. In fact he was not just in
saying that Spencer's generalizations, in the regions to which he
confined them, were not Philosophy, or that there was any real break
between those regions and the regions beyond, where they were carried by
Fiske, or even the regions still farther beyond where, whatever may be
the outcome, they are now being carried by students given to legitimate
Psychical Research. Spencer was too early for the movement into the
latter, and as to his relations with the former, Fiske well says
(_Evolution and Religion_, p. 277):
"There are some people who seem to think that it is not enough that Mr.
Spencer should have made all these priceless contributions to human
knowledge, but actually complain of him for not giving us a complete and
exhaustive system of theology into the bargain."
Yet Spencer, though he restrained himself from transcendental
speculations regarding Evolution, was by no means insensible to them
when made by others. Some readers not altogether unfamiliar with Emerson
will be surprised at the collection made by Fiske's biographer, of
Emerson's inspirations regarding Evolution, especially as they were
given on an almost negligible knowledge of the scientific development of
the law. Spencer appreciated them so highly that among his few American
pilgrimages was one to Concord, and this despite Spencer's distrust of
intuition, and Emerson's faith in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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