Fiske wasted very little time on learning that led nowhere. He knew most of the famous futilities generally called Philosophy, but he studied them as a pathologist studies his morbid specimens--to learn and teach what to avoid and how to cure. From his learning grew great and true and useful thoughts, whereas from the learning of many great scholars grow no thoughts at all. He went to the root of the matter when he said (_Life and Letters_, I, p. 255): "There are so many things to be learned, that at first sight they may seem like a confused chaos. The different departments of knowledge may appear so separate and conflicting, and yet so mingled and interdependent, as to render it a matter of doubt where the beginning should be made. But when we have come to a true philosophy, and make _that_ our stand-point, all things become clear. We know what things to learn, and what, in the infinite mass of things to leave unlearned--and then the Universe becomes clear and harmonious." Before the vastness of Fiske's knowledge was summed up in his biography, even those who knew him best probably had a very inadequate idea of it. The traditional "everything about something and something about everything" is all that is conventionally expected from great scholars, but Fiske probably came as near to knowing everything about everything as any man ever did. He knew more about philosophy than most good philosophers, more about history than most good historians, more about biology than most good biologists, more about languages than most good philologists, more about law than most good lawyers, and even more about music than most good musicians. Not only had he studied more widely than most of them, but he remembered with an ease and accuracy seldom equalled. He said that if he ever read a fact in connection with a date, the two were fixed together in his memory, and it was astonishing to test him on such points. For instance, in December, 1898, he might say, "You remember that on February 27, 1878, you wrote me so-and-so"; and this, with him, was a mere matter of course. His liberality and happy ingenuity in sharing his knowledge with his friends were delightful. In many a talk into the small hours and even into the dawn, Fiske did most of the talking; and yet in such a way that nobody thought of his monopoly of it until afterwards.