John Fiske's last book bears this title, and was his essay at the Concord School of Philosophy. The purpose of the present review is not to praise the volume's typography,—for all Houghton, Mifflin & Go's, books are good specimens of "the art preservative,"—nor yet to compliment the crystalline quality of its thought, for of this the author's name is a guaranty; but to show the connection of this book with Christian Science, as believed and set forth by Mrs. Eddy,—not only in her writings, but in her "living epistles, known and read of all men."
Mr. Fiske holds that pantheism is not the necessary outgrowth of modern science. Neither is it of Christian Science. He has been accused of pantheism, but he is no pantheist. Christian Science has been likewise blamed, but is equally innocent of the charge. Pantheism (or All-god-ism) means that everything is God, and that there is no god except the things which exist. Christian Science, with Mr. Fiske, insists upon the existence of Deity apart from His creation; and affirms that creation, in its every part and particle, to be the expression of God's idea. Like Mr. Fiske, Christian Scientists do not "regard the world of phenomena as sufficient unto itself," and they insist that it must be referred to an "underlying and all-comprehensive unity." They cannot say, with some theorists, as interpreted by Mr. Fiske:—
Nothing has an ultimate origin or destiny; there is no dramatic tendency in the succession of events, nor any ultimate law to which everything must be referred; there is no reasonableness in the universe, save that with which human fancy unwarrantably endows it; the events of the world have no orderly progression, like the scenes of a well-constructed plot;.. they drift and eddy about in an utterly blind and irrational manner, though now and then evolving, as if by accident, temporary combinations, which have to us a rational appearance. This is Atheism, pure and unqualified. It requires no Omnipresent Energy.
