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.