io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



true aims and proper methods of education — all this made the 

 period a most fruitful one for the peculiar work of such a teacher 

 as Youmans. The intellectual atmosphere was charged with con- 

 ceptions of evolution. Mr. Youmans had arrived at such concep- 

 tions in the course of his study of the separate lines of scientific 

 speculation which were now about to be summed up and organ- 

 ized by Herbert Spencer into that system of philosophy which 

 marks the highest point to which the progressive intelligence of 

 mankind has yet attained. In the field of scientific generaliza- 

 tion upon this great scale, Mr. Youmans was not an originator ; 

 but his broadly sympathetic and luminous mind moved on a 

 plane so near to that of the originators that he seized at once 

 upon the grand scheme of thought as it was developed, made it 

 his own, and brought to its interpretation and diffusion such a 

 happy combination of qualities as one seldom meets with. The 

 ordinary popularizer of great and novel truths is a man who 

 comprehends them but partially and illustrates them in a lame 

 and fragmentary way. But it was the peculiarity of Mr. You- 

 mans that, while on the one hand he could grasp the newest sci- 

 entific thought so surely and firmly that he seemed to have en- 

 tered into the innermost mind of its author, on the other hand he 

 could speak to the general public in a convincing and stimulat- 

 ing way that had no parallel. This was the secret of his power, 

 and there can be no question that his influence in educating the 

 American people to receive the doctrine of evolution was great 

 and wide-spread. 



The years when Mr. Youmans was traveling and lecturing 

 were the years when the old lyceum system of popular lectures 

 was still in its vigor. The kind of life led by the energetic lect- 

 urer in those days was not that of a Sybarite, as may be seen from 

 a passage in one of his letters : " I lectured in Sandusky, and had 

 to get up at five o'clock to reach Elyria ; I had had but very little 

 sleep. To get from Elyria to Pittsburg I must take the five o'clock 

 morning train, and the hotel darkey said he would try to awaken 

 me. I knew what that meant, and so did not get a single wink of 

 sleep that night. Rode all day to Pittsburg, and had to lecture 

 in the great Academy of Music over foot-lights. . . . The train 

 that left for Zanesville departed at two in the morning. I had 

 been assured a hundred times (for I asked everybody I met) that 

 I would get a sleeping-car to Zanesville, and, when I was all 

 ready to start, I was informed that this morning there was no 

 sleeping-car. By the time I reached here I was pretty completely 

 used up." 



Such a fatiguing life, however, has its compensations. It 

 brings the lecturer into friendly contact with the brightest minds 

 among his fellow-countrymen in many and many places, and en- 



