EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS. n 



larges his sphere of influence in a way that is not easy to estimate. 

 Clearly an earnest lecturer, of commanding intelligence and 

 charming manner, with a great subject to teach, must have an op- 

 portunity for sowing seeds that will presently ripen in a change 

 of opinion or sentiment, in an altered way of looking at things 

 on the part of whole communities. No lecturer has ever had a 

 better opportunity of this sort than Edward Youmans, and none 

 ever made a better use of his opportunity. His gifts as a talker 

 were of the highest order. The commonest and plainest story, as 

 told by Edward Youmans, had all the breathless interest of the 

 most thrilling romance. Absolutely unconscious of himself, sim- 

 ple, straightforward, and vehement, wrapped up in his subject, 

 the very embodiment of faith and enthusiasm, of heartiness and 

 good cheer, it was delightful to hear him. . And when we join 

 with all this his unfailing common sense, his broad and kindly 

 view of men and things, and the delicious humor that kept flash- 

 ing out in quaint, pithy phrases such as no other man would 

 have thought of, and such as are the despair of any one trying 

 to remember and quote them, we can seem to imagine what a 

 power he must have been with his lectures. 



When such a man goes about for seventeen years, teaching 

 scientific truths for which the world is ripe, we may be sure that 

 his work is great, albeit we have no standard whereby we can 

 exactly measure it. In hundreds of little towns with queer 

 names did this strong personality appear and make its way and 

 leave its effects in the shape of new thoughts, new questions, and 

 enlarged hospitality of mind, among the inhabitants. The results 

 of all this are surely visible to-day. In no part of the English 

 world has Herbert Spencer's philosophy met with such a general 

 and cordial reception as in the United States. This may, no 

 doubt, be largely explained by a reference to general causes ; but 

 as it is almost always necessary, along with our general causes, to 

 take into the account some personal influence, so it is in this case. 

 It is safe to say that among the agencies which during the past 

 fifty years have so remarkably broadened the mind of the Ameri- 

 can people, very few have been more potent than the gentle and 

 subtle but pervasive work done by Edward Youmans with his 

 lectures, and to this has been largely due the hospitable reception 

 of Herbert Spencer's ideas. 



It was in 1856 that Mr. Youmans fell in with a review of Spen- 

 cer's Principles of Psychology, by Dr. Morell, in the Medico- 

 Chirurgical Review. This review impressed him so deeply that 

 he at once sent to London for a copy of the book, which had been 

 published in the preceding year. It will be observed that this 

 was four years before the Darwinian theory was announced to the 

 world in the first edition of the Origin of Species. Toward the 



