i 4 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



wrote reviews of theni, and by no. means in the nsnal perfunctory 

 way ; liis reviews and notices were turned ont by the score, and 

 scattered abont in the magazines and newspapers where they 

 would do the most good. Whenever he found another writer who 

 could be pressed into the service, he would give him Spencer's 

 books, kindle him with a spark from his own magnificent enthu- 

 siasm, and set him to writing for the press. The most indefati- 

 gable vender of wares was never more ruthlessly persistent in ad- 

 vertising for lucre's sake than Edward Youmans in preaching in 

 a spirit of the purest disinterestedness the gospel of evolution. As 

 long as he lived, Mr. Spencer had upon this side of the Atlantic 

 an alter ego ever on the alert with vision like that of a hawk for 

 the slightest chance to promote his interests and those of his sys- 

 tem of thought. 



Among the allies thus enlisted at that early time were Mr. 

 George Ripley and Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, both of whom did 

 good service, in their different ways, in awakening public interest 

 in the doctrine of evolution. In those days of the civil war it 

 was especially hard to keep up the list of subscribers in an 

 abstruse philosophical publication of apparently interminable 

 length. Mr. Youmans now and then found it needful to make a 

 journey in the interests of the work, and it was on one of these 

 occasions, in Xovember, 1SG3, that I made his acquaintance. I 

 had already published, in 1861, an article in one of the quarterly 

 reviews in which Mr. Spencer's work was referred to ; and another 

 in 1863, in which the law of evolution was illustrated in connection 

 with certain problems of the science of language. The articles 

 were anonymous, as was then the fashion, and Mr. Youmans's curi- 

 osity was aroused. There were so few people then who had any 

 conception of what Mr. Spencer's work meant, that they could have 

 been counted on one's fingers. At that time I knew of only three 

 — the late Prof. Gurney, of Harvard ; Mr. George Roberts, now an 

 eminent patent lawyer in Boston ; and Mr. John Clark, now of 

 the Prang Educational Company. I have since known that there 

 were at least two or three others about Boston, among others, 

 my learned friend the Rev. W. R. Alger, besides several in other 

 parts of the country. "When we sometimes ventured to observe 

 that Mr. Spencers work was as great as Xewton's, and that his 

 theory of evolution was going to remodel human thinking upon 

 all subjects whatever, people used to stare at us and take us for 

 idiots. Anv one member of such a small communitv was easv to 

 find ; and I have always dated a new era in my life from the Sun- 

 dav afternoon when Mr. Youmans came to my room in Cam- 

 bridge. It was the beginning of a friendship such as hardly 

 comes but once to a man. At that first meeting I knew nothing 

 of him except that he was the author of a text-book of chemistry 



