366 Edward Livingston Youmajis : 



been Avith the greatest achievement of modern thinking 

 the doctrine of Evohition. Students and investigators in 

 all de])artments, alike in the physical and in the historical 

 sciences, were fairly driven by the nature of the phenomena 

 before them into some hypothesis, more or less vagne, of 

 gradiial and orderly change or development. The world was 

 ready and waiting for Herbert Spencer's mighty work when 

 it came, and it was for that reason that it was so quickly tri- 

 umphant over the old order of thought. The victory has been 

 so thorough, swift, and decisive that it will take another 

 generation to narrate the story of it so as to do it full justice. 

 Meanwhile, people's minds are apt to be somewhat dazed with 

 the rapidity and wholesale character of the change ; and noth- 

 ing is more common than to see them adopting Mr. Spencer's 

 ideas without recognizing them as his or knowing whence 

 they got them. As fast as Mr. Spencer could set forth his 

 generalizations they were taken hold of here and there by 

 special workers, each in his own department, and utilized 

 therein. His general system was at once seized, assimilated, 

 and set forth with new illustrations by serious thinkers who 

 were already groping in the regions of abstruse thought 

 which the master's vision pierced so clearly. And thus the 

 doctrine of Evolution has come to be inseparably interfused 

 with the whole mass of thinking in our day and generation. 

 I do not mean to imply that people commoidy entertain 

 very clear ideas about it, for clear ideas are not altogether 

 common. I suspect that a good many people would hesitate 

 if asked to state exactly Avhat Newton's law of gravitation 

 is. 



Among the men in America whose minds, between thirty 

 and forty years ago, were feeling their way toward some 

 such unified conce])tion of nature as Mr. S})encci' was about 

 to set forth in all its dazzling glory among the men who 

 were thus prepared to grasp the doctrine of Evolution at 

 once and expound it with fresh illustrations the first in 

 the field was the man to whose memory we have met here 

 this evening to pay a brief word of tribute. It is but a 

 little while since that noble face was here with us and the 

 tones of that kindly voice were fraught with good cheer for 

 us. To most of you, I ])resume, the man Edward Living- 

 ston Youmans is still a familiar ])resence. There must be 

 many here this evening who listened to the tidings of his 

 deatii two years ago with a sense of jjersonal bereavement. 

 No one who knew liini is likely ever to forget him. Kut 

 for those who remember distinctly the man it may not l)e 



