The Man and His Work. 371 



most beautiful cliiiogi-aphy. The strokes, gnarled and 

 jagged as they were, had a method in their madness, and 

 every pithy sentence went straight as an arrow to its mark. 



"While conquering these physical obstacles Mr. Youmans 

 began writing for the press, and gradually entered into 

 relations with leading newspapers which became more and 

 more important and useful as years went on. He became 

 acquainted Avith Horace, Greeley, William Henry Channiug, 

 and other gentlemen who were interested in social reforms. 

 His sympathies were strongly enlisted with the little party 

 of abolitionists, then held in such scornful disfavor by all 

 other parties. He was also interested in the party of 

 temperance, which, as he and others were afterward to 

 learn, compounded for its essential uprightness of pvirpose 

 by indulging in very gross intemperance of speech and 

 action. The disinterestedness which always characterized 

 him was illustrated by his writing many articles for a 

 temperance paper which could not afford to pay its contrib- 

 utors, although he was struggling with such disadvantages 

 in earning his own livelihood and carrying on his scientific 

 studies. Those were days when leading reformers believed 

 that by some cunningly contrived alteration of social 

 arrangements our human nature, Avith all its inheritance 

 from countless ages of brutality, can somehow be made 

 over all in a moment, just as one would go to work with 

 masons and carpenters and revamp a house. There are 

 many good j)eople who still labor under such a delusion. 



Though ]\rr. Youmans was brought into frequent contact 

 with reformers of this sort, it does not seem to me that his 

 mind was ever deeply im})ressed with such ways of thinking. 

 Science is teaching us that the method of Evolution is that 

 mill of God, of which Ave have heard, Avhich, Avhile it 

 grinds Avith infinite efficacy, yet grinds Avith Avearisome 

 sloAvness. It Avas Mr. DarAvin's discoA^ery of natural 

 selection Avhich first brought this truth home to us ; but Sir 

 Charles Lyell had in 1830 shoAvn hoAV enormous effects are 

 Avrought by the cumulative action of slight and u.nobtrusive 

 causes, and this had much to do Avith turning men's minds 

 toAvard some conception of Evolution. It was about 1847 

 that Mr. Youmans Avas deeply interested in the Avork of 

 geologists, as Avell as in the nebular theory, to Avhich recent 

 discoA^eries Avere adding fresh confirmation. Some time 

 before this he had read that famous book, "Vestiges of 

 Creation," and, although Prof. Agassiz truly declared that 

 it was an unscientific book crammed Avith antiquated and 



