The Man and His Work. 375 



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

 speculation which were now about to be summed, up and 

 organized by Herbert Spencer into that system of philos- 

 ophy which marks the highest point to which the progressive 

 intelligence of mankind has yet attained. In the held of 

 scientific generalization 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 compre- 

 hends them but partially and illustrates them in a lame and 

 fragmentary way. But it was the peculiarity of Mr. 

 Youmans that, while on the one hand he could grasp the 

 newest scientific thought so surely and firmly that he 

 seemed to have entered into the innermost mind of its 

 author, on the other hand he could speak to the general 

 public in a convincing and stimulating 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 lecturer 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. Kode 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 Zanes- 

 ville, and, when I was already 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 

 ))rings the lecturer into friendly contact with the brightest 

 minds among his fellow-countrymen in many and many 



