The Man and His Work. 377 



The Medico-Chirurgical Review. This review impressed 

 him so deeply that he at once sent to London for a copy of 

 the book, Avhich had been published in the preceding year. 

 It will be observed that this was four years before the 

 Darwinian theory was announced in the first edition of the 

 "Origin of Species." Toward the end of that book Mr. 

 Darwin looked forward to a distant future when the con- 

 ception of gradual development might be applied to the 

 phenomena of conscious intelligence. He had not then 

 learned of the existence of such a book as the "Principles 

 of Psychology." In later editions he was obliged to modify 

 his statement and confess that, instead of looking so far 

 forward, he had better have looked about him. I have more 

 than once heard Mr. Darwin laugh merrily over this, at his 

 own expense. 



After struggling for a while with the weighty problems 

 of this book the most profound treatise upon mental 

 phenomena that any human mind has ever produced Mr. 

 Youmans saw that the theory expounded in it was a long 

 stride in the direction of a general theory of Evolution. 

 His interest in this subject received a new and fresh 

 stimulus. He read " Social Statics," and began to recognize 

 Mr. Spencer's hand in the anonymous articles in the 

 quarterlies in which he was then announcing and illustrating 

 various portions or segments of his newly discovered law 

 of Evolution. One evening in February, 1860, as Mr. 

 Youmans was calling at a friend's house in Brooklyn, the 

 Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Salem, handed him the famous 

 prospectus of the great series of philosophical works which 

 Mr. Spencer proposed to issue by subscription. Mr. Johnson 

 had obtained this from Edward Silsbee, who was one of the 

 very first Americans to become interested in Spencer. The 

 very next day Mr. Youmans wrote a letter to Mr. Spencer, 

 offering his aid in procuring American subscriptions and 

 otherwise aiding in every possible Avay the progress of the 

 enterprise. With this letter and ^Ir. Spencer's cordial 

 reply began the life-long friendship between the two men. 

 It was in that same month that I first became aware of Mr. 

 Spencer's existence, through a single paragraph quoted from 

 him by Mr. LcAves, and in that paragraph there was immense 

 fascination. I had been steeping myself in the literature 

 of modern philosophy, starting with Bacon and Descartes, 

 and was then studying Comte's "Philosophic Positive," 

 which interested me as suggesting that the special doctrines 

 of the several sciences might be organized into a general 



