78 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



hundreds of little towns with queer names did this 

 strong personality appear and make its way and leave 

 its effects in the shape of new thoughts, new questions, 

 and enlarged hospitality of mind, among the inhabit- 

 ants. The results of all this are surely visible to-day. 

 In no part of the English world has Herbert Spencer's 

 philosophy met with such a general and cordial recep- 

 tion as in the United States. This may no doubt be 

 largely explained by a reference to general causes ; 

 but as it is almost always necessary, along with our 

 general causes, to take into the account some personal 

 influence, so it is in this case. It is safe to say that 

 among the agencies which during the past fifty years 

 have so remarkably broadened the mind of the Ameri- 

 can people, very few have been more potent than the 

 gentle and subtle but pervasive work done by Edward 

 Youmans with his lectures, and to this has been large- 

 ly due the hospitable reception of Herbert Spencer's 

 ideas. 



Many a young man in many a town could trace 

 to Youmans and his lectures the first impulse that 

 led him to seek and obtain a university education. 

 In quarters innumerable his advice gave direction to 

 family reading in the best treatises on astronomy, phys- 

 ics, chemistry, geology, and physiology. Nothing in 

 all his experience pleased him more than the genuine 

 interest in science which he used to find in the small- 

 est and unlikeliest places. After a lecture it was 

 always his habit in free and easy talk to draw out the 

 opinion of his hearers, and thus he often got useful 

 hints. It helped him in learning what modes of pres- 

 entation were most effective, and at what points of the 

 borderland between the known and the unknown his 

 audiences could most readily follow him. He also 



