The Apostle of Involution. 151 



scriptions, asks to be very kindly remembered to you. I 

 thought it best not to send away Parts V and VI any 

 faster than they were paid for. Remember me with kind 

 regards to Mr. Silsbee, if he is still with you ; and believe me, 

 Faithfully yours, E. L. YOUMANS. 



29 BLOOMSBURY SQUARE, LONDON, W. C., May 12, 1863. 



My DEAR YOUMANS: Let me once more thank you for 

 your continued attention to my affairs, which is the more 

 to be valued by me as being given under your present great 

 pressure of work. Your unflagging enthusiasm for the prop- 

 agation of advanced ideas is something quite remarkable, 

 and the spectacle of it serves one as a kind of moral tonic. 



I read to Huxley and Tyndall the passages in your let- 

 ter concerning them. They were pleased at finding their 

 respective reprints so rapidly pushed forward. ... I am 

 much obliged to you for your advice respecting the dis- 

 posal of the amount due to me from Appletons. I asked 

 the opinions of several mercantile men here (one an Ameri- 

 can), and they advise me to draw at whatever sacrifice. I 

 feel somewhat inclined to follow this advice, notwithstand- 

 ing your protest. I cannot but think that the comparative 

 prosperity you describe is an illusive indication of your 

 social state, and results from the spending of capital rather 

 than revenue. There was a like condition of things during 

 the French Revolution, and in England during the war with 

 France. But in both cases there came a fearful prostration 

 and a discontent of the lower classes, which would probably 

 have produced social convulsion had not the repressive 

 power of political organization been so great. With you 

 there is nothing like so great a repressive political organi- 

 zation, and under the same intensity of popular distress a 

 crash would be much more likely to result.* I doubt not 



* Mr. Spencer was probably wrong here. I doubt if any other gov- 

 ernment in existence would be so hard to overturn by a social convulsion 

 as that of the United States. 



