1 66 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



to bear upon your philosophy, I am especially anxious to 

 get the First Principles in hand as soon as possible. With 

 earnest wishes for your health and general well-being, I 

 remain, 



Very cordially yours, E. L. YOUMANS. 



In reading this letter for the first time, almost thirty 

 years since it was written, and five years since all that 

 was mortal of my noble friend was laid in the grave, 

 many bright and tender reminiscences are awakened. 

 Subtle links of causation had begun to join our lives 

 together before we ever met. It was owing to You- 

 mans that the first volume of Buckle's History of 

 Civilization was reprinted by the Appletons in 1858. 

 A copy was not long in finding its way to Middletown, 

 Conn., where I soon got hold of it and devoured 

 it. Many years would probably have passed before a 

 copy of the London edition would have reached that 

 little town. I thus owed to Youmans the most power- 

 ful intellectual stimulus of those early years and the 

 occasion of my first published essay. The study of 

 Buckle led directly to Mill's System of Logic and to 

 Comte's Philosophic Positive, which interested me as 

 suggesting that the special doctrines of the several 

 sciences might be organized into a general body of 

 doctrine of universal significance. Comte's work was 

 crude and often wildly absurd, but there was much in 

 it that was very suggestive. I have already mentioned 

 how, early in 1860, Youmans first saw the prospectus 

 of Spencer's proposed series of works setting forth 

 the doctrine of evolution, and how he wrote his first 

 letter to Spencer the very next day. It was at about 

 the same time that I first became aware of Spencer's 

 existence, through a single paragraph quoted from 



