The A post I 'lit (ion. 167 



him by Lewes,* and in that paragraph there was im- 

 mense fascination. On my first visit to Massachu- 

 setts, in Mav, 1860, I fell upon a copy of that same 

 prospectus of Spencer's series, in the Old Corner 

 Bookstore, in Boston, and read it with exulting de- 

 light, for clearly there was to be such an organiza- 

 tion of scientific doctrine as the world was waiting 

 for. Whe'n I published the essay on the Evolution of 

 Language, in 1863, there were so few people who had 

 any conception of what Spencer's work meant that 

 they could have been counted on one's fingers. At 

 that time I knew of only four the Rev. John Lang- 

 don Dudley, of Middletown, a preacher of extraor- 

 dinary wisdom and power ; my old comrade and fel- 

 low-student Mr. George Litch Roberts, of Boston, 

 now one of the most eminent patent lawyers in the 

 United States ; Mr. John Spencer Clark, now of the 

 Prang Educational Company; and the late Professor 

 Gurney, of Harvard. Of course there were others, 

 besides Youmans himself, whose names occur in the 

 foregoing letter and elsewhere in this book. Some 

 of us entertained pretty decided opinions about Mr. 

 Spencer's work. When we sometimes ventured to 

 observe that it was as great as Newton's, and that hjs 

 theory of evolution was going to remodel human think- 

 ing upon all subjects whatever, people used to stare at 

 us and take us for idiots. Any one member of such a 

 small community was easy to find ; and I have always 

 dated a new era in my life from the Sunday after- 

 noon when Youmans, escorted by Roberts, came to 

 my room in Cambridge. It was the beginning of a 



* Lewes, Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences, London, 1853, pp. 

 168-171. 



