INTRODUCTION 



that time on he was a constant follower both 

 of Spencer^s further volumes as they appeared, 

 and of the literature of discussion which grew 

 up about the Spencerian and Darwinian theo- 

 ries. In the just quoted paper upon Youmans, 

 Fiske has given some account of the faithful 

 little band that, during our civil war, already 

 constituted the nucleus of a Spencerian school 

 in our country. " There were so few people 

 then" (viz. in 1863), he says, "who had any 

 conception of what Spencer's work meant, that 

 they could have been counted on one's fin- 

 gers." Fiske met Youmans in 1863. The two 

 were from the first allies in the attempt to at- 

 tract public attention to the new ideas. Yet, 

 as we shall see, Fiske was never the mere dis- 

 ciple and propagandist of Spencerianism that 

 Youmans became — and the defence of the 

 philosophy of evolution was for him but one 

 of the prominent interests in an extremely 

 wealthy intellectual life. 



5. The doctrine of evolution, which was so 

 eagerly attacked and defended during the years 

 between i860 and 1880, and which has now 

 become, in its great general outlines, a part of 

 the common knowledge and opinion of the age, 

 came to public notice in the sixties in two prin- 

 cipal forms : (i) As the Darwinian theory of the 

 " Origin of Species," and (2) as the Spencerian 



XXXV 



