304 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



37 QUEEN'S GARDENS, BAYSWATER, W., October 12, 1872. 



MY DEAR YOUMANS : I have just finished the second 

 volume of the Psychology, and expect to have it issued in 

 a bound form in less than a fortnight. 



I find on looking back that it is just twelve years since 

 I commenced. Having now got half through, it might be 

 inferred that it will take another twelve years to finish. I 

 see reason for hoping, however, that ten will suffice.* 

 Considerably more than two years, I believe, have gone in 

 interruptions partly due to occasional relapses of health, 

 partly to the second edition of First Principles, partly to 

 various incidental essays and articles, and partly to the 

 arrangement and superintendence of the Descriptive So- 

 ciology, which during the earlier stages occupied much 

 time. Indeed, now that I put them down, these interrup- 

 tions account, I think, for more than two years' loss of 

 time. As I am much better now than I was when I com- 

 menced, and as I do not see the likelihood of much inci- 

 dental writing hereafter, I am inclined to hope that after 

 completing the Study, etc., ten years will suffice to carry 

 me through. 



Your last number has reached me, as also the copy of 

 the World, in which I find myself " interviewed " in a some- 

 what romancing style ; for, while I recognize some things 

 in it as having been said to me, there is much in it which I 

 certainly did not say notably the passages from First 

 Principles which I am represented as repeating. 



May I suggest that you are hardly giving the method 

 of dictation a fair trial. Neither the hand of your late 

 amanuensis nor the hand of the one by whom you wrote 

 last implies the ability to write with tolerable rapidity. If 

 you employ a slow writer, you will not only lose valuable 



* More than twenty, alas ! have since elapsed, and because of unfore- 

 seen ill health the series is not yet quite finished. Happily, since 1890 it 

 has been advancing more rapidly, and the end seems almost in sight. 



