Ill 



EDWARD LIVINGSTON YOUMANS l 



IN one of the most beautiful of all the shining 

 pages of his " History of the Spanish Conquest 

 in America," Sir Arthur Helps describes the way 

 in which, through " some fitness of the season, 

 whether in great scientific discoveries or in the 

 breaking into light of some great moral cause, 

 the same processes are going on in many minds, 

 and it seems as if they communicated with each 

 other invisibly. We may imagine that all good 

 powers aid the ' new light,' and brave and wise 

 thoughts about it float aloft in the atmosphere of 

 thought as downy seeds are borne over the fruitful 

 face of the earth." 2 The thinker who elaborates 

 a new system of philosophy, deeper and more com- 

 prehensive than any yet known to mankind, though 

 he may work in solitude, nevertheless does not work 

 alone. The very fact which makes his great scheme 

 of thought a success, and not a failure, is the fact 



1 An address before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, March 

 23, 1890. 



2 Vol. iii. p. 113. 



