76 A Century of Science 



strongly enlisted with the little party of abolition- 

 ists, then held in such scornful disfavour by all 

 other parties. He was also interested in the party 

 of temperance, which, as he and others were after- 

 ward to learn, compounded for its essential up- 

 rightness of purpose by indulging in very gross 

 intemperance of speech and action. The disin- 

 terestedness which always characterized him was 

 illustrated by his writing many articles for a tem- 

 perance paper which could not afford to pay its 

 contributors, although he was struggling with such 

 disadvantages in earning his own livelihood and 

 carrying on his scientific studies. Those were days 

 when leading reformers believed that by some cun- 

 ningly contrived alteration of social arrangements 

 our human nature, with all its inheritance from 

 countless ages of brutality, can somehow be made 

 over all in a moment, just as one would go to work 

 with masons and carpenters and revamp a house. 

 There are many good people who still labour under 

 such a delusion. 



Though Mr. Youmans was brought into frequent 

 contact with reformers of this sort, it does not seem 

 to me that his mind was ever deeply impressed with 

 such ways of thinking. Science is teaching us that 

 the method of evolution is that mill of God, of 

 which we have heard, which, while it grinds with 



