92 A Century of Science 



As long as he lived, Spencer had upon this side of 

 the Atlantic an alter ego ever on the alert with 

 vision like that of a hawk for the slightest chance 

 to promote his interests and those of his system of 

 thought. 



Among the allies thus enlisted at that early time 

 were Mr. George Ripley and the Rev. Henry Ward 

 Beecher, both of whom did good service, in their 

 different ways, in awakening public interest in the 

 doctrine of evolution. In those days of the Civil 

 War it was especially hard to keep up the list of 

 subscribers in an abstruse philosophical publica- 

 tion of apparently interminable length. Youmans 

 now and then found it needful to make a journey 

 in the interests of the work, and it was on one 

 of these occasions, in November, 1863, that I 

 made his acquaintance. I had already published, 

 in 1861, an article in one of the quarterly reviews, 

 in which Spencer's work was referred to; and 

 another in 1863, in which the law of evolution 

 was illustrated in connection with certain problems 

 of the science of language. The articles were 

 anonymous, as was then the fashion, and You- 

 mans' curiosity was aroused. There were so few 

 people then who had any conception of what Spen- 

 cer's work meant that they could have been 

 counted on one's fingers. At that time I knew 



