end of that book Mr. Darwin looked forward to a distant future when the conception of gradual development might be applied to the phenomena of conscious intelligence. He had not then learned of the existence of such a book as the Principles of Psychology. In later editions he was obliged to modify his statement and confess that, instead of looking so far forward, he had better have looked about him. I have more than once heard Mr. Darwin laugh merrily over this, at his own expense.
After struggling for a while with the weighty problems of this book—the most profound treatise upon mental phenomena that any human mind has ever produced—Mr. Youmans saw that the theory expounded in it was a long stride in the direction of a general theory of evolution. His interest in this subject received a new and fresh stimulus. He read Social Statics, and began to recognize Mr. Spencer's hand in the anonymous articles in the quarterlies in which he was then announcing and illustrating various portions or segments of his newly discovered law of evolution. One evening in February, 1860, as Mr. Youmans was calling at a friend's house in Brooklyn, the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Salem, handed him the famous prospectus of the great series of philosophical works which Mr. Spencer proposed to issue by subscription. Mr. Johnson had obtained this from Edward Silsbee, who was one of the very first Americans to become interested in Spencer. The very next day Mr. Youmans wrote a letter to Mr. Spencer, offering his aid in procuring American subscriptions and otherwise aiding in every possible way the progress of the enterprise. With this letter and Mr. Spencer's cordial reply began the life-long friendship between the two men. It was in that same month that I first became aware of Mr. Spencer's existence, through a single paragraph quoted from him by Mr. Lewes, and in that paragraph there was immense fascination. I had been steeping myself in the literature of modern philosophy, starting with Bacon and Descartes, and was then studying Comte's Philosophic Positive, which interested me as suggesting that the special doctrines of the several sciences might be organized into a general body of doctrine of universal significance. Comte's work was crude and often wildly absurd, but there was much in it that was very suggestive. In May, 1860, in the Old Corner Bookstore in Boston, I fell upon a copy of that same prospectus of Mr. Spencer's works, and read it with exulting delight, for clearly there was to be such an organization of scientific doctrine as the world was waiting for. It appeared that there was some talk of Ticknor & Fields undertaking to conduct the series in case subscriptions enough should be received. Mr. Spencer preferred to have his works appear in Boston; but when in the course of 1860 his book on Education was offered to Ticknor & Fields, they declined
