Appletons took it, and thus presently secured the management of the
philosophical series. This brought Youmans into permanent relations with
Spencer and his work. In 1861 Youmans was married, and in the course of
the following year made a journey in Europe with his wife. It was now
that he became personally acquainted with Spencer, and found him quite
as interesting and admirable as his books. Friendships were also begun
with Huxley and other foremost men of science. From more than one of
these men I have heard the warmest expressions of personal affection for
Youmans, and of keen appreciation of the aid that they have obtained in
innumerable ways from his intelligent and enthusiastic sympathy. But no
one else got so large a measure of this support as Spencer. As fast as
his books were republished Youmans wrote reviews of them, and by no
means in the usual perfunctory way; his reviews and notices were turned
out by the score, and scattered about in the magazines and newspapers
where they would do the most good. Whenever he found another writer who
could be pressed into the service, he would give him Spencer's books,
kindle him with a spark from his own magnificent enthusiasm, and set him
to writing for the press. The most indefatigable vender of wares was
never more ruthlessly persistent in advertising for lucre's sake than
Edward Youmans in preaching in a spirit of the purest disinterestedness
the gospel of evolution. 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 publication 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 Youmans' curiosity was aroused. There were so few people
then who had any conception of what Spencer's work meant that they could
have been counted on one's fingers. At that time I knew of only three:
the late Professor Gurney, of Harvard; Mr. George Litch Roberts, now an
eminent patent lawyer in Boston; and Mr. John Spencer Clark, now of the
Prang Educational Company. I have since known that there were at least
two or three others about Boston, among them my learned friend the Rev.
William Rounseville Alger, besides several in other parts of the
country. When we sometimes ventured to observe that Spencer's work was
as great as Newton's, and that his theory of evolution was going to
remodel human thinking upon all subjects whatever, people used to stare
at us and take us for idiots. Any one member of such a small community
was easy to find; and I have always dated a new era in my life from the
Sunday afternoon when Youmans came to my room in Cambridge. It was the
beginning of a friendship such as hardly comes but once to a man. At
that first meeting I knew nothing of him except that he was the author
of a textbook of chemistry which I had found interesting, in spite of
its having been crammed down my throat by an old-fashioned memorizing
teacher who, I am convinced, never really knew so much as the difference
between oxygen and antimony. At first it was a matter of breathless
interest to talk with a man who had seen Herbert Spencer. But one of
the immediate results of this interview was the beginning of my own
correspondence and intimate friendship with Spencer. And from that time
forth it always seemed as if, whenever any of the good or lovely things
of life came to my lot, somehow or other Edward Youmans was either the
cause of it, or at any rate intimately concerned with it. The sphere of
his unselfish goodness was so wide and its quality so potent that one
could not come into near relations with him without becoming in all
manner of unsuspected ways strengthened and enriched.
In the autumn of 1865 we were dismayed by the announcement that Spencer
would no longer be able to go on issuing his works. In London they were
published at his own expense and risk, and those books which now yield a
handsome profit did not then pay the cost of making them. By the summer
of 1865 there was a balance of £1100 against Spencer, and his property
was too small to admit of his going on and losing at such a rate. As
soon as this was known, John Stuart Mill begged to be allowed to assume
the entire pecuniary responsibility of continuing the publication; but
this, Mr. Spencer, while deeply affected by such noble sympathy, would
not hear of. He consented, however, with great reluctance, to the
attempt of Huxley and Lubbock, and other friends, to increase
artificially the list of subscribers by inducing people to take the work
just in order to help support it. But after several months the sudden
death of Spencer's father added something to his means of support, and
he thereupon withdrew his consent to this arrangement, and determined to
go on publishing as before, and bearing the loss.
But as soon as the first evil tidings reached America Youmans made up
his mind that $5500 must be forthwith raised by subscription, in order
to make good the loss already incurred. It is delightful to remember the
vigour with which he took hold of this work. The sum of $7000 was raised
and invested in American securities in Spencer's name. If he did not see
fit to accept these securities, they would go without an owner. The best
of Waltham watches was procured for Spencer by his American friends; a
letter, worded with rare delicacy and tact, was written by the late
Robert Minturn; and Youmans sailed for England to convey the letter and
the watch to Spencer. It was a charming scene on a summer day in an
English garden when the great philosopher was apprised of what had been
done. It was so skilfully managed that he could not refuse the tribute
without seeming churlish. He therefore accepted it, and applied it to
extending his researches in descriptive sociology.
Of the many visits which Youmans made to England, now and then extending
them to the Continent, one of the most important was in 1871, for the
purpose of establishing the International Scientific Series. This was a
favourite scheme of Youmans. He realized that popular scientific books,
adapted to the general reader, are apt to be written by third-rate men
who do not well understand their subject; they are apt to be dry or
superficial, or both. No one can write so good a popular book as the
master of a subject, if he only has a fair gift of expressing himself
and keeps in mind the public for which he is writing. The master knows
what to tell and what to omit, and can thus tell much in a short compass
and still make it interesting; moreover, he avoids the inaccuracies
which are sure to occur in second-hand work. Masters of subjects are
apt, however, to be too much occupied with original research to write
popular books. It was Youmans' plan to induce the leading men of science
in Europe and America to contribute small volumes on their special
subjects to a series to be published simultaneously in several countries
and languages. Furthermore, by special contract with publishing houses
of high reputation, the author was to receive the ordinary royalty on
every copy of his book sold in every one of the countries in question;
thus anticipating international copyright upon a very wide scale, and
giving the author a much more adequate compensation for his labour. To
put this scheme into operation was a task of great difficulty, so many
conflicting interests had to be considered. Youmans' brilliant success
is attested by that noble series of more than fifty volumes, on all
sorts of scientific subjects, written by men of real eminence, and
published in England, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, as well as in
the United States.
A word is all that can be spared for other parts of our friend's work,
which deserve many words, and those carefully considered. His book on
"Household Science" is not the usual collection of scrappy comment,
recipe, and apothegm, but a valuable scientific treatise on heat, light,
air, and food in their relations to every-day life. In his "Correlation
of Physical Forces" he brings together the epoch-making essays of the
men who have successively established that doctrine, introducing them
with an essay of his own, in which its history and its philosophical
implications are set forth in a masterly manner. In his book on the
"Culture demanded by Modern Life" we have a similar collection of essays
with a similar excellent original discussion, showing the need for wider
and later training in science, and protesting against the excess of time
and energy that is spent in classical education where it is merely the
following of an old tradition.
As a crown to all this useful work, Youmans established, in 1872, "The
Popular Science Monthly," which has unquestionably been of high
educational value to the general public. It was not the aim of this
magazine to give an account of every theory expounded, every fact
observed, every discovery made, from year to year, whether significant
or insignificant. The mind of the people is not educated by dumping a
great unshapely mass of facts into it. It needs to be stimulated rather
than crammed. Education in science should lead one to think for one's
self. The scientific magazine, therefore, should present articles from
all quarters that deal with the essential conceptions of science or
discuss problems of real theoretical or practical interest, no matter
whether every particular asteroid or the last new species of barnacle
receives full attention or not. "The Popular Science Monthly" has now
been with us eighteen years; its character has always been of the
highest, and it must have exerted an excellent influence not only as a
diffuser of valuable knowledge, but in training its readers to
scientific habits of thought in so far as mere reading can contribute to
such a result.
In concluding our survey of this useful and noble life, what impresses
us most, I think, is the broad democratic spirit and the absolute
unselfishness which it reveals at every moment and in every act. To
Edward Youmans the imperative need for educating the great mass of the
people so as to use their mental powers to the best advantage came home
as a living, ever present fact. He saw all that it meant and means in
the raising of mankind to a higher level of thought and action than that
upon which they now live. To this end he consecrated himself with
unalloyed devotion; and we who mourn his loss look back upon his noble
career with a sense of victory, knowing how the good that such a man
does lives after him and can never die.
_March, 1890._
IV
THE PART PLAYED BY INFANCY IN THE EVOLUTION OF MAN[16]
The remarks which my friend Mr. Clark has made with reference to the
reconciling of science and religion seem to carry me back to the days
when I first became acquainted with the fact that there were such things
afloat in the world as speculations about the origin of man from lower
forms of life; and I can recall step by step various stages in which
that old question has come to have a different look from what it had
thirty years ago. One of the commonest objections we used to hear, from
the mouths of persons who could not very well give voice to any other
objection, was that anybody, whether he knows much or little about
evolution, must have the feeling that there is something degrading about
being allied with lower forms of life. That was, I suppose, owing to the
survival of the old feeling that a dignified product of creation ought
to have been produced in some exceptional way. That which was done in
the ordinary way, that which was done through ordinary processes of
causation, seemed to be cheapened and to lose its value. It was a
remnant of the old state of feeling which took pleasure in miracles,
which seemed to think that the object of thought was more dignified if
you could connect it with something supernatural; that state of culture
in which there was an altogether inadequate appreciation of the amount
of grandeur that there might be in the slow creative work that goes on
noiselessly by little minute increments, even as the dropping of the
water that wears away the stone. The general progress of familiarity
with the conception of evolution has done a great deal to change that
state of mind. Even persons who have not much acquaintance with science
have at length caught something of its lesson,--that the infinitely
cumulative action of small causes like those which we know is capable of
producing results of the grandest and most thrilling importance, and
that the disposition to recur to the cataclysmic and miraculous is only
a tendency of the childish mind which we are outgrowing with wider
experience.
The whole doctrine of evolution, and in fact the whole advance of
modern science from the days of Copernicus down to the present day, have
consisted in the substitution of processes which are familiar and the
application of those processes, showing how they produce great results.
When Darwin's "Origin of Species" was first published, when it gave us
that wonderful explanation of the origin of forms of life from allied
forms through the operation of natural selection, it must have been like
a mental illumination to every person who comprehended it. But after all
it left a great many questions unexplained, as was natural. It accounted
for the phenomena of organic development in general with wonderful
success, but it must have left a great many minds with the feeling: If
man has been produced in this way, if the mere operation of natural
selection has produced the human race, wherein is the human race anyway
essentially different from lower races? Is not man really dethroned,
taken down from that exceptional position in which we have been
accustomed to place him, and might it not be possible, in the course of
the future, for other beings to come upon the earth as far superior to
man as man is superior to the fossilized dragons of Jurassic antiquity?
Such questions used to be asked, and when they were asked, although one
might have a very strong feeling that it was not so, at the same time
one could not exactly say why. One could not then find any scientific
argument for objections to that point of view. But with the further
development of the question the whole subject began gradually to wear a
different appearance; and I am going to give you a little bit of
autobiography, because I think it may be of some interest in this
connection. I am going to mention two or three of the successive stages
which the whole question took in my own mind as one thing came up after
another, and how from time to time it began to dawn upon me that I had
up to that point been looking at the problem from not exactly the right
point of view.
When Darwin's "Descent of Man" was published in 1871, it was of course a
book characterized by all his immense learning, his wonderful fairness
of spirit and fertility of suggestion. Still, one could not but feel
that it did not solve the question of the origin of man. There was one
great contrast between that book and his "Origin of Species." In the
earlier treatise he undertook to point out a _vera causa_ of the origin
of species, and he did it. In his "Descent of Man" he brought together a
great many minor generalizations which facilitated the understanding of
man's origin. But he did not come at all near to solving the central
problem, nor did he anywhere show clearly why natural selection might
not have gone on forever producing one set of beings after another
distinguishable chiefly by physical differences. But Darwin's
co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, at an early stage in his
researches, struck out a most brilliant and pregnant suggestion. In that
one respect Wallace went further than ever Darwin did. It was a point of
which, indeed, Darwin admitted the importance. It was a point of which
nobody could fail to understand the importance, that in the course of
the evolution of a very highly organized animal, if there came a point
at which it was of more advantage to that animal to have variations in
his intelligence seized upon and improved by natural selection than to
have physical changes seized upon, then natural selection would begin
working almost exclusively upon that creature's intelligence, and he
would develop in intelligence to a great extent, while his physical
organism would change but slightly. Now, that of course applied to the
case of man, who is changed physically but very slightly from the apes,
while he has traversed intellectually such a stupendous chasm.
As soon as this statement was made by Wallace, it seemed to me to open
up an entirely new world of speculation. There was this enormous
antiquity of man, during the greater part of which he did not know
enough to make history. We see man existing here on the earth, no one
can say how long, but surely many hundreds of thousands of years, yet
only during just the last little fringe of four or five thousand years
has he arrived at the point where he makes history. Before that,
something was going on, a great many things were going on, while his
ancestors were slowly growing up to that point of intelligence where it
began to make itself felt in the recording of events. This agrees with
Wallace's suggestion of a long period of psychical change, accompanied
by slight physical change.
Well, in the spring of 1871, when Darwin's "Descent of Man" came out,
just about the same time I happened to be reading Wallace's account of
his experiences in the Malay Archipelago, and how at one time he caught
a female orang-outang with a new-born baby, and the mother died, and
Wallace brought up the baby orang-outang by hand; and this baby
orang-outang had a kind of infancy which was a great deal longer than
that of a cow or a sheep, but it was nothing compared to human infancy
in length. This little orang-outang could not get up and march around,
as mammals of less intelligence do, when he was first born, or within
three or four days; but after three or four weeks or so he would get
up, and begin taking hold of something and pushing it around, just as
children push a chair; and he went through a period of staring at his
hands, as human babies do, and altogether was a good deal slower in
getting to the point where he could take care of himself. And while I
was reading of that I thought, Dear me! if there is any one thing in
which the human race is signally distinguished from other mammals, it is
in the enormous duration of their infancy; but it is a point that I do
not recollect ever seeing any naturalist so much as allude to.
It happened at just that time that I was making researches in psychology
about the organization of experiences, the way in which conscious
intelligent action can pass down into quasi-automatic action, the
generation of instincts, and various allied questions; and I thought,
Can it be that the increase of intelligence in an animal, if carried
beyond a certain point, must necessarily result in prolongation of the
period of infancy,--must necessarily result in the birth of the mammal
at a less developed stage, leaving something to be done, leaving a good
deal to be done, after birth? And then the argument seemed to come along
very naturally, that for every action of life, every adjustment which a
creature makes in life, whether a muscular adjustment or an intelligent
adjustment, there has got to be some registration effected in the
nervous system, some line of transit worn for nervous force to follow;
there has got to be a connection between certain nerve-centres before
the thing can be done, whether it is the acts of the viscera or the acts
of the limbs, or anything of that sort; and of course it is obvious that
if the creature has not many things to register in his nervous system,
if he has a life which is very simple, consisting of few actions that
are performed with great frequency, that animal becomes almost automatic
in his whole life; and all the nervous connections that need to be made
to enable him to carry on life get made during the fœtal period or
during the egg period, and when he comes to be born, he comes all ready
to go to work. As one result of this, he does not learn from individual
experience, but one generation is like the preceding generations, with
here and there some slight modifications. But when you get the creature
that has arrived at the point where his experience has become varied, he
has got to do a good many things, and there is more or less
individuality about them; and many of them are not performed with the
same minuteness and regularity, so that there does not begin to be that
automatism within the period during which he is being developed and his
form is taking on its outlines. During prenatal life there is not time
enough for all these nervous registrations, and so by degrees it comes
about that he is born with his nervous system perfectly capable only of
making him breathe and digest food,--of making him do the things
absolutely requisite for supporting life; instead of being born with a
certain number of definite developed capacities, he has a number of
potentialities which have got to be roused according to his own
individual experience. Pursuing that line of thought, it began after a
while to seem clear to me that the infancy of the animal in a very
undeveloped condition, with the larger part of his faculties in
potentiality rather than in actuality, was a direct result of the
increase of intelligence, and I began to see that now we have two steps:
first, natural selection goes on increasing the intelligence; and
secondly, when the intelligence goes far enough, it makes a longer
infancy, a creature is born less developed, and therefore there comes
this plastic period during which he is more teachable. The capacity for
progress begins to come in, and you begin to get at one of the great
points in which man is distinguished from the lower animals, for one of
those points is undoubtedly his progressiveness; and I think that any
one will say, with very little hesitation, that if it were not for our
period of infancy we should not be progressive. If we came into the
world with our capacities all cut and dried, one generation would be
very much like another.
Then, looking round to see what are the other points which are most
important in which man differs from the lower animals, there comes that
matter of the family. The family has adumbrations and foreshadowings
among the lower animal, but in general it may be said that while mammals
lower than man are gregarious, in man have become established those
peculiar relationships which constitute what we know as the family; and
it is easy to see how the existence of helpless infants would bring
about just that state of things. The necessity of caring for the infants
would prolong the period of maternal affection, and would tend to keep
the father and mother and children together, but it would tend
especially to keep the mother and children together. This business of
the marital relations was not really a thing that became adjusted in the
primitive ages of man, but it has become adjusted in the course of
civilization. Real monogamy, real faithfulness of the male parent,
belongs to a comparatively advanced stage; but in the early stages the
knitting together of permanent relations between mother and infant, and
the approximation toward steady relations on the part of the male
parent, came to bring the family, and gradually to knit those
organizations which we know as clans.