A Century of Science, and Other Essays. Fiske John

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

16

Short-hand report of my speech at a dinner given for me by Mr. John Spencer Clark, at the Aldine Club, New York, May 13, 1895.