Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/718

 696 of addresses and arguments on the claims of scientific education by more than twenty English and American thinkers. The editor was represented in the list by a lecture on “The Scientific Study of Human Nature” and an introductory essay on “Mental Discipline in Education,” in which he attempted to show that a course of study mainly scientific not only meets the full requirements of mental training, but also affords the kind of culture or mental discipline especially needed in this country.

Besides his labors as a lecturer and in the preparation of his own works, and his efforts in behalf of Mr. Spencer's publications, Professor Youmans had all along been deeply interested in the reproduction here of the works published abroad by the leaders of modern scientific thought. Among the earliest which he urged the Appletons to republish were those of Whewell, Buckle, Darwin's “Origin of Species,” and the writings of Spencer and Tyndall. He went to England several times on this errand, and, as a result of his exertions, the works of Huxley, Lubbock, Darwin, Lyell, Bain, Tyndall, Maudsley, Sully, Hinton, Bastian, Roscoe, Simpson, Proctor, Helmholtz, Bagehot, Mill, Carpenter, Mattieu Williams, and many others, were reprinted by the Appletons, and have been very popular with thoughtful readers in this country. The arrangement with the publishers was that the authors should be paid a publisher's copyright at the customary American rate.

Chiefly interested in the works of scientific and philosophical authors, who suffer most from lack of international copyright because their productions are in comparatively small demand, Professor Youmans planned the “International Scientific Series,” and spent a year in Europe making arrangements for it with authors and publishers. After not a little hard labor, the series was finally organized on the basis of simultaneous publication in London, New York, Paris, Leipsic, Milan, and St. Petersburg, and of payment to the authors on the sales in all countries. The first volume, issued in 1872, was Tyndall's “Forms of Water,” and was followed by Bagehot's suggestive work on “Physics and Politics.” Other books that attracted attention to the merits of the series were Cooke's “New Chemistry,” Spencer's “Study of Sociology,” Draper's “History of the Conflict between Religion and Science," and Schmidt's “Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism.” The series has reached, in Mr. Angelo Heilprin's “Geographical and Geological Distribution of Animals,” its fifty-seventh number, and as a whole constitutes the most successful popular presentation of scientific and philosophical ideas ever attempted. None of the books have enjoyed a wider circulation than the “Study of Sociology” and the “Conflict between Religion and Science,” both of which are remarkable for the boldness of their statements of new ideas. It thus appears that the foreign authors whose works were in charge of Professor Youmans have been for years in practical