Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/285

Rh suffered from disease of the eyes, involving weary months and years of sometimes partial, sometimes total, blindness.

Altogether he struggled for fifteen years with this terrible disability, dating from the time when his eyes were first attacked in his fifteenth year. These years, however, were not years of idleness: when he could not see he could listen, and his sister, who was seldom far from his side, would read to him from any book he might indicate. Between being read to and reading for himself, when it could be done with any safety, he vastly increased his stores of knowledge, and particularly became so proficient in chemistry that he was able to produce a text-book which had immediate success, and which, in a revised form, is holding its ground to this day.

No sooner had he recovered a fair measure of sight than he betook himself to the delivery of popular lectures on scientific subjects; and here he seemed to have found his true vocation. The people heard him gladly, and more engagements were offered than he was able to accept. The work, however, was not without its dangers: the lecture season was of course in the winter, and in his journeyings to and fro Mr. Youmans was frequently exposed to chills, and was laid up more than once with severe bronchial and pulmonary attacks. If dangerous to the lecturer, the work was useful to the multitude. "Many a young man," observes his biographer, "in many a town could trace to Youmans and his lectures the first impulse that led him to seek a university education. In quarters innumerable his advice gave direction to family reading in the best treatises on astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and physiology."

It was not in the lecture field, however, that he was destined to do his most important work. In the year 1856 he saw in a periodical an article on Spencer's then recently published Principles of Psychology. He sent for the book, and saw, to use Prof. Fiske's words, that "the theory expounded in it was a long stride in the direction of a general theory of evolution." He then read Spencer's Social Statics, which had appeared a few years earlier, and, as we are told, "began to recognize 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." Finally, in the year 1860, he was shown a copy of the circular in which Spencer was announcing his philosophical series. That such a man should be appealing for support, to enable him to bring out works of so transcendent importance, suggested at once to Mr. Youmans that here was a chance for him to render service which might be of much moment. He took what he felt at the time to be the bold step of writing to Spencer, and offering to interest himself in getting American subscribers to the series. Mr. Spencer replied, thanking him very warmly for the offer and for the sympathy which his letter had expressed; and thus was begun a friendship of the most sincere and enduring character between these two eminent men. Nothing in the volume before us is more interesting or produces a pleasanter impression that the extracts given from the correspondence which passed between them from this date onward to the death of Mr. Youmans.

The result of the acquaintance thus formed was that Spencer obtained a gratifying number of subscribers to his series in this country, and that the republication of his works was begun by Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., who were the publishers of Youmans'a Chemistry and of another work which he had produced under the title of Handbook of Household Science. This was really the turning point in Spencer's fortunes. In one of his letters to Youmans we find the following passage: "The energy and self-sacrifice you continue to show in the advancement of my scheme quite astonishes me; and while, in one respect, it is very gratifying to me, yet in another it gives me a certain uncomfortable sense of obligation, more weighty than I like to be under." This shows the relations that had been established between the two men, and makes the action which Youmans so vigorously, we might say heroically, took at a later date to help his friend through a financial crisis entirely natural. Such he was to Spencer all through—the one untiring upholder of his name, defender of his views, and good providence of his fortunes on this continent. Spencer and the evolution philosophy were inseparable in his thoughts, and for so great a cause