Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/428

412 in the theory of evolution, as expounded by Spencer, and coupled by him with a strong: assertion of the rights of the individual. Evolution as a world-grasping hypothesis, and "the law of equal liberty" as the charter of individual rights, made an absolutely irresistible appeal to the deepest instincts of the late Professor's nature; and it is no wonder, therefore, that in them he found an abiding anchorage.

We need only mention, in passing, the important work done by Prof. Youmans in arranging for the publication of the International Scientific Series, of which over seventy volumes have now been issued; but it is fitting that we should speak a little more fully on the subject of his establishment of The Popular Science Monthly. Even before he became interested in Spencer he felt that there was a great need in this country for a periodical which should be devoted to popularizing, not so much the results, as the methods of science. He was too much of a philosopher ever to forget that what the people want, far more than a diet of facts, is education in correct thinking, in the right use of their intellectual faculties. He fully believed, with Spencer, that natural science affords incomparably the best means of discipline for the mind; and after he had become impressed with the importance of that writer's general scheme of thought, he was more than ever desirous of establishing a magazine that might help in the propagation of sound scientific views. How suddenly in the end The Popular Science Monthly sprang into existence, the biography will tell; and on what sound lines it was drawn may be judged from the fact that in the course of twenty-two years those lines have never been departed from. The Popular Science Monthly is to-day what it was in the first year of its existence, and what its name imports. It is not intended for specialists, though specialists have made many valuable contributions to its columns. It aims to bring before intelligent readers the best and most interesting results of contemporary scientific activity, and to keep science as a power, as a method, as an inspiration, as the ally of humanity in its warfare against evil, prominently before the public mind. The magazine has had its own battles to fight, and, in its earlier years particularly, a good deal of misrepresentation to encounter. It has been accused of hostility to particular modes of belief, simply because it has wished to open paths of independent investigation in all subjects. It has, however, outlived most of the prejudice that at one time it excited, and to-day is welcomed in every part of the country as one of the most useful of educational agents, as affording just that aid to sound living and right thinking which it was the most earnest desire of its founder that it should afford.

To some it has appeared that the Monthly set too small value on literary culture, and that its late director was too contemptuous in his attitude toward classical studies. In all questions of this kind, however, a time element enters. Twenty odd years ago it was hard work to get any kind of proper recognition for science in schemes of education; and many sophisms that have since been exploded as to the necessity of the study of the classics for the formation of a good literary style, or for the right discrimination of words, or even for the proper development of the logical faculties, were then widely current and aggressively asserted. It was necessary, therefore, for a periodical that had been started with the express object of championing the claims of science, to put its own case as strongly as possible, and attack with vigor what it considered the errors of the older educational systems. If sometimes it pushed its criticisms too far, that is only what happens when any warfare is being keenly waged. That the founder of the Monthly was no enemy of culture in the widest sense, all who