ch.il] 'ORIGIN OF SPECIES.' 45 



The success of the Origin may, I think, be attributed in 

 large part to my having long before written two condensed 

 sketches, and to my having finally abstracted a much larger 

 manuscript, which was itself an abstract. By this means I 

 was enabled to select the more striking facts and conclusions. 

 I had, also, during many years, followed a golden rule, 

 namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation 

 or thought came across me, which was opposed to my gen- 

 eral results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and 

 at once : for I had found by experience that such facts and 

 thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than 

 favourable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections 

 were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed 

 and attempted to answer. 



It has sometimes been said that the success of the 

 Origin proved " that the subject was in the air/' or " that 

 men's minds were prepared for it." I do not think that 

 this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few 

 naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one 

 who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species. 

 Even Lyell and Hooker, though they would listen with in- 

 terest to me, never seemed to agree. I tried once or twice 

 to explain to able men what I meant by Natural selection, 

 but signally failed. What I believe was strictly true is that 

 innumerable well-observed facts were stored in the minds of 

 naturalists ready to take their proper places as soon as any 

 theory which would receive them was sufficiently explained. 

 Another element in the success of the book was its moderate 

 size; and this I owe to the appearance of Mr. Wallace's 

 essay; had I published on the scale in which I began to 

 write in 1856, the book would have been four or five times 

 as large as the Origin, and very few would have had the 

 patience to read it. 



I gained much by my delay in publishing from about 

 1839, when the theory was clearly conceived, to 1859; and 

 I lost nothing by it, for I cared very little whether men 

 attributed most originality to me or Wallace ; and his essay 

 no doubt aided in the reception of the theory. I was fore- 

 stalled in only one important point, which my vanity has 

 always made me regret, namely, the explanation by means 

 of the Glacial period of the presence of the same species of 

 plants and of some few animals on distant mountain sum- 

 mits and in the arctic regions. This view pleased me so 

 much that I wrote it out in extenso, and I believe that it 



