x PREFACE. 



curious what a long time she is apt to take about 

 prevailing. When, towards the end of 1862, I 

 had finished writing " Man's Place in Nature/' 

 I could say with a good conscience, that my con- 

 clusions " had not been formed hastily or enun- 

 ciated crudely." I thought I had earned the right 

 to publish them and even fancied I might be 

 thanked, rather than reproved, for so doing. How- 

 ever, in my anxiety to promulgate nothing errone- 

 ous, I asked a highly competent anatomist and very 

 good friend of mine to look through my proofs and, 

 if he could, point out any errors of fact. I was 

 well pleased when he returned them without criti- 

 cism on that score; but my satisfaction was speedily 

 dashed by the very earnest warning, as to the con- 

 sequences of publication, which my friend's inter- 

 est in my welfare led him to give. But as I have 

 confessed elsewhere, when I was a young man, 

 there was just a little — a mere soupgon — in my 

 composition of that tenacity of purpose which has 

 another name; and I felt sure that all the evil 

 things prophesied would not be so painful to me 

 as the giving up that which I had resolved to do, 

 upon grounds which I conceived to be right. So 

 the book came out; and I must do my friend the 

 justice to say that his forecast was completely 

 justified. The Boreas of criticism blew his hard- 

 est blasts of misrepresentation and ridicule for 

 some years; and I was even as one of the wicked. 

 Indeed, it surprises me, at times, to think how any 



