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 

 conclusions "had not been formed hastily or 

 enunciated crudely." I thought I had earned 

 the right to publish them and even fancied I 

 might be thanked, rather than reproved, for so 

 doing. However, in my anxiety to promulgate 

 nothing erroneous, 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 criticism on that score ; 

 but my satisfaction was speedily dashed by the 

 very earnest warning, as to the consequences of 

 publication, which my friend's interest 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 soupcon 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 

 hardest blasts of misrepresentation and ridicule 

 for some years ; and I was even as one of the 



