ooker some years before E. Forbes published in 1846 his celebrated
memoir on the subject. In the very few points in which we differed, I
still think that I was in the right. I have never, of course, alluded in
print to my having independently worked out this view.

Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I was at work on the
"Origin," as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes
between the embryo and the adult animal, and of the close resemblance of
the embryos within the same class. No notice of this point was taken, as
far as I remember, in the early reviews of the "Origin," and I recollect
expressing my surprise on this head in a letter to Asa Gray. Within late
years several reviewers have given the whole credit to Fritz Muller and
Haeckel, who undoubtedly have worked it out much more fully and in some
respects more correctly than I did. I had materials for a whole chapter
on the subject, and I ought to have made the discussion longer; for it
is clear that I failed to impress my readers; and he who succeeds in
doing so deserves, in my opinion, all the credit.

This leads me to remark that I have almost always been treated honestly
by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific knowledge as not
worthy of notice. My views have been grossly misrepresented, bitterly
opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done as, I believe,
in good faith. On the whole, I do not doubt that my works have been over
and over again greatly overpraised. I rejoice that I have avoided
controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago, in reference
to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get entangled in a
controversy, as it rarely did any good and caused a miserable loss of
time and temper.

Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has
been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even
when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has been
my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself that "I have
worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more than
this." I remember when in Good Success Bay, in Tierra del Fuego,
thinking (and, I believe, that I wrote home to the effect) that I could
not employ my life better than in adding a little to Natural Science.
This I have done to the best of my abilities, and critics may say what
they like, but they can not destroy this conviction.

FOOTNOTES: