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, whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought, came across me which was opposed to my general 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 favorable 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 interest 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 that 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 more originality to me or to Wallace; and his essay no doubt aided in the reception of the theory. I was forestalled 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 summits and in the arctic regions. This view pleased me so much that I wrote it out in extenso, and I believe that it was read by Hooker some years before Edward Forbes published 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 Mueller 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 without exception been treated honestly by my reviewers, passing over those without scientific knowledge as not worthy of notice. My views have often 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 repeatedly and 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 Terra del Fuego, thinking (and I believe that I wrote home to that 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 cannot destroy this conviction.
During the last two months of 1859 I was fully occupied in preparing a second edition of the Origin, and by an enormous correspondence. On January 1, 1860, I began arranging my notes for my work on the Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, but it was not published until the beginning of 1868, the delay having been caused partly by frequent periods of illness, one of which lasted seven months, and partly by being tempted to publish on other subjects which at the time interested me more.
My Descent of Man was published in February, 1871. As soon as I had become, in the year 1837 or 1838, convinced that species were mutable productions, I could not avoid the belief that man must come under the same law. Accordingly I collected notes on the subject for my own satisfaction, but not, for a long time, with any intention of publishing. Although in the Origin of Species the derivation of any particular species is never discussed, yet I thought it best, in order that no honorable man should accuse me of concealing my views, to add that by the work "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It would have been useless and injurious to the success of the book to parade, without giving any evidence, my conviction with respect to his origin.
But when I found that many naturalists fully accepted the doctrine of the evolution of species, it seemed to me advisable to work up such notes as I possessed, and to publish a special treatise on the origin of man. I was the more glad to do so as it gave me an opportunity of fully discussing sexual selection—a subject which had always greatly interested me. This subject, and that of the variation of our domestic productions, together with the causes and laws of variation, inheritance, and the intercrossing of plants, are the sole subjects which I have been able to write about in full, so as to use all the materials which I have collected. The Descent of Man took me three years to write, but then, as usual, some of this time was lost by ill-health and some was consumed by preparing new editions and other minor works. A second and largely corrected edition of the Descent appeared in 1874.
(1860) THE KINGDOM OF ITALY ESTABLISHED, Giuseppe Garibaldi and John Webb Probyn
After the suppression of the Italian Revolution, by Austria, in 1849, and the restoration of Austrian power in Italy, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, who had headed the movement for Italian independence and had been defeated, abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel. The new King, as Victor Emmanuel II, succeeded to the throne March 23, 1849, the day of his father's defeat at Novara. He was a liberal sovereign and zealous for the cause of his country. With the aid of his great minister, Count Cavour, he proceeded with the work of securing the unity and freedom of Italy. In 1859 Sardinia and France, in alliance, defeated Austria. In this war were made the substantial beginnings from which a new Italian nationality was to be realized. Italian unity was not the object of Napoleon III in his alliance with Italy against Austria, but he did much to advance its prospects. He even promised the complete liberation of Italy, but this promise he failed to fulfil, to the great disappointment of Italian statesmen. Napoleon wished to see an Italian confederation, with the Pope at its head, but this plan was rejected.