It is no doubt the chief work of my life.  It was from the first highly successful.  The first small edition of twelve hundred fifty copies was sold on the day of publication, and a second edition of three thousand copies soon afterward.  Sixteen thousand copies have now (1876) been sold in England; and considering how stiff a book it is, this is a large number.  It has been translated into almost every European tongue, even into such languages as Spanish, Bohemian, Polish, and Russian.  It has also, according to Miss Bird, been translated into Japanese, and is much studied in that country.  Even an essay on it has appeared in Hebrew, showing that the theory is contained in the Old Testament!  The reviews were very numerous; for some time I collected all that appeared on the Origin and on my related books, and these amount (excluding newspaper reviews) to two hundred sixty-five; but after a time I gave up the attempt in despair.  Many separate essays and books on the subject have appeared; and in Germany a catalogue, or bibliography, on “Darwinismus” has appeared every year or two.

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