Note 36 — VII

Darwin on forgetting. In Darwin’s autobiography one finds the following passage that does equal credit to his scientific honesty and his psychologic acumen: “I had during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that 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 favourable ones” (quoted by Jones, loc. cit., p. 38).