and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time; but
it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long
and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been led to
see errors in reasoning and in my own observations or those of
others.

There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put
at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form.
Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them
down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to
scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can,
contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately.
Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could
have written deliberately.

Having said thus much about my manner of writing, I will add that
with my large books I spend a good deal of time over the general
arrangement of the matter. I first make the rudest outline in
two or three pages, and then a larger one in several pages, a few
words or one word standing for a whole discussion or series of
facts. Each one of these headings is again enlarged and often
transferred before I begin to write in extenso. As in several of
my books facts observed by others have been very extensively
used, and as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in
hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty to
forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into
which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I
have bought many books, and at their ends I make an index of all
the facts that concern my work; or, if the book is not my own,
write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I have a