But if he liked sincere, earnest argument, he detested controversy, the bitter war of excited personal feelings bent rather on achieving an individual triumph than on proving an abstract theory. He condemned and deplored the injury to science inevitably wrought by such disputes and had nothing but disgust for the manifestations of temper that were bound to accompany them: ‘I went the other evening to the Zoölogical Society, where the speakers were snarling at each other in a manner anything but like that of gentlemen.’[77] When his own views were involved in bitterness, as, alas, they too often were, he expressed the keenest regret: ‘I often think that my friends ... have good cause to hate me, for having stirred up so much mud, and led them into so much odious trouble. If I had been a friend of myself, I should have hated me.’[78] He early made up his mind to keep out of quarrels if possible, and he congratulated himself on the whole on his success: ‘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.’[79] Thus, whenever it was possible, he shunned dispute, and if, by any chance, haste and eagerness involved him in a mistaken cause, he bitterly regretted his blunder and was ready to acknowledge it with the utmost frankness. One of the most striking cases of this is that of the parallel roads of Glen Roy, as to which Darwin had developed a geological theory which he asserted with a good deal of conviction. A careful consideration of his opponent’s arguments, obliged him to recognize that he was completely in the wrong, and he gave up, though with a pang: ‘I am very poorly to-day, and very stupid, and hate everybody and everything. One lives only to make blunders.’[80] His acknowledgment of his error was ample and complete. It was his natural frankness in admitting his mistakes and endeavoring to rectify them which made Darwin so attractive and engaging. Goethe complains of the disposition of many people to reiterate a misstatement because they have once made it.[81] Such reiteration did not appeal to Darwin in the least. Sometimes he was irritated and annoyed by the attitude of his adversaries, and he expressed the annoyance with the same outspokenness that he gave to other things; but there was never any attempt to conceal his blunders or to maintain his own positions simply because they were his.