When I was a young author, (though I did not publish any thing until I was about thirty) strictures on my writings gave me some disturbance, though I believe even then less than they do most others; but after some time, things of that kind hardly affected me at all, and on this account I may be said to have been well formed for public controversy.[22] But what has always made me easy in any controversy in which I have been engaged, has been my fixed resolution frankly to acknowledge any mistake that I might perceive I had fallen into. That I have never been in the least backward to do this in matters of philosophy, can never be denied. [22] Though Dr. Priestley has been considered as fond of controversy and that his chief delight consisted in it, yet it is far from being true. He was more frequently the defendant than the assailant. His controversies as far as it depended upon himself were carried to with temper and decency. He was never malicious nor even sarcastic or indignant unless provoked. T. C. As I have not failed to attend to the phenomena of my own mind, as well as to those of other parts of nature, I have not been insensible of some great defects, as well as some advantages, attending its constitution; having from an early period been subject to a most humbling failure of recollection, so that I have sometimes lost all ideas of both persons and things, that I have been conversant with. I have so completely forgotten what I have myself published, that in reading my own writings, what I find in them often appears perfectly new to me, and I have more than once made experiments the results of which had been published by me. I shall particularly mention one fact of this kind; as it alarmed me much at the time, as a symptom of all my mental powers totally failing me, until I was relieved by the recollection of things of a similar nature having happened to me before. When I was composing the _Dissertations_ which are prefixed to my _Harmony of the gospels_, I had to ascertain something which had been the subject of much discussion relating to the Jewish passover (I have now forgotten what it was) and for that purpose had to consult, and compare several writers. This I accordingly did, and digested the result in the compass of a few paragraphs, which I wrote in short hand. But having mislaid the paper, and my attention having been drawn off to other things, in the space of a fortnight, I did the same thing over again; and should never have discovered that I had done it twice, if, after the second paper was transcribed for the press, I had not accidentally found the former, which I viewed with a degree of terror.