At a later date, according to one report, Stevenson and Peale met, and Stevenson apologized to Peale for any personal pain which his comments might have caused Peale, though Stevenson never publicly recanted the substance of his statements. There is no record of Peale apologizing to Stevenson for his attacks on Stevenson. It has been argued that even Peale's "positive thinking" message was by implication politically conservative: "The underlying assumption of Peale's teaching was that nearly all basic problems were personal."