38 EVOLUTION [CHAP. II 



determination of the forms was necessary to impress on him the 

 remarkable characteristic species of the different islands. We agree 

 with Mr. Huxley that 1837 is the date of the "new light which was rising 

 in his mind." That the dawn did not come sooner seems to us to be 

 accounted for by the need of time to produce so great a revolution in 

 his conceptions. We do not see that Mr. Huxley's supposition as to the 

 effect of the determination of species, etc., has much weight. Mr. Huxley 

 quotes a letter from Darwin to Zacharias, " But I did not become con- 

 vinced that species were mutable until, I think, two or three years [after 

 1837] had elapsed" (see Letter 278). This passage, which it must be 

 remembered was written in 1877, is all but irreconcilable with the direct 

 evidence of the 1837 note-book. A series of passages are quoted from it 

 in the Life and Letters, Vol. II., pp. 5 et seq., and these it is impossible to 

 read without feeling that he was convinced of immutability. He had not 

 yet attained to a clear idea of Natural Selection, and therefore his views 

 may not have had, even to himself, the irresistible convincing power they 

 afterwards gained ; but that he was, in the ordinary sense of the word, 

 convinced of the truth of the doctrine of evolution we cannot doubt. He 

 thought it " almost useless " to try to prove the truth of evolution until 

 the cause of change was discovered. And it is natural that in later life 

 he should have felt that conviction was wanting till that cause was made 

 out. 1 For the purposes of the present chapter the point is not very 

 material. We know that in 1842 he wrote the first sketch of his theory, 

 and that it was greatly amplified in 1844. So that, at the date of the 

 first letters of this chapter, we know that he had a working hypothesis 

 of evolution which did not differ in essentials from that given in the 

 Origin of Species. 



To realise the amount of work that was in progress during the period 

 covered by Chapter II., it should be remembered that during part of the 

 time namely, from 1846 to 1854 he was largely occupied by his work 

 on the Cirripedes. 2 This research would have fully occupied a less 

 methodical workman, and even to those who saw him at work it seemed 

 his whole occupation. Thus (to quote a story of Lord Avebury's) one of 

 Mr. Darwin's children is said to have asked, in regard to a neighbour, 

 "Then where does he do his barnacles?" as though not merely his 

 father, but all other men, must be occupied on that group. 



Sir Joseph Hooker, to whom the first letter in this chapter is addressed, 

 was good enough to supply a note on the origin of his intimacy with 

 Mr. Darwin, and this is published in the Life and Letters? The close 

 intercourse that sprang up between them was largely carried on by 

 correspondence, and Mr. Darwin's letters to Sir Joseph have supplied 



1 See Charles Darwin, his Life told, etc., 1892, p. 165. 



2 Life and Letters, I. p. 346. 



3 Ibid., II., p. 19. See also Nature, 1899, June 22nd, p. 187, where 

 some reminiscences are published, which formed part of Sir Joseph's 

 speech at the unveiling of Darwin's statue in the Oxford Museum. 



