248 APPENDIX A 



less. The following references to the subject 

 are to be found in his correspondence with 

 Sir Joseph Hooker in 1854 and 1856, years 

 before the publication of the Origin : 



1854, July 2. 'I am glad to hear what you say about 

 parallelism: I am an utter disbeliever of any parallelism 

 more than mere accident.' ' 



1856, July 13. 'You say most truly about multiple 

 creations and my notions. If any one case could be proved, 

 I should be smashed ; but as I am writing my book, I try 

 to take as much pains as possible to give the strongest cases 

 opposed to me, and often such conjectures as occur to me.' 2 



1856, July 19. '. . . it is absolutely necessary that I 

 should discuss single and double creations, as a very crucial 

 point on the general origin of species, and I must confess, 

 with the aid of all sorts of visionary hypotheses, a very 

 hostile one.' 8 



The above-quoted sentences sum up very 

 briefly Darwin's conclusion that evolution as he 

 conceived of it implied that each species had 

 appeared once only in a single continuous area 

 and had then tended to spread from this as from 

 a centre implied in fact the soundness of the 

 belief in what were then called 'single centres 

 of creation*. His arguments in favour of this 

 conviction are given in great detail in the first 

 edition of the Origin : first in chapter X, sup- 

 porting the conclusion, * it is incredible that 

 individuals identically the same should ever have 

 been produced through natural selection from 



1 More Letters, i. 77. 2 More Letters, i. 95. 



3 More Letters, ii. 249. 



