470 SPECULATIONS ON PRIMORDIAL TYPES. CHAP. xxm. 



there was one or five, or a greater number of languages, he 

 may answer that, before he can reply to such a question, it 

 must be decided whether the origin of man was single, or 

 whether there were many primordial races. But he may 

 also observe, that if mankind began their career in a rude 

 state of society, their whole vocabulary would be limited to 

 a few words, and that if they then separated into several 

 isolated communities, each of these would soon acquire an 

 entirely distinct language, some roots being lost and others 

 corrupted and transformed beyond the possibility of subse 

 quent identification, so that it might be hopeless to expect to 

 trace back the living and dead languages to one starting 

 point, even if that point were of much more modern date 

 than we have now good reason to suppose. In like manner 

 it may be said of species, that if those first formed were of 

 very simple structure, and they began to vary and to lose 

 some organs by disuse and acquire new ones by develope- 

 ment, they might soon differ as much as so many distinctly 

 created primordial types. It would therefore be a waste of 

 time to speculate on the number of original monads or germs 

 from which all plants and animals were subsequently evolved, 

 more especially as the oldest fossiliferous strata known to us 

 may be the last of a long series of antecedent formations, which 

 once contained organic remains. It was not till geologists 

 ceased to discuss the condition of the original nucleus of the 

 planet, whether it was solid or fluid, and whether it owed its 

 fluidity to aqueous or igneous causes, that they began to 

 achieve their great triumphs ; and the question now at issue, 

 whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a 

 common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting 

 ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, 

 and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of 

 the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and 

 least mutilated by the hand of time. 



