SPECIES. 113 



word classical ; it is only fit for universities. Cuvier proclaimed 

 the immutability of species, and wished that at every revolution 

 of the globe (the word alone then made his fortune), a new fauna 

 might come ready made from the hands of Grod, to animate 

 the burning or icy lands of the old world. But Cuvier, in 

 proclaiming organic immutability, excepted mankind. We 

 must be allowed to doubt whether it was done with good faith. 

 ' ' Cuvier, full of good taste regarding political propriety," said 

 a son of the republic, his former master, now his adversary, 

 " Cuvier, filling his mind with wise mental reservations con- 

 cerning the future of society, declared that it was not fit- 

 ting that new discoveries, just dug from the heart of the 

 earth, should attack and oppose with hostile malignity the 

 venerated and ancient revelations of our holy books."* This 

 remark, in which Etienne Geoffroy has concealed his anger and 

 contempt under a guise of perfect urbanity, will remain to the 

 end, we are convinced, as the judgment of posterity upon the 

 naturalist statesman, and upon that which they call in France 

 at the present day official science. Species was, then, a definite 

 entity in Cuvier' s opinion, and if he had been consistent, he 

 would doubtless have become the promoter of the idea which 

 has been taken up by Agassiz, that there were several centres 

 of creation on the surface of our planet after the last flood ; in 

 each of these centres would appear a special fauna, and also 

 one of the species constituting the genus homo. 



These different species of men and these different fauna 

 would since have continued to occupy the same geographical 

 areas with merely some alteration. An absolute value is given 

 to species in Cuvier's theory, as well as in that of Agassiz ; it 

 is unchangeable ; it may disappear, but cannot be modified, so 

 that " each of them," as Buffon said at the commencement of 

 his career, when he held the same views, " remains always 

 separated from the others by an interval which nature cannot 

 overstep. "f 



*. IL Geoffroy, Comptes Rendus des seances de I' Academic des Sciences, vol. 

 v, p. 193. 



f See Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Histoire Naturelle Generate, vol. iii, 

 p. 210. 



