Cuvier’s theory seems to be still the dominant one; it is surrounded by that scholastic _prestige_ which is explained by the 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 God, 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 concerning the future of society, declared that it was not fitting 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.”[290] This remark, in which Étienne 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.”[291] Such has been, for a long time, the theory of the origin of species which we have held, and which we maintained in the first edition of this book. In fact, the solution which we now offer differs considerably from that which we then gave. But there is evolution rather than contradiction in going from one to the other. The differences which separate mankind are not lessened, and have not diminished in value in our eyes: we merely explain these differences in another way. It cannot be called contradiction, or even inconsistency, to change one’s manner of viewing things with the times; to regard things otherwise which, as we said before, have no absolute basis; or to change in five years one’s opinion concerning the origin of the living beings on the surface of the globe.