inhabited by beings resembling ourselves. But if the LAPLANDER differs
in so marked a manner from the HOTTENTOT, what difference ought we not
rationally to suppose between an inhabitant of our planet and one of
SATURN or of VENUS?

However it may be, if we are obliged to recur by imagination to the
origin of things, to the infancy of the human species, we may say that
it is probable that man was a necessary consequence of the disentangling
of our globe; or one of the results of the qualities, of the properties,
of the energies, of which it is susceptible in its present position--
that he was born male and female--that his existence is co-ordinate with
that of the globe, under its present position--that as long as this
co-ordination shall subsist, the human specie will conserve himself, will
propagate himself, according to the impulse, after the primitive laws,
which he has originally received--that if this co-ordination should
happen to cease; if the earth, displaced, should cease to receive the
same impulse, the same influence, on the part of those causes which
actually act upon it, or which give it energy; that then the human
species would change, to make place for new beings, suitable to co-order
themselves with the state that should succeed to that which we now see
subsist.

In thus supposing the changes in the position of our globe, the
primitive man did, perhaps, differ more from the actual man, than the
quadruped differs from the insect. Thus man, the same as every thing
else that exists on our planet, as well as in all the others, may be
regarded as in a state of continual vicissitude: thus the last term of
the existence of man is to us as unknown and as indistinct as the first:
there is, therefore, no contradiction in the belief that the species
vary incessantly--that to us it is as impossible to know what he will