Ɛpsilon

To J. D. Baldwin   21 January [1873]1

Down, | Beckenham, Kent.

Jan 21st

Dear Sir

I am much obliged for your letter of Jan. 4th.—2 I see no difficulty in your suggestion that the offspring of an original progenitor might have spread over the earth before (I doubt about long before) they deserved to be called human beings;—that is if the definition of a human being is to be the power of speaking.

Nevertheless I much doubt whether philologists are justified in assuming that the most distinct existing languages could not have been derived from a common stock, far more simple or less developed than any one now spoken.—3

Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch Darwin

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from J. D. Baldwin, 4 January 1873.
3
CD discussed the development of language in Descent 1: 53–62; see also ibid., pp. 234–5, on the origins of widely differing languages, and whether early language-speakers were fully human. On nineteenth-century language theories, see Alter 2005, pp. 53–65.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.2 offspring] after interl del ‘might have’
1.2 might have] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-8746F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-8746F