168 ME. DARWIN'S CRITICS v 



the merit of that virtue which is unconscious; 

 nay, it is, to my understanding, extremely hard to 

 reconcile Mr. Mivart's dictum with that noble sum- 

 mary of the whole duty of man " Thou shalt love 

 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 

 thy soul, and with all thy strength : and thou shalt 

 love thy neighbour as thyself." According to Mr. 

 Mivart's definition, the man who loves God and his 

 neighbour, and, out of sheer love and affection for 

 both, does all he can to please them, is, neverthe- 

 less, destitute of a particle of real goodness. 



And it further happens that Mr. Darwin, who is 

 charged by Mr. Mivart with being ignorant of the 

 distinction between material and formal goodness, 

 discusses the very question at issue in a passage 

 which is well worth reading (vol i. p. 87), and also 

 comes to a conclusion opposed to Mr. Mivart's 

 axiom. A proposition which has been so much 

 disputed and repudiated, should, under no circum- 

 stances, have been thus confidently assumed to be 

 true. For myself, I utterly reject it, inasmuch as 

 the logical consequence of the adoption of any such 

 principle is the denial of all moral value to 

 sympathy and affection. According to Mr. Mivart's 

 axiom, the man who, seeing another struggling in 

 the water, leaps in at the risk of his own life to 

 save him, does that which is " destitute of the most 

 incipient degree of real goodness," unless, as he 

 strips off his coat, he says to himself, " Now, mind, 

 I am going to do this because it is my duty and 



