v ME. DARWIN'S CRITICS 167 



son be correct, the majority of men, even among the 

 most civilised nations, are devoid of that supreme 

 characteristic of manhood. And if it be as absurd 

 as I believe it to be, then, as reason is certainly not 

 self-consciousness, and since it, as certainly, is one of 

 the " actions to which the nervous system minis- 

 ters," we must, if the Reviewer's classification is 

 to be adopted, seek it among those four faculties 

 which he allows animals to possess. And thus, for 

 the second time, he really surrenders, whi-le seem- 

 ing to defend, his position. 



The Quarterly Reviewer, as we have seen, 

 lectures the evolutionists upon their want of know- 

 ledge of philosophy altogether. Mr. Mivart is not 

 less pained at Mr. Darwin's ignorance of moral 

 science. It is grievous to him that Mr. Darwin 

 (and nous autres) should not have grasped the 

 elementary distinction between material and formal 

 morality ; and he lays down as an axiom, of which 

 no tyro ought to be ignorant, the position that 

 " acts, unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious 

 will directed towards the fulfilment of duty," are 

 " absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree 

 of real or formal goodness." 



Now this may be Mr. Mivart's opinion, but it is 

 a proposition which really does not stand on the 

 footing of an undisputed axiom. Mr. Mill denies 

 it in his work on Utilitarianism. The most in- 

 fluential writer of a totally opposed school, Mr. 

 Carlyle, is never weary of denying it, and upholding 



40 



