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y MR. DARWIN’S CRITICS 167 
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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, while 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 
