172 MR. DARWIN’S CRITICS y 
nickname. According to the views of Mr. Spencer, 
Mr. Mill, and Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mivart tells 
us, “virtue is a mere kind of retrieving:” and, 
that we may not miss the point of the joke, he 
puts it in italics. But what if itis? . Does that 
make it less virtue? Suppose I say that sculp- 
ture is a “mere way” of stone-cutting, and 
painting a “mere way” of daubing canvas, and 
music a “mere way” of making a noise, the 
statements are quite true; but they only show 
that I see no other method of depreciating some 
of the noblest aspects of humanity than that of 
using language in an inadequate and misleading 
sense about them. And the peculiar imappro- 
priateness of this particular nickname to the views 
in question, arises from the circumstance which 
Mr. Mivart would doubtless have recollected, if his 
wish to ridicule had not for the moment obscured 
his judgment—that whether the law of evolution 
applies to man or not, that of hereditary transmis-_ 
sion certainly does. Mr. Mivart will hardly deny 
that a man owes a large share of the moral 
tendencies which he exhibits to his ancestors ; and — 
the man who inherits a desire to steal from a 
kleptomaniac, or a tendency to benevolence from a — 
Howard, is, so far as he illustrates hereditary 
transmission, comparable to the dog who inherits — 
the desire to fetch a duck out of the water from — 
his retrieving sire. So that, evolution, or no 
evolution, moral qualities are comparable to a — 
ee at AG Pl nn 
