x.] MR. DARWIN ^S CRITICS. 221 



The Eeviewer declares that Mr. Darwin has, &quot; with 

 needless opposition, set at nought the first principles of 

 both philosophy and religion &quot; (p. 90). 



It looks, at first, as if this meant, that Mr. Darwin s 

 views being false, the opposition to &quot; religion &quot; which 

 flows from them must be needless. But I suspect this 

 is not the right view of the meaning of the passage, as 

 Mr. Mivart, from whom the Quarterly Eeviewer plainly 

 draws so much inspiration, tells us that &quot; the conse 

 quences which have been drawn from evolution, whether 

 exclusively Darwinian or not, to the prejudice of 

 religion, by no means follow from it, and are in fact 

 illegitimate&quot; (p. 5). 



I may assume, then, that the Quarterly Reviewer and 

 Mr. Mivart admit that there is no necessary opposition 

 between &quot;evolution, whether exclusively Darwinian or 

 not,&quot; and religion. But then, what do they mean by 

 this last much-abused term ? On this point the Quarterly 

 Reviewer is silent. Mr. Mivart, on the contrary, is 

 perfectly explicit, and the whole tenor of his remarks 

 leaves no doubt that by &quot; religion &quot; he means theology ; 

 and by theology, that particular variety of the great 

 Proteus, which is expounded by the doctors of the 

 Roman Catholic Church, and held by the members of 

 that religious community to be the sole form of absolute 

 truth and of saving faith. 



According to Mr. Mivart, the greatest and most ortho 

 dox authorities upon matters of Catholic doctrine agree 

 in distinctly asserting &quot; derivative creation&quot; or evolution ; 

 &quot;and thus their teachings harmonize with all that modern 

 science can possibly require&quot; (p. 305). 



I confess that this bold assertion interested me more 

 than anything else in Mr. Mivart s book. What little 

 knowledge I possessed of Catholic doctrine, and of the 

 influence exerted by Catholic authority in former times, 



