36 Darwinism and, Other Essays. 



Mivart from recognizing anything of the sort that 

 he cites Mr. Darwin's scrupulous self-corrections 

 as evidence of his utter untrustworthiness ! What 

 confidence can we place, he asks, in a thinker who 

 makes so many hasty inferences ? overlooking 

 the fact that, in daily experience, those who are 

 the most rash in forming their opinions are apt to 

 be likewise the most indisposed to reconsider 

 them. If Mr. Mivart had any genuine sympathy 

 with the scientific temper of mind, this particular 

 kind of misrepresentation would never have oc- 

 curred to him. 



Along with this inability to appreciate disinter- 

 ested thinking, Mr. Mivart has one or two other 

 peculiarities which, taken together, give him a 

 real genius for twisting things. He is character- 

 ized by a sort of cantankerousness which prompts 

 him to put a controversial aspect on points which 

 properly require only a judicial estimate of the 

 bearings of circumstances. On the question as 

 to just how much effectiveness is to be allowed 

 to the principle of natural selection, he approaches 

 Mr. Darwin with the air of a lawyer browbeating 

 a witness ; and when Mr. Darwin admits that 

 formerly his attention was somewhat too exclu- 

 sively directed toward this cause of the modifi- 

 cation of species, his belligerent critic cries out 



