128 DAKWINIAN INTERESTS 



The letters that follow are concerned with the attack made 

 on Darwin by Mr. St. George Mivart x openly in his * Genesis of 

 Species ' and anonymously, but from internal evidence indubit- 

 ably, in the Quarterly Review. The reply made by Huxley 

 in the Contemporary Review for November 1871 (see * Collected 

 Essays ' ii. 120) under the title of * Mr. Darwin's Critics,' was 

 one of the most deadly in the history of controversy. Mivart, 

 inter alia, had attempted to show that evolution, properly 

 garnished with limitations as to man acceptable to the priest- 

 hood, had been accepted in advance by the Fathers of the 

 Roman Church. Turning up the authorities quoted, Huxley 

 found the precise opposite stated, and with delicious irony 

 was able to pose as the defender of Catholic orthodoxy against 

 a heterodox son of the Church, while combating his philosophy 

 and psychology. At the same time he was full of cold anger 

 against the man who was writing privately to express his friend- 

 ship for Darwin, yet, as the anonymous Quarterly Reviewer, 

 treated Mr. Darwin in a manner ' alike unjust and unbecoming,' 

 sneering at his candour and the mutually generous relations 

 between him and Wallace over the enunciation of Natural 

 Selection. 



Writing to Mrs. Darwin on September 16, apropos of her 

 daughter's marriage to Mr. Litchfield, Hooker also refers to 

 the impending reply. 



I had not seen the marriage in the paper — I hope all 

 passed off with the least possible * putting about.' I am 

 accused of once having uttered the horrid sentiment, that I 

 would rather go to two burials than one marriage, any day. 



I heard from Mr. Huxley yesterday — threatening to 

 * pin out ' Mr. Mivart, for his insolent attack on Mr. Darwin, 



1 St. George Jackson Mivart (1827-1900), F.L.S. 1862, Sec. 1874-80, F.R.S. 

 1869, biologist and brilliant anatomist, who, having embraced Roman 

 Catholicism, formally opposed Darwinism, while supporting evolution by the 

 side wind of derivative creation. But though he employed his great knowledge 

 and polemical adroitness in the service of his spiritual advisers, his liberalising 

 philosophy finally led to his excommunication. Mivart 's biographer in the 

 D.N.B. speaks of the criticisms mentioned in the text as ' an assertion of the 

 right of private judgment which led to an estrangement from both Darwin 

 and Huxley.' This is not the fact. True that .they resented, and Mivart 

 privately apologised for, the personalities of his Quarterly article ; the breach 

 took place three years later owing to a repetition of the offence in a peculiarly 

 hurtful form. 



