254 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [x. 



So that if the Reviewer's new definition of reason be 

 correct, the majority of men, even among the most 

 civilized nations, are devoid of that supreme character- 

 istic of manhood. And if it be as absurd as I believe 

 it to be, then, as reason is certainly not self-consciousness, 

 and as it, as certainly, is one of the " actions to which 

 the nervous system ministers/' 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 seeming 

 to defend, his position. 



The Quarterly Reviewer, as we have seen, lectures the 

 evolutionists upon their want of knowledge 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, un- 

 accompanied by mental acts of conscious will directed 

 towards the fulfilment of duty," are "absolutely desti- 

 tute 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 influential writer of a 

 totally opposed school, Mr. Carlyle, is never weary of 

 denying it, and upholding the merit of that virtue 

 which is unconscious ; nay, it is, to my understanding, 

 extremely hard to reconcile Mr. Mivart's dictum with 

 that noble summary of the whole duty of man " Thou 

 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 

 with all thy soul, and with all thy strength ; and thou 

 shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." According to 



