PRIMITIVE MAN. 387 



which according to it must necessarily be fallacious. 

 It leaves the theistic notions of mankind without 

 explanation, and it will not serve its purpose to assert 

 that some few and exceptional families of men have 

 no notion of a God. Even admitting this, and it is at 

 best very doubtful, it can form but a trifling exception 

 to a general truth. 



It appears to me that this view of the case is very 

 clearly put in the Bible, and it is curiously illustrated 

 by a recent critique of "Mr. Darwin's Critics," 

 by Professor Huxley in the Contemporary Review. 

 Mr. Mivart, himself a derivationist, but differing in 

 some points from Darwin, had affirmed, in the spirit 

 rather of a narrow theologian than of a Biblical 

 student or philosopher, that " acts unaccompanied by 

 mental acts of conscious will" are "absolutely des- 

 titute of the most incipient degree of goodness/' 

 Huxley well replies, " 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.' Accord- 

 ing to Mr. Mivart's definition, the man who loves 

 God and his neighbour, and, out of sheer love and 

 affection for both, does all he can to please them, is 

 nevertheless destitute of a particle of real goodness." 

 Huxley's reply deserves to be pondered by certain 

 moralists and theologians whose doctrine savours of 

 the leaven of the Pharisees, but neither Huxley nor 



