XL] ME. DARWIN'S CRITICS. 291 



puts it iii italics. But what if it is I Does that make 

 it less virtue ? Suppose I say that sculpture is a " mere 

 way " of stone-cutting, and painting a " mere way " of 

 daubing canvas, and music a " mere way " of making a 

 noise, the statements are quite true ; but they only show 

 that I see no other method of depreciating some of the 

 noblest aspects of humanity, than that of using language 

 in an inadequate and misleading sense about them. And 

 the peculiar in appropriateness of this particular nickname 

 to the views in question, arises from the circumstance 

 which Mr. Mivart would doubtless have recollected, if 

 his wish to ridicule had not for the moment obscured 

 his judgment that whether the law of evolution applies 

 to man or not, that of hereditary transmission certainly 

 does. Mr. Mivart will hardly deny that a man owes 

 a large share of the moral tendencies which he exhibits 

 to his ancestors ; and the man who inherits a desire to 

 steal from a kleptomaniac, or a tendency to benevolence 

 from a Howard, is, so far as he illustrates hereditary 

 transmission, comparable to the dog who inherits the 

 desire to fetch a duck out of the water from his re- 

 trieving sire. So that, evolution, or no evolution, moral 

 qualities are comparable to a "kind of retrieving;" 

 though the comparison, if meant for the purposes of 

 casting obloquy on evolution, does not say much for 

 the fairness of those who make it. 



The Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart base their 

 objections to the evolution of the mental faculties of 

 man from those of some lower animal form, upon what 

 they maintain to be a difference in kind between the 

 mental and moral faculties of men and brutes ; and 

 I have endeavoured to show, by exposing the utter 

 unsoundness of their philosophical basis, that these 

 objections are devoid of importance. 



The objections which Mr. Wallace brings forward to 



U 2 





