v MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS 167 



son be correct, the majority of men, even among the 

 most civilised nations, are devoid of that supreme 

 characteristic of manhood. And if it be as absurd 

 as I believe it to be, then, as reason is certainly not 

 self-consciousness, and since it, as certainly, is one of 

 the " actions to which the nervous system minis- 

 ters," we must, if the Reviewer's classification is 

 to be adapted, seek it among those four faculties 

 which he allows animals to possess. And thus, for 

 the second time, he really surrenders, while seem- 

 ing to defend, his position. 



The Quarterly Reviewer, as we have seen, 

 lectures the evolutionists upon their want of know- 

 ledge 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 no%s 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, unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious 

 will directed towards the fulfilment of duty," are 

 " absolutely destitute 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 in- 

 fluential writer of a totally opposed school, Mr. 

 Carlyle, is never weary of denying it, and upholding 



40 



