172 ME. DARWIN'S CRITICS v 



nickname. According to the views of Mr. Spencer, 

 Mr. Mill, and Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mivart tells 

 us, " virtue is a mere kind of retrieving : " and, 

 that we may not miss the point of the joke, he 

 puts it in italics. But what if it is ? Does that 

 make it less virtue ? Suppose I say that sculp- 

 ture 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 inappro- 

 priateness 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 transmis- 

 sion 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 retrieving sire. So that, evolution, or no 

 evolution, moral qualities are comparable to a 



