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 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 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.

And it further happens that Mr. Darwin, who is charged by Mr. Mivart
with being ignorant of the distinction between material and formal
goodness, discusses the very question at issue, in a passage which
is well worth reading (vol. i.p. 87), and also comes to a conclusion
opposed to Mr. Mivart's axiom. A proposition which has been so much
disputed and repudiated, should, under no circumstances, have been
thus confidently assumed to be true. For myself, I utterly reject
it, inasmuch as the logical consequence of the adoption of any such
principle is the denial of all moral value to sympathy and affection.
According to Mr. Mivart's axiom, the man who, seeing another
struggling in the water, leaps in at the risk of his own life to save
him, does that which is "destitute of the most incipient degree of
real goodness," unless, as he strips off his coat, he says to himself,
"Now mind, I am going to do this because it is my duty and for no
other reason;" and the most beautiful character to which humanity
can attain, that of the man who does good without thinking about it,
because he loves justice and mercy and is repelled by evil, has no
claim on our moral approbation. The denial that a man acts morally
because he does not think whether he does so or not, may be put upon
the same footing as the denial of the title of an arithmetician to the
calculating boy, because he did not know how he worked his sums. If
mankind ever generally accept and act upon Mr. Mivart's axiom, they
will sim