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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11680-0.txt b/11680-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6be0ae --- /dev/null +++ b/11680-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15393 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11680 *** + +GEORGE ELIOT: A CRITICAL STUDY OF HER LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY. + +BY + +GEORGE WILLIS COOKE + +AUTHOR OF "RALPH WALDO EMERSON: HIS LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY." + +1884 + + + + + + +PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. + + +The publication of a new edition of this work permits me to say that the +essay on "The Lady Novelists," quoted in the seventh chapter, was written +by George Henry Lewes. Its opinions, however, are substantially those of +George Eliot, and they will be found in harmony with her own words. +Confessing to the error, I yet venture to let the quotations, and the +comments on them, stand as at first made. The three poems mentioned on page +75, were among the latest of the productions of George Eliot's pen. + +It has been suggested to me that I have not done perfect justice to George +Henry Lewes, especially in what I say of his books on the Spanish drama and +the life of Goethe. I have carefully reconsidered what I wrote of him, and +find no occasion for any change of judgment, though two or three words +might properly give place to others of a more appreciative meaning. + +My book has met with much greater praise than I could have expected. Its +errors, I have no doubt, are quite numerous enough; and yet I venture to +think the main thought of the book is correct. + +MARCH, 1884. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +PREFACE + + I. EARLY LIFE + + II. TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR + + III. MARRIAGE + + IV. CAREER AS AN AUTHOR + + V. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS + + VI. LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES + + VII. THEORY OF THE NOVEL + + VIII. POETIC METHODS + + IX. PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE + + X. DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS + + XI. RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES + + XII. ETHICAL SPIRIT + + XIII. EARLIER NOVELS + + XIV. ROMOLA + + XV. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH + + XVI. DANIEL DERONDA + + XVII. THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS + +XVIII. LATER ESSAYS + + XIX. THE ANALYTIC METHOD + + XX. THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT + + XXI. BIBLIOGRAPHY + + + + + + +I. + + +EARLY LIFE. + +The poet and the novelist write largely out of personal experience, and +must give expression to the effects of their own history. What they have +seen and felt, gives shape and tone to what they write; that which is +nearest their own hearts is poured forth in their books. To ignore these +influences is to overlook a better part of what they write, and is often to +lose the explanation of many features of their work. Shakspere is one of +those who are of no time or place, whose words gain no added meaning in +view of what he was and how he lived; but it is not so with a great number +of the best and most inspiring writers. The era in which they lived, the +intellectual surroundings afforded them by their country and generation, +the subtle phases of sentiment and aspiration of their immediate time and +place, are all essential to a true appreciation of their books. It is so of +Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Hugo, Wordsworth, Emerson, and how many more! + +As we must know the eighteenth century in its social spirit, literary +tendencies, revolutionary aims, romantic aspirations, philosophy and +science, to know Goethe, so must we know the nineteenth century in its +scientific attainments, agnostic philosophy, realistic spirit and +humanitarian aims, in order to know George Eliot. She is a product of her +time, as Lessing, Goethe, Wordsworth and Byron were of theirs; a voice to +utter its purpose and meaning, as well as a trumpet-call to lead it on. As +Goethe came after Lessing, Herder and Kant, so George Eliot came after +Comte, Mill and Spencer. Her books are to be read in the light of their +speculations, and she embodied in literary forms what they uttered as +science or philosophy. + +Not only is a poet's mind affected by the tone of thought about him, but +his personal experiences and surroundings are likely to have a large +influence on what he writes. Scott was deeply affected by the romantic +atmosphere of his native land. Her birthplace and youthful surroundings had +a like effect on George Eliot. The Midland home, the plain village life, +the humble, toiling country folk, shaped for her the scenes and characters +about which she was to write. Some knowledge of her early home and the +influences amidst which her mind was formed, help largely to an +appreciation of her books and the views of life which she presents in them. + +The Midland region of England she has pictured with something of that +accuracy with which Scott described the Border. It is a country of historic +memories. Near by her childhood home was the forest of Arden and Astly +Castle, the home of Sir John Grey, whose widow, Elizabeth Woodville, became +the queen of Edward IV. This was also one of the homes of Henry Grey, Duke +of Suffolk, who was found in a hollow tree near by after his rebellion; and +the home, likewise, of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. In another direction +was Bosworth Field; and within twenty miles was Stratford-upon-Avon. The +ancient city of Coventry was not far distant. It was not these historic +regions which attracted her, however, so much as the pleasant country, the +common people, the quiet villages. With observant eyes she saw the world +about her as it was and she entered into the heart of its life, and has +painted it for us in a most sympathetic, appreciative spirit. The simple, +homely, unromantic life of middle England she has made immortal with her +wit, her satire, her fine description, and her keen love of all that is +human. She herself recognized the importance of her early surroundings. In +one of her letters she used these words: + + It is interesting, I think, to know whether a writer was born in a + central or border district--a condition which always has a strongly + determining influence. I was born in Warwickshire, but certain family + traditions connected with more northerly districts made these districts + a region of poetry to me in my early childhood. I was brought up in the + Church of England, and have never joined any other religious society, + but I have had close acquaintance with many Dissenters of various + sects, from Calvinistic Anabaptists to Unitarians. + +The influence of the surroundings of childhood upon character she has more +than once touched upon in her books. In the second chapter of _Theophrastus +Such_, she says,-- + + I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where + my affections were fledged. + +In the same essay she says,-- + + Our Midland plains have never lost their familiar expression and + conservative spirit for me. + +In _Daniel Deronda_ she most tenderly expresses the same deep conviction +concerning the soul's need of anchorage in some familiar and inspiring +scene, with which the memories of childhood may be delightfully associated. +Her own fond recollections lent force to whatever philosophical +significance such a theory may have had for her. + + A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where + it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for + the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, + for whatever will give that home a familiar, unmistakable difference + amidst the future widening of knowledge; a spot where the definiteness + of early knowledge may be inwrought with affection, and kindly + acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and monkeys, may + spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit + of the blood. + +Mary Ann Evans was born at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish of +Colton, Warwickshire, England, November 22, 1819. In after years she +adopted the abbreviated form of her name, and was known by her friends as +Marian. When she was six months old the family moved to Griff House, which +was situated half-way between Bedworth, a mining village, and the +manufacturing town of Nuneaton. In approaching Griff from Nuneaton, a +little valley, known as Griff Hollows, is passed, much resembling the "Red +Deeps" of _The Mill on the Floss_. On the right, a little beyond, is Griff +House, a comfortable and substantial dwelling surrounded by pleasant +gardens and lawns. + +Robert Evans, her father, was born at Ellaston, Staffordshire, of a +substantial family of mechanics and craftsmen. He was of massive build, +tall, wide-shouldered and strong, and his features were of a marked, +emphatic cast. He began life as a master carpenter, then became a forester, +and finally a land agent. He was induced to settle in Warwickshire by Sir +Roger Newdigate, his principal employer, and for the remainder of his life +he had charge of five large estates in the neighborhood. In this employment +he was successful, being respected and trusted to the fullest extent by his +employers, his name becoming a synonym for trustworthiness. Marian many +times sketched the main traits of her father's character, as in the love of +perfect work in "Stradivarius." He had Adam Bede's stalwart figure and +robust manhood. Caleb Garth, in _Middlemarch_, is in many ways a fine +portrait of him as to the nature of his employment, his delight in the +soil, and his honest, rugged character. + +Caleb was wont to say that "it's a fine thing to have the chance of getting +a bit of the country into good fettle, and putting men into the right way +with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building +done--that those who are living and those who come after will be the better +for. I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work +that is." Robert Evans, like Caleb Garth, "while faithfully serving his +employers enjoyed great popularity among their tenants. He was gentle but +of indomitable firmness; and while stern to the idle and unthrifty, he did +not press heavily on those who might be behindhand with their rent, owing +to ill luck or misfortune, on quarter days." + +While still living in Staffordshire, Robert Evans lost his first wife, by +whom he had a son and a daughter. His second wife, the mother of Marian, +was a Miss Pearson, a gentle, loving woman, and a notable housewife. She is +described in the Mrs. Hackit of "Amos Barton," whose industry, sharp +tongue, epigrammatic speech and marked character were taken from life. +Something of Mrs. Poyser also entered into her nature. She had three +children, Christiana, Isaac and Mary Ann. The house at Griff was situated +in a rich landscape, and was a large, commodious farm-house of red brick, +ivy-covered, and of two stories' height. At the back was a large garden, +and a farm-yard with barns and sheds. + +In the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and Sister," Marian has given +some account of her early life. She had the attachment there described for +her brother Isaac, and followed him about with the same persistence and +affection. The whole of that poem is autobiographical. The account of the +mother gives a delightful glimpse into Marian's child-life: + + Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, + Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, + Then with the benediction of her gaze + Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still + Across the homestead to the rookery elms, + Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, + So rich for us, we counted them as realms + With varied products. + +The early life of Marian Evans has, in many features of it, been very fully +described in the story of Maggie Tulliver. How far her own life is that of +Maggie may be seen by comparing the earlier chapters in _The Mill on the +Floss_ with the "Brother and Sister." The incident described in the poem, +of her brother leaving her in charge of the fishing-rod, is repeated in all +its main features in the experiences of Maggie. In the poem she describes +an encounter with a gipsy, which again recalls Maggie's encounter with some +persons of that race. The whole account of her childhood life with her +brother, her trust in him, their delight in the common pleasures of +childhood, and the impression made on her by the beauties of nature, +reappears in striking similarity in the description of the child-life of +Maggie and Tom. These elements of her early experience and observation of +life have been well described by one who knew her personally. This person +says that "Maggie Tulliver's childhood is clearly full of the most accurate +personal recollections." + +Marian Evans very early became an enthusiastic reader of the best books. In +an almanac she found a portion of one of the essays of Charles Lamb, and +remembered reading it with great delight. In her seventh year a copy +of _Waverley_ was loaned to her older sister. She became herself intensely +fascinated by it, and when it was returned before she had completed it she +was thrown into much distress. The story so possessed her that she began to +complete it in writing, according to her own conception. When this was +discovered, the book was again secured for her perusal. This incident she +has described in a sonnet, which appears as the motto to the fifty-seventh +chapter of _Middlemarch_. + + They numbered scarce eight summers when a name + Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there + As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame + At penetration of the quickening air: + His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, + Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor, + Making the little world their childhood knew + Large with a land of mountain, lake and scaur, + + And larger yet with wonder, love, belief, + Toward Walter Scott, who living far away + Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. + The book and they must part, but day by day, + In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran, + They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan. + +Not only was she a great reader, but she was also a diligent and even a +precocious student, learning easily and rapidly whatever she undertook to +acquire in the way of knowledge. + +She was first sent, with her brother Isaac, to a free school in the village +of Griff. Among her mates was William Jacques, the original of Bob Jakins +in _The Mill on the Floss_. When seven years old she went to a girls' +school at Nuneaton. Her schoolmates describe her as being then a "quiet, +reserved girl, with strongly lined, almost masculine features, and a +profusion of light hair worn in curls round her head." The abundance of +her curling hair caused her much trouble, and she once cut it off, as +Maggie Tulliver did, because it would not "lie straight." "One of her +school-fellows," we are told, "recalls that the first time she sat down to +the piano she astonished her companions by the knowledge of music she had +already acquired. She mastered her lessons with an ease which excited +wonder. She read with avidity. She joined very rarely in the sports of her +companions, and her diffidence and shrinking sensibility prevented her from +forming any close friendship among her school-fellows. When she stood up in +the class, her features, heavy in repose, were lighted by eager excitement, +which found further vent in nervous movements of her hands. At this school +Marian was well taught in English, with drawing, music, and some little +French." + +Leaving this school at the age of twelve, she went to that of the Misses +Franklin in Coventry, a large town a few miles distant. To the careful +training received there she was much indebted, and in after years often +spoke of it with the heartiest appreciation. One of her friends, Edith +Simcox, has given an account of this school and of Marian's studies +there. "Almost on the outskirts of the old town of Coventry, towards the +railway station, the house may still be seen, itself an old-fashioned +five-windowed, Queen Anne sort of dwelling, with a shell-shaped cornice +over the door, with an old timbered cottage facing it, and near adjoining +a quaint brick and timber building, with an oriel window thrown out upon +oak pillars. Between forty and fifty years ago, Methodist ladies kept the +school, and the name of 'little mamma,' given by her school-fellows, is +a proof that already something was to be seen of the maternal air which +characterized her in later years, and perhaps more especially in +intercourse with her own sex. Prayer meetings were in vogue among the +girls, following the example of their elders; and while taking, no doubt, +a leading part in them, she used to suffer much self-reproach about her +coldness and inability to be carried away with the same enthusiasm as +others. At the same time, nothing was farther from her nature than any +sceptical inclination, and she used to pounce with avidity upon any +approach to argumentative theology within her reach, carrying Paley's +_Evidences_ up to her bedroom, and devouring it as she lay upon the floor +alone." + +During the three years Marian attended this school she held aloof from the +other pupils, was grave and womanly in her deportment. She acquired Miss +Rebecca Franklin's slow and precise method of speaking, and to her diligent +training owed her life-long habit of giving a finished completeness to all +her sentences. It seems that her imagination was alive at this time, and +being slowly cultivated. She was in the habit of scribbling verses in her +books and elsewhere. + +A fellow-pupil during the time she was a member of this boarding-school has +given these reminiscences of Marian's life there: "She learned everything +with ease," says this person, "but was passionately devoted to music, and +became thoroughly accomplished as a pianist. Her masters always brought the +most difficult solos for her to play in public, and everywhere said she +might make a performer equal to any then upon the concert stage. She was +keenly susceptible to what she thought her lack of personal beauty, +frequently saying that she was not pleased with a single feature of her +face or figure. She was not especially noted as a writer, but so uncommon +was her intellectual power that we all thought her capable of any effort; +and so great was the charm of her conversation, that there was continual +strife among the girls as to which of them should walk with her. The +teachers had to settle it by making it depend upon alphabetical +succession." + +Leaving the school in Coventry at the age of fifteen, Marian continued her +studies at home. The year following, her mother died; and this event, as +she afterwards said, first made her acquainted with "the unspeakable grief +of a last parting." Soon after, her older sister and her brother were +married and left home. She alone remained with her father, and was for +several years his housekeeper. "He offered to get a housekeeper," says Miss +Blind, "as not the house only, but farm matters had to be looked after, and +he was always tenderly considerate of 'the little wench,' as he called her. +But his daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into +her own hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge +of her domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on +at the same time." Her experiences at this period have been made use of in +more than one of her characters. The dairy scenes in _Adam Bede_ are so +perfectly realistic because she was familiar with all the processes of +butter and cheese making. + +In 1841 her father gave up his business to his son and moved to Foleshill, +one mile from Coventry. A pleasant house and surroundings made the new +home, and her habits of thought and life became more exact and fastidious. +The frequent absence of her father gave her much time for reading, which +she eagerly improved. Books were more accessible, though her own library +was a good one. + +She zealously began and carried on a systematic course of studies, such as +gave her the most thorough results of culture. She took up Latin and Greek +with the head master of the Coventry grammar-school, and became familiar +with the classic literatures. French, German and Italian were read in all +the master-pieces of those languages. The Old Testament was also studied +in the original; at the same time she became a proficient player on the +piano, and obtained a thorough knowledge of music. During several years of +quiet and continuous study she laid the foundations of that accurate and +wide-reaching knowledge which was so notable a feature of her life and +work. It was a careful, systematic knowledge she acquired, such as entitled +her to rank as an educated person in the fullest sense. Her painstaking +thoroughness, and her energetic application, were as remarkable at this +time as in later years. Her knowledge was mainly self-acquired, but it was +in no sense superficial. It is difficult to see in what way it could have +been improved, even if the universities had been open to her. + +Her life and her studies at Coventry have been well described by one who +knew her. We are told that "in this somewhat more populous neighborhood she +soon became known as a person of more than common interest, and, moreover, +as a most devoted daughter and the excellent manager of her father's +household. There was perhaps little at first sight which betokened genius +in that quiet gentle-mannered girl, with pale grave face, naturally pensive +in expression: and ordinary acquaintances regarded her chiefly for the +kindness and sympathy that were never wanting to any. But to those with +whom, by some unspoken affinity, her soul could expand, her expressive gray +eyes would light up with intense meaning and humor, and the low, sweet +voice, with its peculiar mannerism of speaking--which by the way wore off +in after years--would give utterance to thoughts so rich and singular that +converse with Miss Evans, even in those days, made speech with other people +seem flat and common. Miss Evans was an exemplification of the fact that a +great genius is not an exceptional, capricious product of nature, but a +thing of slow, laborious growth, the fruit of industry and the general +culture of the faculties. At Foleshill, with ample means and leisure, her +real education began. She acquired French, German and Italian from Signor +Brezzi. An acquaintance with Hebrew was the result of her own unaided +efforts. From Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michaels, Coventry, +she received lessons in music, although it was her own fine musical sense +which made her in after years an admirable pianoforte player. Nothing once +learned escaped her marvellous memory; and her keen sympathy with all human +feelings, in which lay the secret of her power of discriminating character, +caused a constant fund of knowledge to flow into her treasure-house from +the social world about her." + +Marian Evans early showed an unusual interest in religious subjects. Her +parents belonged to the Established Church, while other members of the +family were zealous Methodists. Religion was a subject which occupied much +of their attention, and several of them were engaged in one way and another +in its inculcation. Marian was an attentive listener to the sermons +preached in the parish church, and at the age of twelve was teaching in a +Sunday school held in a cottage near her father's house. Up to the age of +eighteen she was a most devoted believer in Christianity, and her zeal was +so great that Evangelicalism came to represent her mode of thought and +feeling. She was a somewhat rigid Calvinist and full of pious enthusiasm. +After her removal to Coventry, where her reading was of a wider range and +her circle of friends increased, doubts gradually sprang up in her mind. In +a letter written to Miss Sara Hennell she gave a brief account of her +religious experiences at this period. In it she described an aunt, Mrs. +Elizabeth Evans, who was a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah +Morris in _Adam Bede_. + + There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident + in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family--few and far-between + visits of (to my childish feeling) strange uncles and aunts and cousins + from my father's far-off native country, and once a journey of my own, + as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William + (a rich builder) in Staffordshire--but _not_ my uncle and aunt Samuel, + so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I remember + of northerly relatives in my childhood. + + But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married and I was + mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in + which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived + in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate + state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he + persuaded her to return with him, telling her that _I_ should be very, + very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly + under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavoring to + shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some + consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New + Testament. I _was_ delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard + her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of + exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that I should find + sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--about sixty--and, I + believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little + woman, with bright, small, dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I + imagine, but was now gray--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a + totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will + believe--was not _simply_ physical; no difference is. She was a woman + of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I + have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the + exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this + vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and + quiet in her manners--very loving--and (what she must have been from + the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and the + love of man were fused together. There was nothing highly distinctive + in her religious conversation. I had had much intercourse with pious + Dissenters before; the only freshness I found, in our talk, came from + the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and + though _she left the society when women were no longer allowed to + preach_, and joined the New Wesleyans, she retained the character of + thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked + with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about + predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority + came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which + at the time I disapproved; it was not strictly a consequence of her + Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it, yet it + came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of + Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with + us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, + once greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had + taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. "But I hope the + good man's in heaven, for all that," said my uncle. "Oh, yes," said my + aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, "Mr. A's in + heaven--that's sure." This was at the time an offence to my stern, + ascetic, hard views--how beautiful it is to me now! + +One who has been permitted to read the letters of Marian Evans written to +this aunt, has given the following account of them, which throws much light +on her religious attitude at this period: "Most of the epistles are +addressed to my 'dear uncle and aunt,' and all reveal George Eliot's great +talents. The style is elegant and graceful, and the letters abound in +beautiful metaphor; but their most striking characteristic is the religious +tinge that pervades them all. Nearly every line denotes that George Eliot +was an earnest biblical student, and that she was, especially in the years +1839 and 1840, very anxious about her spiritual condition. In one of these +letters, written from Griff to Elizabeth Evans, in 1839, she says she is +living in a dry and thirsty land, and that she is looking forward with +pleasure to a visit to Wirksworth, and likens her aunt's companionship and +counsel to a spring of pure water, acceptable to her as is the well dug for +the traveller in the desert. That the most affectionate and loving +relationship existed between the eminent author and Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, +is apparent from this correspondence. The inmost secrets of George Eliot's +heart are laid bare in these letters to the famous Methodist preacher, who +was at that time her dearest friend. She is ever asking for advice and +spiritual guidance, and confesses her faults with a candor that is rendered +additionally attractive by reason of the polished language in which it is +clothed. When quite a girl, George Eliot was known as pious and clever; and +in the letters she wrote in 1839, when she was twenty years old, the +cleverness has grown and expanded, although she is not so sure about her +piety. She says that 'unstable as water thou shalt not excel,' seems to be +a description of her character, instead of the progress from strength to +strength that should be experienced by those who wish to stand in the +presence of God. In another letter she admits that she cannot give a good +account of her spiritual state, says that she has been surrounded by +worldly persons, and that love of human praise is one of her great +stumbling-blocks. But in a letter written in 1840 the uncertainty has gone +from her mind, and she writes that she has resolved in the strength of the +Lord to serve him evermore. In a later communication, however, she does not +appear so confident, and admits that she is obliged to strive against the +ambition that fills her heart, and that her fondness of worldly praise is a +great bar and hindrance to spiritual advancement. Still she thinks it is no +use sitting inactive with folded hands; and believing that the love of God +is the only thing to give real satisfaction to human beings, she hopes, +with his help, to obtain it. One of the letters is chiefly devoted to the +concern felt by Marian Evans at Elizabeth Evans' illness; and another, +written at Foleshill, betrays some humor amid the trouble that afflicts her +about her own future. Their outward circumstances, she writes, are all she +can desire; but she is not so certain about her spiritual state, although +she feels that it is the grace of God alone that can give the greatest +satisfaction. Then she goes on to speak of the preacher at Foleshill, with +whom she is not greatly pleased: 'We get the truth, but it is not +recommended by the mode of its delivery,' is how she writes of this divine; +yet she is charitable withal, and removes the sting by adding that more +good may sometimes be obtained from humble instruments than from the +highest privileges, and that she must examine her own heart rather than +speak unkindly of the preacher. Up to this period it is evident that Marian +Evans' views upon religion were orthodox, and that her life was passed in +ceaseless striving for the 'peace that passeth understanding;' but in 1843 +a letter was written to Elizabeth Evans by a relative in Griff, in which +Marian Evans is spoken of, and the change in her religious opinions +indicated. She writes that they are in great pain about Mary Ann; but the +last portion of the letter, dealing more fully with the subject, has +unfortunately got lost or destroyed. The close association of George Eliot +with Derbyshire, as well as her love for the quaint village of Wirksworth, +and its upright, honest, God-fearing people, breaks forth in more than one +of these communications." + +Partly as the result of her studies and partly as the result of contact +with other minds, Marian began to grow sceptical about the religious +beliefs she had entertained. This took place probably during her +twenty-third year, but the growth of the new ideas was slow at first. As +one of her friends has suggested, it was her eagerness for positive +knowledge which made her an unbeliever. She had no love of mere doubt, no +desire to disagree with accepted doctrines, but she was not content unless +she could get at the facts and reach what was just and reasonable. "It is +seldom," says this person, "that a mind of so much power is so free from +the impulse to dissent, and that not from too ready credulousness, but +rather because the consideration of doubtful points was habitually crowded +out, one may say, by the more ready and delighted acceptance of whatever +accredited facts and doctrines might be received unquestioningly. We can +imagine George Eliot in youth, burning to master all the wisdom and +learning of the world; we cannot imagine her failing to acquire any kind of +knowledge on the pretext that her teacher was in error about something else +than the matter in hand; and it is undoubtedly to this natural preference +for the positive side of things that we are indebted for the singular +breadth and completeness of her knowledge and culture. A mind like hers +must have preyed disastrously upon itself during the years of comparative +solitude in which she lived at Foleshill, had it not been for that +inexhaustible source of delight in every kind of intellectual acquisition. +Languages, music, literature, science and philosophy interested her alike; +it was early in this period that in the course of a walk with a friend she +paused and clasped her hands with a wild aspiration that she might live 'to +reconcile the philosophy of Locke and Kant!' Years afterward she remembered +the very turn of the road where she had spoken it." + +The spiritual struggles of Maggie Tulliver give a good picture of Marian +Evans' mental and spiritual experiences at this time. Her friends and +relatives were scandalized by her scepticism. Her father could not at all +sympathize with her changed religious attitude, and treated her harshly. +She refused to attend church, and this made the separation so wide that it +was proposed to break up the home. By the advice of friends she at last +consented to outwardly conform to her father's wishes, and a partial +reconciliation was effected. This alienation, however, had a profound +effect upon her mind. She slowly grew away from the intellectual basis +of her old beliefs, but, with Maggie, she found peace and strength in +self-renunciation, and in the cultivation of that inward trust which makes +the chief anchorage of strong natures. She bore this experience patiently, +and without any diminution of her affection; but she also found various +friends among the more cultivated people of Coventry, who could sympathize +with her in her studies and with her radical views in religion. These +persons gave her the encouragement she needed, the contact with other and +more matured minds which was so necessary to her mental development, and +that social contact with life which was so conducive to her health of mind. +In one family especially, that of Mr. Charles Bray, did she find the true, +and cordial, and appreciative friendship she desired. These friends +softened the growing discord with her own family, and gave her that devoted +regard and aid that would be of most service to her. "In Mr. Bray's +family," we are told by one who has written of this trying period of her +career, "she found sympathy with her ardent love of knowledge and with the +more enlightened views that had begun to supplant those under which (as she +described it) her spirit had been grievously burdened. Emerson, Froude, +George Combe, Robert Mackay, and many other men of mark, were at various +times guests at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill while Miss Evans was there +either as inmate or occasional visitor; and many a time might have been +seen, pacing up and down the lawn or grouped under an old acacia, men of +thought and research, discussing all things in heaven and earth, and +listening with marked attention when one gentle woman's voice was heard to +utter what they were quite sure had been well matured before the lips +opened. Few, if any, could feel themselves her superior in general +intelligence; and it was amusing one day to see the amazement of a certain +doctor, who, venturing on a quotation from Epictetus to an unassuming young +lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his Greek by his feminine +auditor. One rare characteristic belonged to her which gave a peculiar +charm to her conversation. She had no petty egotism, no spirit of +contradiction; she never talked for effect. A happy thought well expressed +filled her with delight; in a moment she would seize the thought and +improve upon it--so that common people began to feel themselves wise in her +presence; and perhaps years after she would remind them, to their pride and +surprise, of the good things they had said." + +She was an ardent reader of Emerson and other thinkers of his cast of +thought, and some traces of this early sympathy are to be seen in her +books. On his second visit to England Emerson spent a day or two at the +house of Charles Bray, with whose writings he had previously become +acquainted. Emerson was much impressed with the personality of Marian +Evans, and more than once said to Bray, "That young lady has a calm, +serious soul." When Emerson asked her somewhat suddenly, "What one book do +you like best?" she at once replied, "Rousseau's _Confessions_." She +cherished this acquaintance with Emerson, and held him in grateful +remembrance through life. + +The painful experiences of this period are undoubtedly reflected in another +of her autobiographic poems, that entitled "Self and Life." She speaks of +the profound influence the past had over her mind, and that her hands and +feet were still tiny when she began to know the historic thrill of contact +with other ages. She also makes Life say to Self, in regard to her pain and +sorrow: + + But all thy anguish and thy discontent + Was growth of mine, the elemental strife + Towards feeling manifold with vision blent + To wider thought: I was no vulgar life + That like the water-mirrored ape, + Not discerns the thing it sees, + Nor knows its own in others' shape, + Railing, scorning, at its ease. + Half man's truth must hidden lie + If unlit by sorrow's eye. + I by sorrow wrought in thee + Willing pain of ministry. + +The intellectual surroundings of Marian Evans at this time gave shape to +her whole after-life. There were now laid the foundations of her mode of +thinking, and her philosophic theories began to be formed. It was in the +home of one of her friends she learned to think for herself, and it was +there her positivist doctrines first appeared. Charles Bray was affected by +the transcendental movement, and was an ardent admirer of Newman, Emerson +and others among its leaders. This interest prepared him, as it has so many +other minds, for the acceptance of those speculative views which were built +up on the foundation of science when the transcendental movement began to +wane. The transcendental doctrines of unity, the oneness of mind and +matter, the evolution of all forms of life and being from the lowest, the +universal dominion of law and necessity, and the profound significance of +nature in its influence on man, as they were developed by Goethe, +Schelling, Carlyle and Emerson, gave direction to a new order of +speculation, which had its foundations in modern science. + +Bray was an ardent phrenologist, and in 1832 published a work on _The +Education of the Feelings_, based on phrenological principles. In 1841 +appeared his main work, _The Philosophy of Necessity_; this was followed +several years later by a somewhat similar work, _On Force, its Mental and +Moral Correlates_. His philosophy was summarized in a volume published in +1871, which was entitled _A Manual of Anthropology_. He also wrote +pamphlets on "Illusion and Delusion," "The Reign of Law," "Toleration," and +"Christianity." In his work on necessity he promulgated very many of those +ideas which have formed so prominent a part of the philosophy of George +Eliot. The dominion of law, the reign of necessity, experience as the +foundation of knowledge, humanity as an organism that develops a larger +life for man by the aid of experience and tradition,--these are among the +doctrines of the book. There is every reason for believing that in the +teachings of Charles Bray, Marian Evans found many of the main elements of +her philosophy, and with his aid her opinions were largely shaped. + +Mrs. Bray was also a woman of large intelligence, and of a mind freely +open to new theories. She wrote a _Physiology for Schools_ and a +school-book on _Duties to Animals_, which have been well received by the +public and used as text books in the schools of the Midland counties. In +1882 she published a little book on the _Elements of Morality_, consisting +of a series of easy lessons for Unitarian Sunday schools and for home +teaching. To the Brays, Marian Evans owed much in the way of sympathy, +culture and direct influence. Perhaps more than any other persons they gave +tone and direction to her mind. One who knew them has said, "Besides being +a practical as well as theoretical philanthropist, Mr. Bray was also a +courageous impugner of the dogmas which form the basis of the popular +theology. Mrs. Bray shared in this general largeness of thought, while +perhaps more in sympathy with the fairer aspects of Christianity." + +A brother and a sister of Mrs. Bray's, Charles C. Hennell and Sara S. +Hennell, also had a large influence on Marian Evans during this period. It +was Charles Hennell who induced her to translate Strauss, and it was Sara +Hennell to whom she wrote about her aunt after the publication of _Adam +Bede_. Hennell's _Inquiry concerning the origin of Christianity_ was +published in 1838, and appeared in a second edition in 1841. In the latter +year the book was read by Marian Evans, after a faithful perusal of the +Bible as a preparation for it, and quickly re-read, and with great interest +and delight. She then pronounced it "the most interesting book she had ever +read," dating from it a new birth to her mind. The book was translated into +German, Strauss writing a preface for it, and that interpreter of +Christianity praised it highly. Hennell rejected all supernaturalism and +the miraculous, regarding Christianity as a slow and natural development +out of Judaism, aided by Platonism and other outside influences. He finds +the sources of Jesus' teachings in the Jewish tendencies of the time, while +the cause of the supremacy of the man Jesus was laid in a long course of +events which had swelled to a crisis at the time of his appearance, and +bore him aloft to a height whence his personal qualities told with a power +derived from the accumulated force of many generations. Jesus was an +enthusiast who believed himself the predicted king of the Jews, and he was +a revolutionist expecting to establish an earthly kingdom for the supremacy +of Judaism. Jesus was largely influenced by the Essenes, but he rejected +their austerity. Hennell found a mixture of truth and error in the Gospels, +and believed that many mythical elements entered into the accounts given of +Jesus. A thorough rationalist, he claimed to accept the spiritual essence +of Christianity, and to value highly the moral teachings of Jesus. In a +later work on _Christian Theism_ he finds an argument for belief in God +mainly in nature. In his conclusions he is not far from F.W. Newman and +Theodore Parker; but he does not give the credit to intuition and the +religious faculty they do, though he is an earnest believer in God, and +inclined to accept Christianity as the highest expression of religion. + +Sara S. Hennell early published _An Essay on the Skeptical Tendency of +Butler's Analogy_, and a Baillie prize essay on _Christianity and +Infidelity: An Exposition of the Arguments on Both Sides_. A work of much +merit and thought appeared from her pen in 1860, under the title of +_Thoughts in Aid of Faith_. In this work she follows her brother, Strauss, +Feuerbach and Spencer in an interpretation of religion, which constantly +recalls the theories of George Eliot. In a series of more recent books she +has continued the same line of thought. The early and intimate friendship +of Marian Evans and Miss Hennell may explain this similarity of opinion, +and the beliefs they held in common were doubtless developed to a greater +or less extent even when the former lived in Coventry. + +Another friend of this period was a German scholar by the name of Brabant, +resident in England, a friend of Strauss, Paulus, Coleridge and Grote. +Grote described him as "a vigorous self-thinking intellect." A daughter of +Dr. Brabant first undertook the translation of Strauss, and she it was who +married Charles Hennell. After this marriage Miss Evans offered to take to +Dr. Brabant the place of his daughter, and did act as his housekeeper for +some months. + +Marian Evans was surrounded at the most impressible period of her life by +this group of intellectual, free-thinking people, who seem to have fully +indoctrinated her with their own opinions. None of them had rejected +Christianity or theism, but they were rationalists in spirit, and eager +students of philosophy and science. Here were laid the foundations of the +doctrines she afterwards held so strongly, and even during this period very +many of the theories presented in her books were fully developed. Here her +mind was thoroughly prepared for the teachings of Comte, Spencer and Lewes; +and her early instructors had gone so far in their lessons that the later +teachers had little to do more than to give system to her thoughts. + +It was essential to George Eliot's novel-writing that she was educated +amidst religious influences, and that she earnestly accepted the religious +teaching of her childhood. Not less important was her humble home and her +association with the common life of the people. Through all her work these +influences appear, coloring her thought, shaping her views of life, and +increasing her sympathies and affections. Her tender, enthusiastic love of +humble life never lost any of its quickening power. The faith of childhood +was lost, but its memory was left in a warm appreciation of all phases of +religious life and a heartfelt sympathy with all the sorrows and +aspirations of men. + +Her father's health becoming very poor, Marian spent the next two or three +years in the care of him. She read to him most of Scott's novels, devoting +several hours each day to this task. During this period she made a visit to +the Isle of Wight, and there read the novels of Richardson. Her father died +in 1849, and she was very much affected by this event. She grieved for him +overmuch, and could find no consolation. Her friends, the Brays, to divert +and relieve her mind, invited her to take a continental tour with them. +They travelled extensively in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Her +grief, however, was so excessive as to receive little relief, and her +friends began to fear the results. On their return to England they left her +at Geneva, where she remained for nearly a year. After some months in a +boarding-house near Geneva she became an inmate of the family of M. +d'Albert Durade, a Swiss water-color painter of some reputation, who +afterwards became the translator of her works into French. She devoted the +winter of 1849-50 to the study of French and its literature, to mathematics +and to reading. Her teacher in mathematics soon told her that she was able +to proceed without his aid. She read Rousseau and studied the French +socialists. M. Durade painted her portrait, making a remarkable picture. +The softness of the clear blue eyes, in which is expressed a profound depth +of thought, is one of its characteristics. M. Durade accompanied her to +England in the spring of 1850, and she went to live with her brother, where +she remained for a few months. The old family differences about religion +had alienated the brother and sister so far intellectually that she +accepted an invitation from the Brays to find a home with them. Her sadness +and grief continued, and her health was not good. Her fits of nervousness +and of tears were frequent, but her studies continued to occupy her mind. +She delighted to converse with Mr. Bray, and other persons of earnest +thought had their influence on her mind. Among these was George Dawson, the +famous preacher who cut himself loose from all denominations. + + + + +II. + + +TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR. + +It was while living at Foleshill, and amidst the intellectual influences of +awakening radicalism, that Marian Evans undertook her first literary labor. +This was the translation of the _Leben Jesu_ of David Strauss. A book so +daring in its interpretations of the origin of Christianity excited much +attention, and especially among those who had broken away from the old +religious beliefs. The work of translation was at first undertaken by Miss +Brabant, who soon married Charles Hennell. Then the task was taken up by +Marian Evans, who gave three years to it, renewing her Hebrew studies for +the purpose, and the book was published in 1846. The work was thoroughly +done, so much so that Strauss complimented the translator on its accuracy +and correctness of spirit. Concerning the translation the _Westminster +Review_ had this word of praise to offer: "We can testify that the +translator has achieved a very tough work with remarkable spirit and +fidelity. The author, though indeed a good writer, could hardly have spoken +better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently +fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both +languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological +criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another +critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the +German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the +English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the +original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought +and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the +present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of +preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, +combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which impart to +the volumes before us the air and the spirit of an original. A modest and +kindly care for his reader's convenience has induced the translator often +to supply the rendering into English of a Greek quotation when there was no +corresponding rendering into German in the original. Indeed, Strauss may +well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for this English +edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is _et +accurata et perspicua_." + +The book had a successful sale, but Marian Evans received only twenty +pounds, and twenty-five copies of the book, for her share of the +translation. A little later she translated Feuerbach's _Essence of +Christianity_, receiving fifty pounds for this labor. It was published in +1854, but the sale was small, and it proved a heavy loss to the publisher. +While translating Strauss she aided a friend interested in philosophical +studies (probably Charles Bray) by the translation, for his reading, of the +_De Deo_ of Spinoza. Some years later she completed a translation of the +more famous _Ethica_ of the same thinker. It was not published, probably +because there was at that time so little interest in Spinoza. + +The execution of such work as this, and all of it done in the most +creditable and accurate manner, indicates the thoroughness of Marian Evans' +scholarship. Though she doubtless was somewhat inclined to accept the +opinions she thus helped to diffuse, yet Miss Simcox tells us that "the +translation of Strauss and the translation of Spinoza were undertaken, not +by her own choice but at the call of friendship; in the first place to +complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the second to +make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly phrenologist +who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded translation as a work +that should be undertaken as a duty, to make accessible any book that +required to be read; and though undoubtedly she was satisfied that the +_Leben Jesu_ required to be read in England, it would be difficult to +imagine a temper more naturally antipathetic to her than that of its +author; and critics who talk about the 'Strauss and Feuerbach period' +should be careful to explain that the phrase covers no implication that +she was at anytime an admirer or a disciple of Strauss. There are extremes +not only too remote but too disparate to be included in the same life." + +Marian Evans did not become an admirer or disciple of Strauss, probably +because she preferred Charles Hennell's interpretation of Christianity, It +is certain, however, that she was greatly affected by Feuerbach, and that +his influence was ever after strongly marked in her thinking. The teachings +of Charles Bray and Charles Hennell had prepared her for the reception of +those of Feuerbach, and he in turn made her mind responsive to the more +systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to +regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had +shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made +ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of +the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. +According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images +corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the +outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these +subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary +product of its own activity. The mind necessarily believes in God, which is +man's way of conceiving his species and realizing to himself the perfect +type of his own nature. God does not exist, and yet he is a true picture of +man's soul, a necessary product of his feeling and consciousness. All +religious ideas are true subjectively, and Christianity especially +corresponds to the inward wants and aspirations of the soul. To Feuerbach +it is true as a poetic interpretation of feeling and sentiment, and to him +it gives the noblest and truest conception of what the soul needs for its +inward satisfaction. + +The influence of Feuerbach is to be seen in the profound interest which +Marian Evans ever took in the subject of religion. That influence alone +explains how it was possible for one who did not accept any religious +doctrines as true, who did not believe in God or immortality, and who +rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as +she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy +with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times +she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a +just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she +learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to +man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like +so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping +scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, +arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration, +revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed +most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by +its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation. Religion +was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger +realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of +feeling. To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to +rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true +interpretation of the soul's wants, at the same time that she totally +rejected it as fact and dogma. + +In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist +him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, Chapman had been the +publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the +way to the continent the year before. He was the publisher of a large +number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and +radical sentiment of the time. The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker, +Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note, +appeared on his list. The _Westminster Review_ was devoted to scientific +and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, +Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of +contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a +wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able +departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries. +Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in +writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide +reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the acquaintance of +a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women. Under this +influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of +the ablest among them. Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was +"distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which +have since made her known to all the world." We are told by another that +"her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and +the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression +on all who wore thrown into her society." + +Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of +his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors. She was +extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave +herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A +fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the _Review_ was held in Mr. +Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the +scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time. Harriet +Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the +London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke. She visited George Combe and +his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return. + +While assisting Mr. Chapman, Marian Evans contributed only one article, +beyond her editorial work, to the pages of the _Westminster Review_. The +work she did, almost wholly that of digesting and reviewing new books, +could have been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except +in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally, +however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of +current English literature for January, 1852. she had Carlyle's _Life of +Sterling_ in hand. Her notice of the book is highly appreciative of +Carlyle's genius, and full of cordial praise. This passage gives her idea +of a true biography: + + We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently + to the task of the biographer,--that when some great or good personage + dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of + letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds + of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the + inclination, to read, we could have a real "Life," setting forth + briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims and + achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has + for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) + the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on + the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the + conditions required for the perfection of life writing,--personal + intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the + depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes + characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect,--are + seldom found in combination. _The Life of Sterling_ is an instance of + this rare conjunction. Its comparatively tame scenes and incidents + gather picturesqueness and interest under the rich lights of Carlyle's + mind. We are told neither too little nor too much; the facts noted, the + letters selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest + conception of what Sterling was and what he did; and though the book + speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind of + scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose. + +The earliest of the regular articles, and the only one printed while she +was the associate editor of the _Review_, is on "The Lady Novelists." It +appeared in the number for July, 1852, and contained a striking discussion +of woman's place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that +field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of +the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her +treatment of Jane Austen and George Sand, praising as well as criticising +with insight and fine discrimination. At the outset she defines literature +as an expression of the emotions, and gives a remarkably clear and original +description of its functions. + +Her editorial connection with the _Westminster Review_ continued for about +two years, until the end of 1853. For the next three years she was a +contributor to its pages, where there appeared "Woman in France: Madame de +Sablé," in October, 1854; "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," October, +1855; "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," January, 1856; "The Natural History of +German Life," July, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856; +and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two +other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little +value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its +Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these +articles are still as great as when they were first published. This will +justify the publication here of numerous extracts from their most salient +and important paragraphs. As indicating her literary judgment, and her +capacity for incisive characterization and clear, trenchant criticism, +reference may be made to the essay on Heine, which is one of the finest +pieces of critical writing the century has produced. + + Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age; no echo, but a + real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth + studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us + in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic + wand of his fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art--who + sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous + rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his + mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose + literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the + possibilities of German prose; and--in spite of all charges against + him, true as well as false--a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and + brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering + man, who, with all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to + endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an + intellectual interest. It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight + in the other scale--that Heine's magnificent powers have often served + only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so + that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but + have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the + precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and + personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly + been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness, + all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings + of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of + exquisite poetry, of wit, humor and just thought. It is apparently too + often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions + committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the + advantage of being himself a man of _no_ genius, so that those + transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; _he_, forsooth, never + lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse + allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the + temptation that lies in transcendent power.... + + In Heine's hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, + becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, + brilliant; it is German in an _allotropic_ condition. No dreary, + labyrinthine sentences in which you find "no end in wandering mazes + lost;" no chains of adjectives in linked harshness long drawn out; no + digressions thrown in as parentheses; but crystalline definiteness and + clearness, fine and varied rhythm, and all that delicate precision, + all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest + order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty + in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was + pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant + does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in + prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm + development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign + to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to + the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects. + Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates + between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and + daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness, + tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet. + +The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and +humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds +is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only +nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of +European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found +both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany, +having a flavor and a spirit quite his own. + +Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological +character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling +with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her +entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes +unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The +terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr. +Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends +each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds +in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a +perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection +of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their +minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that +Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or +1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare +the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen +psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as +accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the +circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education, +the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they +lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with +those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by +whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places +of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was +because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before +it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them. +In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no +deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism. +She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their +purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so +unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into +character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere. + + Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is + not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity--no + indication of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual + communion with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of + justification, and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an + experience. He insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith, + as labors to be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely represents + them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with divine + love. He is at home in the external, the polemical, the historical, the + circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and practical. The + great majority of his published sermons are occupied with argument or + philippic against Romanists and unbelievers, with vindications of the + Bible, with the political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism + of public events; and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual and + practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of fringe in a + hurried sentence or two at the end. He revels in the demonstration that + the Pope is the Man of Sin; he is copious on the downfall of the + Ottoman empire; he appears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story + which tends to show how he abashed an "infidel;" it is a favorite + exercise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the earth + is to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce + being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, Puseyites + and infidels are given over to gnashing of teeth. But of really + spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a + manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of sympathy with that + yearning over the lost and erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, + and prompted the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them," of the gentler + fruits of the Spirit, and the peace of God which passeth + understanding--of all this, we find little trace in Dr. Cumming's + discourses. + +Even more severe is her account of the poet Young. She speaks of him as "a +remarkable individual of the species _divine_." This is her account of his +life: + + He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his + metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if + you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a + psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last + Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic + applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After + spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a + hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a + parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with + fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his + imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general + mendicancy business to a particular branch; in other words, he has + determined on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking + orders," with the prospect of a good living and an advantageous + matrimonial connection. And no man can be better fitted for an + Established Church. He personifies completely her nice balance of + temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the + momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for + immortal life and for "livings;" he has a vivid attachment to patrons + in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with + something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly + things; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his + meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are + not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man + believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire + for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never + forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the + King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar + than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among + the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, + and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it + were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers it would be wise + and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven + apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. + Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is + to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and + frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and + skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and + exalting the next; and by this double process you get the + Christian--"the highest style of man." With all this, our new-made + divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the + worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of + Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes and + objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, + in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and + jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive; for this divine is Edward + Young, the future author of _Night Thoughts_. + +She says, "One of the most striking characteristics of Young is his +_radical insincerity as a poetic artist_." + + Indeed, we remember no mind in poetic literature that seems to have + absorbed less of the beauty and the healthy breath of the common + landscape than Young's. His images, often grand and finely presented, + lie almost entirely within that circle of observation which would be + familiar to a man who lived in town, hung about the theatres, read the + newspaper, and went home often by moon and star light. There is no + natural object nearer than the moon that seems to have any strong + attraction for him, and even to the moon he chiefly appeals for + patronage, and "pays his court" to her.... He describes nothing so well + as a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail over nothing more + familiar than the day of judgment and an imaginary journey among the + stars.... The adherence to abstractions, or to the personification of + abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the _want of genuine + emotion_. He sees Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists + and storms of earth: he sees Religion coming down from the skies, with + this world in her left hand and the other world in her right; but we + never find him dwelling on virtue or religion as it really exists--in + the emotions of a man dressed in an ordinary coat, and seated by his + fireside of an evening, with his hand resting on the head of his little + daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish ends, in the internal + triumph of justice and pity over personal resentment, in all the + sublime self-renunciation and sweet charities which are found in the + details of ordinary life. + +In these essays there are various indications of her religious opinions, +and those of a decided character. In that on Dr. Cumming, she has this word +to say of the rationalistic conception of the Bible: + + He seems to be ignorant, or he chooses to ignore the fact, that there + is a large body of eminently instructed and earnest men who regard the + Hebrew and Christian scriptures as a series of historical documents, to + be dealt with according to the rules of historical criticism, and that + an equally large number of men, who are not historical critics, find + the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the scriptures, opposed to + their profoundest moral convictions. + +This statement is suggestive of her position on religious subjects: + + The best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system, + believe that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the saving but + the educating of men's souls, the creating within them of holy + dispositions, the subduing of egoistical pretensions, and the perpetual + enhancing of the desire that the will of God--a will synonymous with + goodness and truth--may be done on earth. But what relation to all this + has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of the Christian in + the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show, of which Satan is + the wild beast in the shape of a great red dragon, and two thirds of + mankind the victims--the whole provided and got up by God for the + edification of the saints? + +She calls Dr. Cumming's teachings "the natural crop of a human mind where +the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic beliefs." +Then she deals with that belief in this trenchant fashion: + + Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids the complete + prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as religious systems have + been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and + though dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth: + build walls around the living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar + have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the + sap. But next to the hatred of the enemies of God which is the + principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more + obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a + reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the + sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in + proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into activity by + their proper objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly + impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as it is compassion that + speaks through the eyes when we soothe, and moves the arm when we + succor, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the soothing or the succor be + given because another being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to + be one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of + self-interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in producing an + action, but they presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and + conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the actions of accessory + motives will be excluded. + +In writing of Young she says,-- + + The God of the _Night Thoughts_ is simply Young himself "writ large"--a + didactic poet, who "lectures" mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of + mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven, and + expects the tribute of inexhaustible applause. Young has no conception + of religion as anything else than egoism turned heavenward; and he does + not merely imply this, he insists on it. + +She contrasts Young with Cowper, preferring the latter because he dwells +more on the things of a common and simple life. + + In Young we have the type of that deficient human sympathy, that + impiety toward the present and the visible, which flies for its + motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague and + unknown: in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which + cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its + reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. + +This warm human sympathy is all she cares for in religion. + + See how a lovely, sympathetic nature manifests itself in spite of creed + and circumstance! Where is the poem that surpasses the _Task_ in the + genuine love it breathes, at once toward inanimate and animate + existence--in truthfulness of perception and sincerity of + presentation--in the calm gladness that springs from a delight in + objects for their own sake, without self-reference--in divine sympathy + with the lowliest pleasures, with the most shortlived capacity for + pain? Here is no railing at the earth's "melancholy map," but the + happiest lingering over her simplest scenes with all the fond + minuteness that belongs to love; no pompous rhetoric about the + inferiority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their behalf against + man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, and a sense of enlarged happiness + from their companionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about human misery + and human virtue, but that close and vivid presentation of particular + deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How + Cowper's exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of morning sunlight + on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every detail and investing + every detail with beauty! No object is too small to prompt his song-- + not the sooty film on the bars, or the spoutless teapot holding a bit + of mignonette that serves to cheer the dingy town lodging with a "hint + that nature lives;" and yet his song is never trivial, for he is alive + to small objects, not because his mind is narrow, but because his + glance is clear and his heart is large. + +Her contributions to the _Westminster Review_ indicate that Marian Evans +had read much and well, and that she was possessed of a thoroughly +cultivated mind and much learning. To their preparation she gave herself +diligently, writing slowly, after a careful study of her subject and much +thought devoted to a faithful thinking out of all its parts. It has been +many times suggested that these articles gave indication only of learning +and studious effort. They certainly give strong hint of these, but also of +much more. That on human life shows how much she had thought, and how +thoroughly and philosophically, on one of the largest problems; while the +one on Heine indicates her penetrating literary judgment and her capacity +for analysis and interpretation. These essays are not mere compilations, +mere digests of learned information; they are studies of large subjects +done in a large and inspiring manner. Her essays on the poet Young and Dr. +Cumming, and the two on lady novelists, as well as that on Heine, show many +indications of that subtle power and that true genius which were displayed +in her later work. There was genius displayed in these articles, without +doubt, and genius of a high order. It was genius not as yet aware of +itself, and not yet at the height of its power and capable of its truest +expression, but genius nevertheless. Many of the most striking +characteristics of her novel-writing were shown in these essays. Here was +the same love of common human life; the same interest in its humbler forms +and expressions; the like penetrating analysis and subtle portrayal of +character; a psychological method of the same probing and comprehensive +nature. Her main philosophical ideas were indicated here, though not given +that clear and incisive expression they afterwards received. When she wrote +of the natural history of German life she indicated in the very title of +her essay one of her main theories, and her conception of man as a social +being was brought out in it. These essays fully indicate that her opinions +were already formed, that the leading ideas she was to give expression to +in her novels had been arrived at by diligent study and thought, and that +she had equipped herself with ample reasons for the acceptance of the +opinions she held. Their chief defect is in their occasional arrogance of +expression, as if the writer had not yet wholly escaped the superior airs +of the young woman elated with the greatness of her knowledge, and a +certain rudeness and vehemence of statement not seen later. It is a defect +that is not very prominent, but one that is apparent enough to mar some of +the best of these pages. It was one she never wholly outgrew, though in her +novels her large information was usually so managed and subordinated as to +give little annoyance to the intelligent reader. + +It must be quite evident to any reader of her _Westminster Review_ +contributions, that Marian Evans would never have attained to any such high +literary eminence as an essayist as that which she has secured as a +novelist. Readable as are her essays,--and the five just named are +certainly worthy of a place in her complete works,--yet they are not of the +highest order. She could attain the highest range of her power only when +something far more subtile and intrinsic was concerned. That this is true +may be seen in these essays; for even here she writes the best only when +she has human motives, feelings and aspirations to weigh and explain. That +she could dissect and explain the inner man they made apparent enough; but +her genius demanded also the opportunity to create, to build up a life of +high beauty and purpose from materials of its own construction. Her +_Review_ articles gave her a high place in the eyes of her friends, and +their chief value seems to have been, that they caused these friends to see +that she could do other and better work, and led them to induce her to +apply her genius in a direction more congenial to its capacity. + + + + +III. + + +MARRIAGE. + +In 1853 Marian Evans became the wife of George Henry Lewes. He had married +at an early ago a woman possessed of many charms of person. They went to +live in a large house at Kensington with five other young couples, keeping +house on a co-operative arrangement, with many attractions of social +entertainment therewith. One result was the desertion of her home by Mrs. +Lewes in connection with one of the men into whose company she was +constantly thrown by this manner of life. She soon repented, and Lewes +forgave her, receiving her back to his home. A second time, however, she +left him. His having condoned her fault made it impossible for him to +secure a divorce according to the laws of England at that time. He seems to +have done what he could to retain her faithful devotion to her marriage +relations, so long as that seemed possible. + +When Lewes and Marian Evans met, on her going to live in London, and after +his wife had deserted him, there sprang up a strong attachment between +them, As they could not be legally married, she agreed to live with him +without that formality. + +It is to be said of this affair that George Eliot was very far from looking +at such a problem as Goethe or, George Sand would have looked at it, from +the position of personal inclination. Yet we are told by Miss Blind that +she early entertained liberal views in regard to divorce, believing that +greater freedom in this respect is desirable. There could have been no +passionate individualistic defiance of law in her case, however. No one has +insisted more strongly than she on the importance and the sanctity of the +social regulations in regard to the union of the sexes. That her marriage +was a true one in all but the legal form, that she was faithful to its +every social obligation, has been abundantly shown. She was a most faithful +wife to Lewes, and the devoted mother of his three children by the previous +marriage, while she found in him that strong, self-reliant helpmate she +needed. + +Her marriage under these circumstances required no little individualism of +purpose, and some defiance of social obligations. Her intimate friends were +unable to comprehend her conduct, and she was alienated from most of them. +Especially her friends in Coventry were annoyed at such a marriage, and +were not reconciled with her for a long time, and not until they saw that +she had acted with a conscientious purpose. She was excluded from society +by this act, and her marriage was interpreted as a gross violation of +social morality. To a sensitive nature, as hers assuredly was, and to one +who so much valued the confidence of her friends as she did, such exclusion +must have been a serious cross. She freely elected her own course in life, +however, and she never seems to have complained at the results it brought +her. That it saddened her mind seems probable, but there is no outward +evidence that she accepted her lot in a bitter or complaining spirit. No +one could have written of love and marriage in so high and pure a spirit as +everywhere appears in her books with whom passion was in any degree a +controlling influence. In _Adam Bede_ her own conception of wedded love is +expressed out of the innermost convictions and impulses of her own heart, +when she exclaims,-- + + What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they + are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on + each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be + one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the + last parting. + +In _Felix Holt_ there is a passage on this subject which must have come +directly from her own experience, and it gives us a true insight into the +spirit in which she accepted the distrust of friends and the coldness of +the world which her marriage brought her. + + A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, + and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not + to be had when and how she will: to know that high initiation, she must + often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and + watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes all things easy; + it makes us choose what is difficult. + +Throughout her novels she exalts marriage, never casts any slur upon it, +treats it as one of the most sacred of all human relations. She makes it +appear as a sacrament, not of the Church, but of the sublime fellowship of +humanity. It is pure, holy, a binding tie, a sacred obligation, as it +appears in her books. When Romola is leaving Florence and her husband, her +love dead and all that made her life seem worthy gone with it, she meets +Savonarola, who bids her return to her home and its duties. What the great +prophet-priest says on this occasion we have every reason to believe +expressed the true sentiments of George Eliot herself. He proclaims, what +she doubtless thoroughly believed, that marriage is something far more than +mere affection, more than love; that its obligation holds when all love is +gone; that its obligation is so sacred and binding as to call for the +fullest measure of renunciation and personal humiliation. As throwing light +on George Eliot's manner of looking at this subject, the whole chapter +which describes the meeting of Romola and Savonarola deserves to be read. +That portion of it in which Savonarola gives his views of marriage may here +be reproduced, not as giving the doctrine of the Church, but as presenting +the positivist conception of marriage as interpreted by George Eliot. + + His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life, which + made it seem impossible toiler that she could go on her way as if she + had not heard it; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she must + take, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. And the instinctive + shrinking from a return to her husband brought doubts. She turned away + her eyes from Fra Girolamo, and stood for a minute or two with her + hands hanging clasped before her, like a statue. At last she spoke, as + if the words were being wrung from her, still looking on the ground. + + "My husband--he is not--my love is gone!" + + "My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Marriage is not + carnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads you + to! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all the + obligations of your place and name. That would not have been if you had + learned that it is a sacramental vow, from which none but God can + release you. My daughter, your life is not as a grain of sand, to be + blown by the winds; it is as flesh and blood, that dies if it be + sundered. Your husband is not a malefactor?" + + Romola flushed and started. "Heaven forbid! No; I accuse him of + nothing." + + "I did not suppose he was a malefactor. I meant that if he were a + malefactor your place would be in the prison beside him. My daughter, + if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You + may say, 'I will forsake my husband,' but you cannot cease to be a + wife." + + "Yet if--oh, how could I bear--" Romola had involuntarily begun to say + something which she sought to banish from her mind again. + + "Make your marriage sorrows an offering, too, my daughter: an offering + to the great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease. + The end is sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is + beginning, and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our + blessedness to die for it: to die daily by the crucifixion of our + selfish will--to die at last by laying our bodies on the altar. My + daughter, you are a child of Florence; fulfil the duties of that great + inheritance. Live for Florence--for your own people, whom God is + preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron + is sharp--I know, I know--it rends the tender flesh. The draught is + bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup--there is the + vision which makes all life below it dross forever. Come, my daughter, + come back to your place!" [Footnote: Chapter XL.] + +Again, when Dorothea goes to see Rosamond to intercede in Dr. Lydgate's +behalf with his wife, we have an expression of the sacredness of marriage, +and the renunciation it demands of all that is opposed to its trust and +helpfulness. Dorothea says,-- + + "Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful + in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved some one else better + than--than those we were married to, it would be of no use"--poor + Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language + brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or + getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very + dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us + like a murder--and everything else is gone. And then our husband--if he + loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in + his life--" + +If Marian Evans rejected the sanctions which society has imposed on the +love of man and woman in the legal forms of marriage, it was not in a +wilful and passionate spirit. There are reasons for believing that she was +somewhat touched in her youth with the individualistic theories of the +time, which made so many men and women of genius reject the restraints +imposed by society, as in the case of Goethe, Heine, George Sand, Shelley +and many another; yet she does not appear to have been to more than a very +limited extent influenced by such considerations in regard to her own +marriage. The matter for surprise is, that one who regarded all human +traditions, ceremonies and social obligations as sacred, should have +consented to act in so individualistic a manner. She makes Rufus Lyon +say--and it is her own opinion--that "the right to rebellion is the right +to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness." Her +marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. +She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to +this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and +personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she +was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be +seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the _Westminster +Review_, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the +tone of his books was not "immaculate," and that it was "strangely at +variance, with that sound and lofty morality which ought to form the basis +of every education." She also speaks of the philosophy of that day as "the +delusive though plausible theory that no license of tone, or warmth of +coloring, could injure any really healthy and high-toned mind." In the +article on "Woman in France," she touches on similar theories. As this +article was written just at the time of her marriage, one passage in it may +have a personal interest, and shows her conception of a marriage such as +her own, based on intellectual interest rather than on passionate love. She +is speaking of + + the laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage tie. + Heaven forbid [she adds] that we should enter on a defence of French + morals, most of all in relation to marriage! But it is undeniable that + unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, grounded only on + inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more + intelligent sympathy with men, and to heighten and complicate their + share in the political drama. The quiescence and security of the + conjugal relation are, doubtless, favorable to the manifestation of the + highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard + of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the + faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object--to convert + indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness + into perspicuity. + +Her conception of marriage may have been affected by that presented by +Feuerbach in his _Essence of Christianity_. In words translated into +English by herself, Feuerbach says, "that alone is a religious marriage +which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of +marriage--love." Again, he says that marriage is only sacred when it is an +inward attraction confirmed by social and personal obligations; "for a +marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the +voluntary, contented self-restriction of love--in short, a marriage which +is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing--is +not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage." As a moral +and social obligation, marriage is to be held sacred; its sacredness grows +out of its profound human elements of helpfulness, nurture and emotional +satisfaction, while its obligation rises from its primary social +functions. It does not consist in any legal form, but in compliance with +deep moral and social responsibilities. Some such conception of marriage +as this she seems to have accepted, which found its obligation in the +satisfaction it gives to the inner nature, and in the fulfilment of social +responsibilities. The influence of Compte may also have been felt in the +case of both Lewes and Marian Evans; they saw in the marriage form a +fulfilment of human, not of legal, requirements. + +While there is no doubt they would both gladly have accepted the legal +form had that been possible, yet they were sufficiently out of sympathy +with the conventionalities of society to cause them to disregard that form +when it could not be complied with. They regarded themselves, however, as +married, and bound by all the ties and requirements which marriage +imposes. They proclaimed themselves to their friends as husband and wife, +and they were so accepted by those who knew them. In her letters to +literary correspondents she always mentioned Lewes as "my husband." The +laws of most civilized nations recognize these very conditions, and +regard the acceptance of the marriage relation before the world as a +sufficient form. + +Those who have written of this marriage, bear testimony to its devotion +and beauty. The author of the account of her life and writings in the +_Westminster Review_, an early and intimate friend, says the "union was +from the first regarded by themselves as a true marriage, as an alliance +of a sacred kind, having a binding and permanent character. When the fact +of the union was first made known to a few intimate friends, it was +accompanied with the assurance that its permanence was already irrevocably +decreed. The marriage of true hearts for a quarter of a century has +demonstrated the sincerity of the intention. 'The social sanction,' said +Mr. Lewes once in our hearing, 'is always desirable.' There are cases in +which it is not always to be had. Such a ratification of the sacrament of +affection was regarded as a sufficient warrant, under the circumstances of +the case, for entrance on the most sacred engagement of life. There was +with her no misgiving, no hesitation, no looking back, no regret; but +always the unostentatious assertion of quiet, matronly dignity, the most +queenly expression and unconscious affirmation of the 'divine right' of +the wedded wife. We have heard her own oral testimony to the enduring +happiness of this union, and can, as privileged witnesses, corroborate it. +As a necessary element in this happiness she practically included the +enjoyment inseparable from the spontaneous reciprocation of home +affection, meeting with an almost maternal love the filial devotion of Mr. +Lewes's sons, proffering all tender service in illness, giving and +receiving all friendly confidence in her own hour of sorrowful +bereavement, and crowning with a final act of generous love and +forethought the acceptance of parental responsibilities in the +affectionate distribution of property, the visible result of years of the +intellectual toil whose invisible issues are endless." + +Their marriage helped both to a more perfect work and to a truer life. She +gave poise and purpose to the "versatile, high-strung, somewhat wayward +nature" of her husband, and she "restrained, raised, ennobled, and +purified" his life and thought. He stimulated and directed her genius life +into its true channel, cared for her business interests with untiring +faithfulness, made it possible for her to pursue her work without burdens +and distractions, and gave her the inspiration of a noble affection and a +cheerful home. Miss Edith Simcox speaks of "the perfect union between +these two," which, she says, "lent half its charm to all the worship paid +at the shrine of George Eliot." She herself, Miss Simcox proceeds to say, +"has spoken somewhere of the element of almost natural tenderness in a +man's protecting love: this patient, unwearying care for which no trifles +are too small, watched over her own life; he stood between her and the +world, her relieved her from all those minor cares which chafe and fret +the artist's soul; he wrote her letters; in a word, he so smoothed the +course of her outer life as to leave all her powers free to do what she +alone could do for the world and for the many who looked to her for help +and guidance. No doubt this devotion brought its own reward; but we are +exacting for our idols and do not care to have even a generous error to +condone, and therefore we are glad to know that, great as his reward was, +it was no greater than was merited by the most perfect love that ever +crowned a woman's life." Mr. Kegan Paul also writes of the mutual +helpfulness and harmony of purpose which grew out of this marriage. "Mr. +Lewes's character attained a stability and pose in which it had been +somewhat lacking, and the quiet of an orderly and beautiful home enabled +him to concentrate himself more and more on works demanding sustained +intellectual effort, while Mrs. Lewes's intensely feminine nature found +the strong man on whom to lean in the daily business of life, for which +she was physically and intellectually unfitted. Her own somewhat sombre +cast of thought was cheered, enlivened and diversified by the vivacity and +versatility which characterized Mr. Lewes, and made him seem less like an +Englishman than a very agreeable foreigner." + +This marriage presents one of the curious ethical problems of literature. +In this case approval and condemnation are alike difficult. Her own +teaching condemns it; her own life approves it. We could wish it had not +been, for the sake of what is purest and best; and yet it is not difficult +to see that its effects were in many ways beneficial to her. That it was +ethically wrong there is no doubt. That it was condemned by her own +teaching is so plain as to cause doubt about how she could herself approve +it. + +Lewes had a brilliant and versatile mind. He was not a profound thinker, +but he had keen literary tastes, a vigorous interest in science, and a +remarkable alertness of intellect. His gifts were varied rather than deep; +literary rather than philosophical. As a companion, he had a wonderful +charm and magnetism; he was a graceful talker, a marvellous story-teller, +and a wit seldom rivalled. His intimate friend, Anthony Trollope, says, +"There was never a man so pleasant as he with whom to sit and talk vague +literary gossip over a cup of coffee and a cigar." By the same friend we +are told that no man related a story as he did. "No one could say that he +was handsome. The long bushy hair, and the thin cheeks, and the heavy +mustache, joined as they were, alas! almost always to a look of sickness, +were not attributes of beauty. But there was a brilliance in his eye which +was not to be tamed by any sickness, by any suffering, which overcame all +other feeling on looking at him." + +George Henry Lewes was born in London, April 18, 1817. His grandfather was +a well-known comedian. His education was received in a very desultory +manner. He was at school for a time in Jersey, and also in Brittany, where +he acquired a thorough command of French. Later he attended a famous school +in Greenwich, kept by a Dr. Burney. After leaving school he went into a +notary's office, and then he became a clerk to a Russia merchant. His mind +was, however, attracted to scientific and philosophic studies, and he +betrayed little interest either in the law or in commercial pursuits. Then +he took up the study of medicine, giving thorough attention to anatomy and +physiology. It is said that his horror of the dissecting-room was so great +as to cause him to abandon the purpose to become a physician. All this time +his mind was steadily drawn to philosophy, and he gave as much time to it +as he could. The bent, of his mind was early developed, and in 1836, when +only nineteen, he had projected a treatise on the philosophy of mind, in +which he proposed to give a physiological interpretation to the doctrines +of Reid, Stewart and Brown. At the age of twenty he gave a course of +lectures on this subject; and to this line of thought he held ever after. +One of the influences which led to his departure from a strict +interpretation of the Scotch metaphysicians was the influence of Spinoza. +As indicating the eagerness with which he pursued his studies in all +directions, and the earnestness of his purpose at so early an age, his own +account of a club he attended at this time [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, +April 1,1866, introductory to the article on Spinoza.] may be mentioned. In +this account he describes a Jew by the name of Cohen, who first introduced +him to the study of Spinoza, and who has mistakenly been supposed to be the +original of Mordecai in _Daniel Deronda_. + +The sixth member of this club, who "studied anatomy and many other things, +with vast aspirations, and no very definite career before him," was Lewes +himself, in all probability. His eager desire for knowledge took him to +Germany in 1838, where he remained for two years in the same desultory +study of many subjects. He became thoroughly acquainted with the German +language and life, and gave much attention to German literature and +philosophy. On his return to England, Lewes entered upon his literary +career, which was remarkable for its versatility and productiveness. In +1841 he wrote "The Noble Heart," a three-act tragedy, published in 1852. +His studies of Spinoza found expression in one of the first essays on the +subject published in England. In 1843, he published in the _Westminster +Review_ his conclusions on that thinker. His essay was reprinted in a +separate form, attracting much attention, and in 1846 was incorporated into +a larger work, the result of his studies in Germany and of his interest in +philosophy. In 1845, at the age of twenty-nine, he published a history of +philosophy, in which he undertook to criticise all metaphysical systems +from the inductive and scientific point of view. This work was his +_Biographical History of Philosophy_. It appeared in four small volumes in +Knight's weekly series of popular books devoted to the diffusion of +knowledge among the people. Lewes touched a popular demand in this book, +reaching the wants of many readers. He continued through many years to +elaborate his studies on these subjects and to re-work his materials. New +and enlarged editions, each time making the book substantially a new one, +were published in 1857, in 1867 and in 1871. No solid book of the century +has sold better; and it has been translated into several continental +languages. + +Lewes did not confine himself to philosophy. Other and very different +subjects also attracted his attention. His mind ranged in many directions, +and his flexible genius found subjects of interest on all sides. In 1846 he +published a little book on _The Spanish Drama: Lope de Vega and Calderon_, +a slight affair, full of his peculiar prejudices, and devoted mainly to an +unsympathetic criticism. The following year he gave to the world an +ambitious novel, _Ranthorpe_. It seems to have been well read in its day, +was translated into German and reprinted on the continent by Tauchnitz. The +plot is well conceived, but the story is rapidly told, full of incident and +tragedy, and there is a subtle air of unreality about it. The experiences +of a poet are unfolded in a romantic form, and the attempt is made to show +what is the true purpose and spirit in which literature can be successfully +pursued. To this end there is a discussion running through the book on the +various phases of the literary life, much in the manner of Fielding. +_Ranthorpe_ would now be regarded as a very dull novel, and it is crude, +full of the sensational, with little analysis of character and much action. + +It was read, however, by Charlotte Brontë with great interest, and she +wrote of it to the author in these words: "In reading _Ranthorpe_ I have +read a new book--not a reprint--not a reflection of any other book, but _a +new book_. I did not know such books were written now. It is very different +to any of the popular works of fiction; it fills the mind with fresh +knowledge. Your experience and your convictions are made the reader's; and +to an author, at least, they have a value and an interest quite unusual." +In 1848, Lewes published another novel of a very different kind--_Rose, +Blanche and Violet_. This was a society novel, intended to reach the minds +of the ordinary novel-readers, but was not so successful as the first. It +has little plot or incident, but has much freshness of thought and +originality of style. + +The same year appeared his _Life of Robespierre_, the result of original +investigations, and based largely on unpublished correspondence. Without +any sympathy of opinion with Robespierre, and without any purpose of +vindicating his character, Lewes told the true story of his life, and +showed wherein he had been grossly misrepresented. The book was one of +much interest, though it lacked in true historic insight and was clumsily +written. While these works were appearing, Lewes was a voluminous +contributor to the periodical literature of the day. He wrote, at this +time and later, for the _Edinburgh Review_, the _Foreign Quarterly_, +_British Quarterly_, _Westminster Review_, _Fraser's Magazine_, +_Blackwood's Magazine_, _Cornhill Monthly_, _Saturday Review_, in the +_Classical Museum_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Atlas_ and various other +periodicals, and on a great variety of subjects. His work of this kind was +increased when in 1849 he became the literary editor of _The Leader_ +newspaper, a weekly journal of radical thought and politics. His +versatility, freshness of thought and vigor of expression made this +department of _The Leader_ of great interest. His reviews of books were +always good, and his literary articles piquant and forcible. In the first +volume he published a story called _The Apprenticeship of Life_. In April, +1852, he began in its columns a series of eighteen articles on Comte's +Positive Philosophy. In connection with the second article of this series +he asked for subscriptions in aid of Comte, and in the third reported that +three workingmen had sent in money. These subscriptions were continued +while the articles were in progress, and amounted to a considerable sum. In +1854 these essays were republished in Bohn's _Scientific Library_ under the +title of _Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences_. The _Leader_ was ably +conducted, but it was radical and outspoken, and did not receive the +support it deserved. In 1854 his connection with it came to an end. + +While connected with _The Leader_, Lewes had turned his attention to +Goethe, and made a thorough study of his life and opinions. After spending +many months in Weimar, and as a result of his studies in Germany, he +published in 1855 his _Life and Works of Goethe_. It was carefully +re-written in 1873, and the substance of it was given in an abbreviated +and more popular form a few years later. This has usually been accepted +as the best book about Goethe written in English. Mr. Anthony Trollope +expresses the usual opinion when he says, "As a critical biography of +one of the great heroes of literature it is almost perfect. It is short, +easily understood by common readers, singularly graphic, exhaustive, and +altogether devoted to the subject." On the other hand, Bayard Taylor +said that "Lewes's entertaining apology hardly deserves the name of a +biography." It is an opinionated book, controversial, egotistic, and +unnecessarily critical. It was written less with the purpose of +interpreting Goethe to the English reader than of giving expression +to Lewes's own views on many subjects. His chapters on Goethe's science +and on his realism are marked by an extreme dogmatism. The poetic and +religious side of Goethe's nature he was incapable of understanding, and +always misrepresents, as he did that side of his nature which allied Goethe +with Schiller and the other idealists. Lewes was always polemical, had some +theory to champion, some battle to fight. He did not write for the sake of +the subject, but because the subject afforded an arena of battle for the +theories to the advocacy of which he gave his life. + +With the completion of his _Life of Goethe_, Lewes turned his attention +more than ever to physiological studies, though he had continued to give +them much attention in the midst of his other pursuits. In 1858 appeared +his _Seaside Studies_, in which he recorded the results of his original +investigations at Ilfracombe, Tenby, Scilly Isles and Jersey. This volume +is written in a plain descriptive style, containing many interesting +accounts of scenery and adventure, explanations of the methods of study of +animal life at the seashore, how experiments are carried on, the results of +these special studies, and much of controversy with other observers. It +combines science and description in a happy manner. Another result of his +physiological studies was a paper "On the Spinal Cord as a Centre of +Sensation and Volition," read before the British Association for the +Advancement of Science, in 1858. This was followed the next year by three +published addresses on "The Nervous System," in which he presented those +theories which were more carefully developed in his latest work, where he +gave a systematic account of his philosophy. From this time on to his death +the greater part of his energies were given to these studies, and to the +building up of a philosophy based on physiology. A popular work, in which +many of his theories are unfolded, and marked throughout by his peculiar +ideas in regard to the relations of body and mind, was published in 1858. +This was his _Physiology of Common Life_, a work of great value, and +written in a simple, comprehensive style, suited to the wants of the +general reader. In the first volume he wrote of hunger and thirst, food and +drink, digestion, structure and uses of the blood, circulation of the +blood, respiration and suffocation, and why we are warm and how we keep so. +The second treats of feeling and thinking, the mind and the brain, our +senses and sensations, sleep and dreams, the qualities we inherit from our +parents, and life and death. In 1860 he printed in _The Cornhill Magazine_ +a series of six papers on animal life. They were reprinted in book form in +1861, under the title of _Studies in Animal Life_. More strictly scientific +than his _Seaside Studies_, they were even more popular in style, and +intended for the general reader. While these books were being published he +was at work on a more strictly scientific task, and one intended for the +thoughtful and philosophic reader. This was his _Aristotle: a Chapter from +the History of Science, including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific +Writings_, which was completed early in 1862, but not published until 1864. +As in his previous works, Lewes is here mainly concerned with an exposition +of his theories of the inductive method, and he judges Aristotle from this +somewhat narrow position. He refuses Aristotle a place among scientific +observers, but says he gave a great impulse towards scientific study, while +in intellectual force he was a giant. The book contains no recognition of +Aristotle's value as a philosopher; indeed his metaphysics are treated with +entire distrust or indifference. His fame is pronounced to be justifiably +colossal, but it is said he did not lay the basis of any physical science. +It is a work of controversy rather than of unbiassed exposition, and its +method is dry and difficult. + +Early in the year 1865, a few literary men in London conceived the project +of a new review, which should avoid what they conceived to be the errors of +the old ones. It was to be eclectic in its doctrinal position, contain only +the best literature, all articles were to be signed by the author's name, +and it was to be published by a joint-stock company. Lewes was invited to +become the editor of this new periodical, and after much urging he +consented. The first number of _The Fortnightly Review_ was published May +15,1865, It proved a financial failure, and was soon sold to a publishing +firm. The eclectic theory was abandoned, and the _Review_ became an +agnostic and radical organ under the management of its second editor, John +Morley. Lewes edited six volumes, when, in 1867, he was obliged, on account +of his health, to resign his position. He made the _Review_ an independent +and able exponent of current thought, and he kept it up to a very high +standard of literary excellence. His own contributions were among the best +things it contained, and give a good indication of the wide range of his +talent. In the first volume he published papers on "The Heart and the +Brain," and on the poetry of Robert Buchanan, as well as a series of four +very able and valuable papers on "The Principles of Success in Literature." +In the second volume he wrote about "Mr. Grote's Plato." In the third he +dealt with "Victor Hugo's Latest Poems," "Criticism in relation to Novels," +and "Auguste Comte." In this volume he began a series of essays entitled +"Causeries," in which he treated, in a light vein, of the passing topics of +the day. He wrote of Spinoza in the fourth volume, and of "Comte and Mill" +in the sixth, contributing nothing to the fifth. After Morley became the +editor, in the ninth and tenth volumes, he published three papers on +Darwin's hypothesis, and in 1878 there was a paper of his on the "Dread and +Dislike of Science." He also had a criticism of Dickens in the July number +of 1872, full of his subtle power of analysis and literary insight. + +Lewes in early life had a strong inclination to become an actor, and he did +go on the stage for a short time. He wrote and translated several plays, +one of his adaptations becoming very popular. He wrote dramatic criticisms +for the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and other journals, during many years. In 1875, +a volume of these papers was published with the title, _On Actors and the +Art of Acting_. It treated in a pleasant way, and with keen insight, of +Edmund Kean, Charles Kean, Rachel, Macready, Fan-en, Charles Matthews, +Frédéric Lemaitre, the two Keeleys, Shakspere as actor and critic, natural +acting, foreign actors on our stage, the drama of Paris in 1865, Germany in +1867, and Spain in 1867, and of his first impressions of Salvini. Another +piece of work done by him was the furnishing, in 1867, of an explanatory +text to accompany Kaulbach's _Female Characters of Goethe_. + +The last years of Lewes's life were devoted to the preparation of a +systematic exposition of his physiological philosophy. As early as the year +1858, he was at work on the nervous system, and, soon after, his studies +took a systematic shape. In his series of volumes on the _Problems of Life +and Mind_ he gave to the world a new theory of the mind and of knowledge. +In the first two volumes, published in 1874, and entitled _The Foundations +of a Creed_, he developed his views on the methods of philosophic research. +These were followed in 1877 by a third volume, on _The Physical Basis of +Life_. After his death his wife edited two small volumes on Psychology, +which included all the writing he left in a form ready for publication. His +work was left incomplete, but its publication had gone far enough to show +the methods to be followed and the main conclusions to be reached. + +Concerning the work done by Lewes in philosophy, there will be much +difference of opinion. He did much through his various expositions to make +the public familiar with the inductive methods of inquiry and with the +conclusions of positive thought. He made his books readable, and even +popular, giving philosophy an exposition suited to the wants of the general +reader. At the same time, he was polemical and dogmatic, and more concerned +to be clever than to be exact in his interpretation. Into the meanings of +some of the greatest thinkers he had little clear insight, and he is seldom +to be implicitly trusted as an expositor of those whose systems were in any +way opposed to his own. His limitations have been well defined by Ribot, in +his _Contemporary English Psychology_. + +"Mr. Lewes lacks the vocation of the scholar, which, indeed, is generally +wanting in original minds. His history resembles rather that of Hegel than +that of Ritter. His review of the labors of philosophers is rather occupied +with that which they have thought, than with their comparative importance. +He judges rather than expounds; his history is fastidious and critical. It +is the work of a clear, precise and elegant mind, always that of a writer, +often witty, measured, possessing no taste for declamation, avoiding +exclusive solutions, and making its interest profitable to the reader whom +he forces to think." Ribot speaks of the work again as being original but +dogmatic and critical. He says it belongs to that class of books which make +history a pretext for conflict. "The author is less occupied with the +exposition of facts than he is with his method of warfare; he thinks less +of being exact than of being clever.... He has evidently no taste, or, if +we prefer so to put it, he has not the virtue necessary to face these +formidable folios, these undigested texts of scholastic learning, which the +historian of philosophy ought to penetrate, however repulsive to his +positive and lucid mind." + +On the other hand, Mr. Frederic Harrison has described the great success of +the _Biographical History of Philosophy_, and made it apparent what are its +chief merits. "This astonishing work was designed to be popular, to be +readable, to be intelligible. It was all of these in a singular degree. It +has proved to be the most popular account of philosophy of our time; it has +been republished, enlarged, and almost re-written, and each re-issue has +found new readers. It did what hardly any previous book on philosophy ever +did--it made philosophy readable, reasonable, lively, almost as exciting as +a good novel. Learners who had been tortured over dismal homilies on the +pantheism of Spinoza, and yet more dismal expositions of the pan-nihilism +of Hegel, seized with eagerness upon a little book which gave an intense +reality to Spinoza and his thoughts, which threw Hegel's contradictories +into epigrams, and made the course of philosophic thought unfold itself +naturally with all the life and coherence of a well-considered plot.... +There can be no possible doubt as to the success of this method. Men to +whom philosophy has been a wearisome swaying backward and forward of +meaningless phrases, found something which they could remember and +understand.... For a generation this 'entirely popular' book saturated the +minds of the younger readers. It has done as much as any book, perhaps-more +than any, to give the key to the prevalent thought of our time about the +metaphysical problems.... That such a book should have had such a triumph +was a singular literary fact. The opinions frankly expressed as to +theology, metaphysics, and many established orthodoxies; its conclusion, +glowing in every page, that metaphysics, as Danton said of the Revolution, +was devouring its own children, and led to self-annihilation; its +proclamation of Comte as the legitimate issue of all previous philosophy +and positive philosophy as its ultimate _irenicon_--all this, one might +think, would have condemned such a book from its birth. The orthodoxies +frowned; the professors sneered; the owls of metaphysic hooted from the +gloom of their various jungles; but the public read, the younger students +adopted it, the world learned from it the positive method; it held its +ground because it made clear what no one else had made clear--what +philosophy meant, and why philosophers differed so violently." + +This extravagant praise becomes even absurd when the writer gravely says +that this book "had simply killed metaphysic." A popular style and method +gave the book success, along with the fact that the temper of the time made +such a statement acceptable. It cleverly indicated the weak places in the +metaphysical methods, and it presented the advantages of the inductive +method with great eloquence and ingenuity. Its satire, and its contempt for +the more spiritualistic systems, also helped to make it readable. + +His later work, in which he develops his own positive conclusions, has the +merit of being one of the best expositions yet made of the philosophy of +evolution. In view, however, of his unqualified condemnation of the +theories of metaphysicians, his system is one of singular audacity of +speculation. Not even Schelling or Hegel has gone beyond him in theorizing, +or exceeded him in the ground traversed beyond the limits of demonstration. +He who had held up all speculative systems to scorn, distanced those he had +condemned, and showed how easy it is to take theory for fact. Metaphysic +has not had in its whole history a greater illustration of the daring of +speculation than in the case of Lewes's theory of the relations of the +subjective and objective. He interprets matter and mind, motion and +feeling, objective and subjective, as simply the outer and inner, the +concave and convex, sides of one and the same reality. Mind is the same as +matter, except that it is viewed from a different aspect. In this opinion +he resembles Schelling more than any other thinker, as he does in some +other of his speculations. As a monist, his conclusions are similar to +those of the leading German transcendentalists. Indeed, the evolution +philosophy he expounds is, in some of its aspects, but a development of the +identity philosophy of Schelling. In its monism, its theory of the +development of mind out of matter, and its conception of law, they are one +and the same. The evolution differs from the identity philosophy mainly in +its more scientific interpretation of the influence of heredity and the +social environment. The one is undoubtedly an outgrowth from the other, +while the audacious nights of speculation indulged in by Lewes rival +anything attempted even by Schelling. + +Lewes was one of the earliest English disciples of Auguste Comte, and he +probably did more than any other person to introduce the opinions of that +thinker to English students. He was a zealous and yet not a blind disciple, +rejecting for the most part the later speculations of Comte. Comte's +theories of social and religious construction were repugnant to Lewes's +mind, but his positive methods and his entire rejection of theology were +acceptable. Comte's positivism was the foundation of his own philosophy, +and he did little more than to expand and more carefully work out the +system of his predecessor. In psychology he went beyond Comte, through his +physiological studies, and by the adoption of the methods and results of +evolution. His discovery of the sociological factors of mind was a real +advance on his master. + +George Eliot's connection with Lewes had much to do with the +after-development of her mind. An affinity of intellectual purpose +and conviction drew them together. She found her philosophical theories +confirmed by his, and both together labored for the propagation of +that positivism in which they so heartily believed. Their lives and +influence are inseparably united. There was an almost entire unanimity of +intellectual conviction between them, and his books are in many ways the +best interpreters of the ethical and philosophical meanings of her novels. +Her thorough interest in his studies, and her comprehension of them, is +manifest on many of her pages. Her enthusiastic acceptance of positivism in +that spirit in which it is presented by Lewes, is apparent throughout all +her work. Their marriage was a companionship and a friendship. They lived +in each other, were mutual helpers, and each depended much on--the advice +and counsel of the other. Miss Mathilde Blind has pointed out how +thoroughly identical are their views of realism in art, and on many other +subjects they were as harmonious. They did not echo each other, but there +was an intimate affinity of intellectual apprehension and purpose. + +Immediately after their marriage, Lewes and his wife went to Germany, and +they spent a quiet year of study in Berlin, Munich and Weimar. Here he +re-wrote and completed his _Life of Goethe_. On their return to England +they took a house in Blandford Square, and began then to make that home +which was soon destined to have so much interest and attraction. A good +part of the year 1858 was also spent on the continent in study and travel. +Three months were passed in Munich, six weeks in Dresden, while Salzburg, +Vienna and Prague were also visited. The continent was again visited in the +summer of 1865, and a trip was taken through Normandy, Brittany and +Touraine. Other visits preceded and followed, including a study of Florence +in preparation for the writing of _Romola_, and a tour in Spain in 1867 to +secure local coloring for _The Spanish Gypsy_. In 1865, the house in +Blandford Square was abandoned for "The Priory," a commodious and pleasant +house on the North Bank, St. John's Wood. It was here Mr. and Mrs. Lewes +lived until his death. + + + + +IV. + + +CAREER AS AN AUTHOR. + +Until she was thirty-six years old Mrs. Lewes had given no hint that she +was likely to become a great novelist. She had shown evidence of large +learning and critical ability, but not of decided capacity for imaginative +or poetic creation. The critic and the creator are seldom combined in one +person; and while she might have been expected to become a philosophical +writer of large reputation, there was little promise that she would become +a great novelist. Before she began the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, she had +written but very little of an original character. She was not drawn +irresistibly to the career for which she was best fitted, and others had to +discover her gift and urge her to its use. Mr. Lewes saw that the person +who could write so admirably of what a novel ought to be, and who could so +skilfully point out the defects in the lady novelists of the day, was +herself capable of writing much better ones than those she criticised. It +was at his suggestion, and through his encouragement, she made her first +attempt at novel-writing. Her love of learning, her relish for literary and +philosophical studies, led her to believe that she could accomplish the +largest results in the line of the work she had already begun. Yet Lewes +had learned from her conversational powers, from her keen appreciation of +the dramatic elements of daily life, and from her fine humor and sarcasm, +that other work was within the range of her powers. Reluctantly she +consented to turn aside from the results of scholarship she had hoped to +accomplish, and with many doubts concerning her ability to become a writer +of fiction. The history of the publication of her first work, _Scenes +of Clerical Life_, has been fully told, and is helpful towards an +understanding of her career as an author. + +In the autumn of 1856, William Blackwood received from Lewes a short story +bearing--the title of "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," which he +sent as the work of an anonymous friend. His nephew has described the +results that followed on the reception of this novel by Blackwood, and its +publication in _Blackwood's Magazine_. "The story was offered as the first +instalment of a series; and though the editor pronounced that 'Amos' would +'do,' he wished to satisfy himself that it was no chance hit, and requested +a sight of the other tales before coming to a decision. Criticisms on the +plot and studies of character in 'Amos Barton' were frankly put forward, +and the editor wound up his letter by saying,' If the author is a new +writer, I beg to congratulate him on being worthy of the honors of print +and pay. I shall be very glad to hear from him or you soon.' At this time +the remaining _Scenes of Clerical Life_ were unwritten, and the criticisms +upon 'Amos' had rather a disheartening effect upon the author, which the +editor hastened to remove as soon as he became sensible of them, by +offering to accept the tale. He wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'If you think it would +stimulate the author to go on with the other tales, I shall publish 'Amos' +at once;' expressing also his 'sanguineness' that he would be able to +approve of the contributions to follow, as 'Amos' gave indications of +great freshness of style. Some natural curiosity had been expressed as +to the unknown writer, and a hint had been thrown out that he was 'a +clergyman,'--a device which, since it has the great sanction of Sir Walter +Scott, we must regard as perfectly consistent with the ethics of anonymous +literature. + +"'Amos Barton' occupied the first place in the magazine for January, 1857, +and was completed in the following number. By that time 'Mr. Gilfil's Love +Story' was ready, and the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ appeared month by +month, until they ended with 'Janet's Repentance' in November of that year. +As fresh instalments of the manuscript were received, the editor's +conviction of the power, and even genius, of his new contributor steadily +increased. In his first letter to the author after the appearance of 'Amos +Barton,' he wrote, 'It is a long time since I have read anything so fresh, +so humorous and so touching. The style is capital, conveying so much in so +few words.' In another letter, addressed 'My dear Amos,' for lack of any +more distinct appellation, the editor remarks, 'I forgot whether I told you +or Lewes that I had shown part of the MS. to Thackeray. He was staying with +me, and having been out at dinner, came in about eleven o'clock, when I had +just finished reading it. I said to him, 'Do you know that I think I have +lighted upon a new author who is uncommonly like a first-class passenger?' +I showed him a page or two--I think the passage where the curate returns +home and Milly is first introduced. He would not pronounce whether it came +up to my ideas, but remarked afterwards that he would have liked to have +read more, which I thought a good sign.' + +"From the first the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ arrested public attention. +Critics were, however, by no means unanimous as to their merits. They +had so much individuality--stood so far apart from the standards of +contemporary fiction--that there was considerable difficulty in applying +the usual tests in their case. The terse, condensed style, the exactitude +of expression, and the constant use of illustration, naturally suggested to +some the notion that the new writer must be a man of science relaxing +himself in the walks of fiction. The editor's own suspicions had once been +directed towards Professor Owen by a similarity of handwriting. Guesses +were freely hazarded as to the author's personality, and among other +conjectures was one that Lord Lyttoll, whose 'Caxton' novels were about +the same period delighting the readers of this magazine, had again struck +a new vein of fiction. Probably Dickens was among the first to divine that +the author must be a woman; but the reasons upon which he based this +opinion might readily have been met by equally cogent deductions from the +_Scenes_ that the writer must be of the male sex. Dickens, on the +conclusion of the _Scenes_, wrote a letter of most generous appreciation, +which, when sent through the editor, afforded the unknown author very +hearty gratification. + +"While 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' was passing through the magazine, the +editor was informed that he was to know the author as 'George Eliot.' It +was at this time, then, that a name so famous in our literature was +invented. We have no reason to suppose that it had been thought of when the +series was commenced. It was probably assumed from the impossibility of a +nameless shadow maintaining frequent communication with the editor of a +magazine; possibly the recollection of George Sand entered into the idea; +but the designation was euphonious and impressive. + +"Before the conclusion of the _Scenes_, Mr. Blackwood felt satisfied that +he had to do with a master mind, and that a great career as a novelist lay +open to George Eliot; and his frequent communications urged her warmly to +persevere in her efforts. When 'Janet's Repentance' was drawing to a close, +and arrangements were being made for re-issuing the sketches as a separate +publication, he wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'George Eliot is too diffident of his +own powers and prospects of success. Very few men, indeed, have more reason +to be satisfied as far as the experiment has gone. The following should be +a practical cheerer,'--and then he proceeded to say how the Messrs, +Blackwood had seen reason to make a large increase in the forthcoming +reprint of the _Scenes_. The volumes did not appear until after the New +Year of 1858; and their success was such that the editor was able, before +the end of the month, to write as follows to Lewes: 'George Eliot has +fairly achieved a literary reputation among judges, and the public must +follow, although it may take time. Dickens's letter was very handsome, and +truly kind. I sent him an extract from George Eliot's letter to me, and I +have a note from him, saying that 'he has been much interested by it,' and +that 'it has given him the greatest pleasure.' Dickens adheres to his +theory that the writer must be a woman.' To George Eliot herself he wrote +in February, 1858, 'You will recollect, when we proposed to reprint, my +impression was that the series had not lasted long enough in the magazine +to give you a hold on the general public, although long enough to make your +literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases, a very long time often +elapses between the two stages of reputation, the literary and the public. +Your progress will be _sure_, if not so quick as we could wish.'" + +The success of the _Clerical Scenes_ determined the literary career of Mrs. +Lewes. She began at once an elaborate novel, which was largely written in +Germany. It was sent to Blackwood for publication, and his nephew has given +a full account of the reception of the manuscript and the details of giving +the work to the public. + +"_Adam Bede_ was begun almost as soon as the _Scenes_ were finished, and +had already made considerable progress before their appearance in the +reprint. In February, 1858, the editor, writing to Mr. Lewes, says, 'I am +delighted to hear from George Eliot that I might soon hope to see something +like a volume of the new tale. I am very sanguine.' In a few weeks after, +the manuscript of the opening chapters of _Adam Bede_ was put into his +hands, and he writes thus to Lewes after the first perusal: 'Tell George +Eliot that I think _Adam Bede_ all right--most lifelike and real. I shall +read the MS. quietly over again before writing in detail about it.... For +the first reading it did not signify how many things I had to think of; I +would have hurried through it with eager pleasure. I write this note to +allay all anxiety on the part of George Eliot as to my appreciation of the +merits of this most promising opening of a picture of life. In spite of all +injunctions, I began _Adam Bede_ in the railway, and felt very savage when +the waning light stopped me as we neared the Scottish border.' A few weeks +later, when he had received further chapters, and had reperused the +manuscript from the beginning, Mr. Blackwood wrote to George Eliot, 'The +story is altogether very novel, and I cannot recollect anything at all like +it. I find myself constantly thinking of the characters as real personages, +which is a capital sign.' After he had read yet a little further he +remarks, 'There is an atmosphere of genuine religion and purity that fears +no evil, about the whole opening of the story.' George Eliot made an +expedition to Germany in the spring of 1858, and the bulk of the second +volume was sent home from Munich. Acknowledging the receipt of the +manuscript, the editor wrote to Lewes, 'There can be no mistake about the +merits, and I am not sure whether I expressed myself sufficiently warmly. +But you know that I am not equal to the _abandon_ of expression which +distinguishes the large-hearted school of critics.' Adam Bede was completed +in the end of October, 1858, and Mr. Blackwood read the conclusion at once, +and sent his opinions. He says, 'I am happy to tell you that I think it is +capital.--I never saw such wonderful efforts worked out by such a +succession of simple and yet delicate and minute touches. Hetty's night in +the fields is marvellous. I positively shuddered for her, poor creature; +and I do not think the most thoughtless lad could read that terrible +picture of her feelings and hopeless misery without being deeply moved. +Adam going to support her at the trial is a noble touch. You really make +him a gentleman by that act. It is like giving him his spurs. The way poor +Hetty leans upon and clings to Dinah is beautiful. Mr. Irwine is always +good; so are the Poysers, lifelike as possible. Dinah is a very striking +and original character, always perfectly supported, and never obtrusive in +her piety. Very early in the book I took it into my head that it would be +'borne in upon her' to fall in love with Adam. Arthur is the least +satisfactory character, but he is true too. The picture of his happy, +complacent feelings before the bombshell bursts upon him is very good.' + +"_Adam Bede_ was published in the last week of January, 1859. The author +was desirous on this occasion to test her strength by appealing directly to +the public; and the editor, though quite prepared to accept _Adam Bede_ for +the magazine, willingly gratified her. Sending George Eliot an early copy, +before _Adam Bede_ had reached the public, he says, 'Whatever the +subscription may be, I am confident of success--great success. The book is +so novel and so true, that the whole story remains in my mind like a +succession of incidents in the lives of people I know. _Adam Bede_ can +certainly never come under the class of popular agreeable stories; but +those who love power, real humor, and true natural description, will stand +by the sturdy carpenter and the living groups you have painted in and about +Hayslope.' + +"_Adam Bede_ did not immediately command that signal success which, looking +back to it now, we might have expected for it. As the editor had warned the +author, the Scenes had secured for her a reputation with the higher order +of readers and with men of letters, but had not established her popularity +with the public in general. The reviewers, too, were somewhat divided. Many +of them recognized the merits of the work, but more committed the blunder +of endeavoring to fix the position of the book by contrasting the author +with the popular novelists of the time, and by endeavoring to determine +from which of them she had drawn her inspiration. In 1859 a review of _Adam +Bede_ from the pen of one of the oldest and ablest of our contributors was +published in this magazine, and on its appearance George Eliot wrote the +editor, 'I should like you to convey my gratitude to your reviewer. I see +well he is a man whose experience and study enabled him to relish parts of +my book which I should despair of seeing recognized by critics in London +back drawing-rooms. He has gratified me keenly by laying his fingers on +passages which I wrote either from strong feeling or from intimate +knowledge, but which I had prepared myself to find passed over by +reviewers.' Soon after, _The Times_ followed with an appreciative notice of +the book which sounded its real merits, and did justice to the author's +originality of genius; and by the month of April the book was steadily +running through a second edition. Readers were beginning to realize that +the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ was not a mere chance success, but the work +of a writer capable of greater and better things." + +It was Mrs. Lewes's desire not to be known to the public in her own +personality, hence her adoption of a _nom de plume_. She shrank from the +consequences of a literary fame, had none of George Sand's love of +notoriety or desire to impress herself upon the world. It was her hope that +George Eliot and Mrs. Lewes would lead distinct lives so far as either was +known outside her own household; that the two should not be joined together +even in the minds of her most intimate friends. When her friend, the editor +of the _Westminster Review_, detected the authorship of _Adam Bede_, and +wrote to her in its praise, congratulating her on the success she had +attained, Lewes wrote to him denying positively that Mrs. Lewes was the +author. Charles Dickens also saw through the disguise, and wrote to the +publisher declaring his opinion that _Adam Bede_ was written by a woman. +When this was denied, he still persisted in his conviction, detecting the +womanly insight into character, her failure adequately to portray men, +while of women "she seemed to know their very hearts." + +The vividness with which scenes and persons about her childhood home were +depicted, speedily led to the breaking of this disguise. One of her +school-fellows, as soon as she had read _Adam Bede_, said, "George Eliot +is Marian Evans;" but others were only confident that the author must be +some Nuncaton resident, and began to look about them for the author. Some +portions of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ had already been discovered to +have a very strong local coloring, and now there was much curiosity as to +the personality of the writer. A dilapidated gentleman of the neighborhood, +who had run through with a fortune at Cambridge, was selected for the +honor. While the _Scenes_ were being published, an Isle of Man newspaper +attributed the authorship to this man, whose name was Liggins, but he at +once repudiated it. On the appearance of _Adam Bede_ this claim was again +put forward, and a local clergyman became the medium of its announcement +to the public. The London _Times_ printed the following letter in its issue +of April 15, 1859: "Sir,--The author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam +Bede_ is Mr. Joseph Liggins, of Nuncaton, Warwickshire. You may easily +satisfy yourself of my correctness by inquiring of any one in that +neighborhood. Mr. Liggins himself and the characters whom he paints are +as familiar there as the twin spires of Coventry.--Yours obediently, +H. ANDERS, Rector of Kirkby." + +The next day the following was printed by the same paper:-- + + Sir,--The Rev. H. Anders has with questionable delicacy and + unquestionable inaccuracy assured the world through your columns that + the author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam Bede_ is Mr. Joseph + Liggins, of Nuncaton. I beg distinctly to deny that statement. I + declare on my honor that that gentleman never saw a line of those works + until they were printed, nor had he any knowledge of them whatever. + Allow me to ask whether the act of publishing a book deprives a man of + all claim to the courtesies usual among gentlemen? If not, the attempt + to pry into what is obviously meant to be withheld--my name--and to + publish the rumors which such prying may give rise to, seems to me + quite indefensible, still more so to state these rumors as ascertained + facts. I am, sir. Yours, &c., GEORGE ELIOT. + +Liggins found his ardent supporters, and he explained the letter +repudiating the authorship of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ as being +written to further his own interests. He obtained money on the plea that he +was being deprived of his rights, by showing portions of a manuscript which +he had copied from the printed book. Neighboring clergymen zealously +espoused his cause, and a warm controversy raged for a little time +concerning his claim. Very curiously, it became a question of high and low +church, his own fellow-believers defending Liggins with zeal, while the +other party easily detected his imposition. Finally, Blackwood published a +letter in _The Times_ denying his claims, accompanied by one from George +Eliot expressing entire satisfaction with her publisher. A consequence of +this discussion was, that the real name of the author was soon known to the +public. + +The curiosity excited about the authorship of _Adam Bede_, the Liggins +controversy, and the fresh, original character of the book itself, soon +drew attention to its merits. It was referred to in a Parliamentary debate, +and it became the general topic of literary conversation. Its success was +soon assured, and it was not long before it was recognized that a new +novelist of the first order had appeared. + +It is as amusing as interesting now to look back upon the reception given +to _Adam Bede_ by the critics. It is not every critic who can detect a +great writer in his first unheralded book, and some very stupid blunders +were made in regard to this one. It was reviewed in _The Spectator_ for +February 12, 1859, in this unappreciative manner: "George Eliot's +three-volume novel of _Adam Bede_ is a story of humble life, where +religious conscientiousness is the main characteristic of the hero and +heroine, as well as of some of the other persons. Its literary feature +partakes, we fear, too much of that Northern trait which, by minutely +describing things and delineating individuals as matters of substantive +importance in themselves, rather than as subordinate to general interest, +has a tendency to induce a feeling of sluggishness in the reader." + +Not all the critics were so blundering as this one, however, and in the +middle of April, _The Times_ said there was no mistake about the character +of _Adam Bede_, that it was a first-rate novel, and that its author would +take rank at once among the masters of the craft. In April, also, +_Blackwood's Magazine_ gave the book a hearty welcome. The natural, genuine +descriptions of village life were commended, and the boot was praised for +its "hearty, manly sympathy with weakness, not inconsistent with hatred of +vice." Throughout this notice the author is spoken of as "Mr. Eliot." The +critic of the _Westminster Review_, in an appreciative and favorable +notice, expressed a doubt if the author could be a man. He cited Hetty as +proof that only a woman could have written the book, and said this +character could "only be delineated as it is by an author combining the +intense feelings and sympathies of a woman with the conceptive power of +artistic genius." The woman theory was pronounced to be beset with serious +difficulties, however, and the notice concluded with these words: "But +while pronouncing no decisive opinion on this point, we may remark that the +union of the best qualities of the masculine and feminine intellect is as +rare as it is admirable; that it is a distinguishing characteristic of the +most gifted artists and poets, and that to ascribe it to the author of +_Adam Bede_ is to accord the highest praise we can bestow." + +With the writing of _Adam Bede_, George Eliot accepted her career as a +novelist, and henceforth her life was devoted to literary creation. Even +before _Adam Bede_ was completed, her attention was directed to Savonarola +as the subject for a novel. Though this subject was in her mind, yet it was +not made use of until later. As soon as _Adam Bede_ was completed, she at +once began another novel of English life, and drawn even more fully than +its predecessors from her own experience. Of this new work a greater +portion of the manuscript was in the hands of the publishers with the +beginning of 1860. She called it _Sister Maggie_, from the name of the +leading character. This title did not please the publisher, and on the 6th +of January, Blackwood wrote to her suggesting that it be called _The Mill +on the Floss_. This title was accepted by George Eliot, and the new work +appeared in three volumes at the beginning of April, 1860. + +In July, 1859, there appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ a short story from +George Eliot bearing the title of "The Lifted Veil." This was followed by +another, in 1864, called "Brother Jacob." Both were printed anonymously and +are the only short stories she wrote after the _Clerical Scenes_. They +attracted attention, but were not reprinted until 1880, when they appeared +in the volume with _Silas Marner_, in Blackwood's "cabinet edition" of her +works. In March, 1861, _Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe_, her only +one-volume novel, was given to the public by Blackwood. + +Having carefully studied the life and surroundings of Savonarola, she now +took up this subject, and embodied it in her _Romola_. This novel appeared +in the _Cornhill Magazine_ from July, 1862, to July, 1863. It has been +reported that it was offered to Blackwood for publication, who rejected it +because it was not likely to be popular with the public. The probable +reason of its publication in the _Cornhill Magazine_ was that a large sum +was paid for its first appearance in that periodical. In a letter written +July 5, 1862, Lewes gave the true explanation. "My main object in +persuading her to consent to serial publication was not the unheard-of +magnificence of the offer, but the advantage to such a work of being read +slowly and deliberately, instead of being galloped through in three +volumes. I think it quite unique, and so will the public when it gets over +the first feeling of surprise and disappointment at the book not being +English and like its predecessor." The success it met with while under way +in the pages of the magazine may be seen from a letter written by Lewes on +December 18. "Marian lives entirely in the fifteenth century, and is much +cheered every now and then by hearing indirectly how her book is +appreciated by the higher class of minds, and some of the highest, though +it is not, and cannot be, popular. In Florence we hear they are wild with +delight and surprise at such a work being executed by a foreigner, as if an +Italian had ever done anything of the kind." _Romola_ was illustrated in +the _Cornhill Magazine_, and on its completion was reprinted by Smith, +Elder & Co., the publishers of that periodical. + +The success of _Romola_ was such as to lead George Eliot to begin on +another historical subject, though she was probably induced to do this much +more by its fitness to her purposes than by the public reception of the +novel. This time she gave her work a poetical and dramatic form. _The +Spanish Gypsy_ was written in the winter of 1864-5, but was laid aside for +more thorough study of the subject and for careful revision. She had +previously, in 1863, written a short story in verse, founded on the pages +of Bocaccio, entitled "How Lisa Loved the King." Probably other poems had +also been written, but poetry had not occupied much of her attention. As a +school-girl, and even after she had gone to London, she had written verses. +Among these earlier attempts, it may not be unsafe to conjecture, may have +been the undated poems which she has published in connection with _The +Legend of Jubal_. These are "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and go, +Love," and "The Death of Moses." + +After laying aside _The Spanish Gypsy_ she began on another novel of +English life, and _Felix Holt: the Radical_ was printed in three volumes by +Blackwood, in June, 1866. Shortly after, she printed in _Blackwood's +Magazine_--an "Address to workmen, by Felix Holt," in which she gave some +wholesome and admirable advice to the operative classes who had been +enfranchised by the Reform Bill. In the same magazine, "How Lisa Loved the +King" was printed in May, 1869. This was the last of her contributions to +its pages. Its publisher gave her many encouragements in her literary +career, and was devoted to her interests. After his death she gave +expression to her appreciation of his valuable aid in reaching the public, +through a letter addressed to his successor. + + I feel that his death was an irreparable loss to my mental life for + nowhere else is it possible that I can find the same long-tried + genuineness of sympathy and unmixed impartial gladness in anything I + might happen to do well. To have had a publisher who was in the fullest + sense of the word a gentleman, and at the same time a man of excellent + moral judgment, has been an invaluable stimulus and comfort to me. Your + uncle had retained that fruit of experience which makes a man of the + world, as opposed to the narrow man of literature. He judged well of + writing, because he had learned to judge well of men and things, not + merely through quickness of observation and insight, but with the + illumination of a heart in the right place--a thorough integrity and + rare tenderness of feeling. + +After a visit to Spain in the summer of 1867, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was +re-written and published by Blackwood, in June, 1868. During several years, +at this period of her life, her pen was busy with poetical subjects. "A +Minor Prophet" was written in 1865, "Two Lovers" in 1866, and "Oh may I +join the Choir Invisible" in 1867. "Agatha" was written in 1868, and was +published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for August, 1869. _The Legend of Jubal_ +was written in 1869 and was printed in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for May, +1870. In 1869 were also written the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and +Sister." "Armgart" was written in 1870, and appeared in _Macmillan's +Magazine_ in July, 1871. "Arion" and "Stradivarius" were written in 1873. +"A College Breakfast Party" was written in April, 1874, and was printed in +_Macmillan's Magazine_ for July, 1878. _The Legend of Jubal and other +Poems_ was published by Blackwood in 1874, and contained all the poems just +named, except the last. A new edition was published in 1879 as _The Legend +of Jubal and other Poems, Old and New_. The "new" poems in this edition are +"The College Breakfast Party," "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and +go, Love," and "The Death of Moses." + +To the longer of these poetical studies succeeded another novel of English +Life. _Middlemarch: a Study of Provincial Life_ was printed in twelve +monthly parts by Blackwood, beginning in December, 1871. Five years later, +_Daniel Deronda_ was printed in eight monthly parts by the same publisher, +beginning with February, 1876. This method of publication was probably +adopted for the same reason assigned by Lewes for the serial appearance of +_Romola_. Both novels attracted much attention, and were eagerly devoured +and discussed as the successive numbers appeared, the first because of its +remarkable character as a study of English life, the other because of its +peculiar ideas, and its defence of the Jewish race. Her last book, +_Impressions of Theophrastus Such_, a series of essays on moral and +literary subjects, written the year before, was published by Blackwood in +June, 1879. Its reception by the public was somewhat unfavorable, and it +added nothing of immediate enlargement to her reputation. + +Of miscellaneous writing George Eliot did but very little. While Mr. Lewes +was the editor of _The Leader_ newspaper, from 1849 to 1854, she was an +occasional contributor of anonymous articles to its columns. When he +founded _The Fortnightly Review_ she contributed to its first number, +published in May, 1865, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in +which she reviewed Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_. These occasional +efforts of her pen, together with the two short stories and the poems +already mentioned, constituted all her work outside her series of great +novels. She concentrated her efforts as few authors have done; and having +found, albeit slowly and reluctantly, what she could best accomplish, she +seldom strayed aside. When her pen had found its proper place it was not +often idle; and though she did not write rapidly, yet she continued +steadily at her work and accomplished much. Within twenty years she wrote +eight great works of fiction, including _The Spanish Gypsy_; works that are +destined to an immortality of fame. From almost entire obscurity her name +appeared, with the publication of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, to attract +attention among a few most appreciative readers, and it was destined then +to rise suddenly to the highest place of literary reputation with the +publication of _Adam Bede_. Her genius blazed clearly out upon the world in +the fulness of its powers, and each new work added to her fame, and +revealed some new capacity in the delineation of character. Her literary +career shows throughout the steady triumph of genius and of persistent +labor. + + + + +V. + + +PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. + +The home of Mrs. Lewes during the later years of her life was in one of the +London suburbs, near Regent's Park, in what is known as St. John's Wood, at +number 21, North Bank Street. This locality was not too far from the city +for the enjoyment and the use of its advantages, while it was out of the +noise and the smoke. The houses stand far apart, are surrounded with trees +and lawns, while all is quiet and beautiful. The square, unpretentious +house in which the Leweses lived was surrounded by a fine garden and green +turf, while flowers were abundant. A high wall shut it out from the street. +Within, all was refinement and good taste; there were flowers in the +windows, the furniture was plain and substantial, while quiet simplicity +reigned supreme. The house had two stories and a basement. On the first +floor were two drawing-rooms, a small reception room, a dining-room and Mr. +Lewes's study. These rooms were decorated by Owen Jones, their artist +friend. The second floor contained the study of George Eliot, which was a +plain room, not large. Its two front windows looked into the garden, and +there were book-cases around the walls, and a neat writing-desk. All things +about the house indicated simple tastes, moderate needs, and a plain method +of life. + +Mrs. Lewes usually went into her study at eight o'clock in the morning, and +remained there at work until one. If the weather was fine, she rode out in +the afternoon, or she walked in Regent's Park with Mr. Lewes. In case the +weather did not permit her going out, she returned again to her study in +the afternoon. The affairs of her household were so arranged that she could +give herself uninterruptedly to her work. The kitchen was in the basement, +a housekeeper had entire charge of the management of the house, and Mrs. +Lewes was carefully guarded from all outside interruptions. She very seldom +went into society, and she received but few visitors, except on Sunday +afternoons. Her letters were written by Mr. Lewes, with the exception of +those to personal friends or an occasional outside correspondent; and all +the details of the publication of her books and the management of her +business affairs were in his hands. The immediate success of her novels +made them profitable to the publisher, and she was paid comparatively large +sums for them. + +Her evenings were spent by Mrs. Lewes at home, in reading and singing, +unless she went to the theatre, as she often did. She walked much, often +visiting the zoological gardens, and she had a great liking for all kinds +of small animals. She greatly enjoyed travelling. Music was her passion, +and art her delight. She preferred the realistic painters, and she never +tired of the collections she often visited in London. + +The health of Mrs. Lewes was never good. She was a constant sufferer, was +nervous, excitable and low-spirited. Only by the utmost care and husbanding +of her powers was she enabled to accomplish her work. In a note to one of +her correspondents she has given some hint of the almost chronic languor +and bodily weakness from which she suffered. + + The weather, our ailments, and various other causes, have made us put + off our flight from one week to another, but now we are really + fluttering our wings and making a dust about us. I wish we had seen you + oftener. I was placidly looking forward to your staying in England + another year or more, and gave way to my general languor about seeing + friends in these last months, which have been too full of small bodily + miseries for me to feel that I had much space to give to pleasanter + occupation. + +Only those who knew her long and well can fitly describe such a woman as +Mrs. Lewes. Personal intimacy gives a color to the words used, and a +meaning to the delicate shades of expression, that can be had in no other +way. One of her friends has described her as being of "the middle height, +the head large, the brow ample, the lower face massive; the eyes gray, +lighting up from time to time with a sympathetic glow; the countenance +sensitive, spiritual, with 'mind and music breathing' from it; the general +demeanor composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but +somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving evenly, as it were +in a monotone, though now and then rising, with a sort of quiet eagerness, +into a higher note." The same writer speaks of the close-fitting flow of +her robe, and the luxuriant mass of light-brown hair hanging low on both +sides of her head, as marked characteristics of her costume. Her features +were very plain and large, too large for anything like beauty, but strongly +impressive by their very massiveness. More than one of her friends has +spoken of her resemblance to Savonarola, perhaps suggested by her +description of that monk-prophet in _Romola_. Mr. Kegan Paul finds that she +also resembled Dante and Cardinal Newman, and that these four were of the +same spiritual family, with a curious interdependence of likeness. All +these persons have "the same straight wall of brow; the droop of the +powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion kept resolutely +under control; a square jaw, which would make the face stern were it not +counteracted by the sweet smile of lips and eye." Her friends say that no +portrait does her justice, that her massive we features could not be +portrayed. "The mere shape of the head," says Kegan Paul, "would be the +despair of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely +be possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to the +frame, of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her, +although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that, after all, she +was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow and brain." + +An account of her personal traits has been given by Mrs. Lippincott. "She +impressed me," says this writer, "at first as exceedingly plain, with the +massive character of her features, her aggressive jaw and evasive blue +eyes. But as she grew interested and earnest in conversation, a great light +flashed over or out of her face, till it seemed transfigured, while the +sweetness of her rare smile was something quite indescribable. But she +seemed to me to the last lofty and cold. I felt that her head was among the +stars--the stars of a wintry night." Another American, Miss Kate Field, in +writing of the English authors to be seen in Florence half a dozen years +after George Eliot began her career, was the first to give an account of +this new literary star. "She is a woman of large frame and fair Saxon +coloring. In heaviness of jaw and height of cheek-bone she greatly +resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, +judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and +amiable, while her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In +conversation Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining, and her interest in young +writers is a trait which immediately takes captive all persons of this +class. We shall not forget with what kindness and earnestness she addressed +a young girl who had just begun to handle a pen, how frankly she related +her own literary experience, and how gently she _suggested_ advice. True +genius is always allied to humility; and in seeing Mrs. Lewes do the work +of a good Samaritan so unobtrusively, we learned to respect the woman as +much as we had ever admired the writer. 'For years,' said she to us, 'I +wrote reviews because I knew too little of humanity.'" + +These sketches by persons who only met her casually have an interest in the +illustration of her character; and they may be added to by still another +account, written by Mrs. Annie Downs, also an American, in 1879, and +describing a visit to George Eliot two years before her death. "Tall, +slender, with a grace most un-English, her face, instead of beauty, +possessed a sweet benignity, and at times flashed into absolute brilliancy. +She was older than I had imagined, for her hair, once fair, was gray, and +unmistakable lines of care and thought were on the low, broad brow. But +although a pang pierced my heart as I recognized that most of her life was +behind her, so intensely did I feel her personality that in a moment I lost +sight of her age; it was like standing soul to soul, and beyond the reach +of time. Dressed in black velvet, with point lace on her hair, and repeated +at throat and wrists, she made me think at once of Romola and Dorothea +Brooke. She talked of Agassiz, of his museum at Cambridge, of the great +natural-history collections at Naples, of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures, +and with enthusiasm of Mr. Furnival's Shakspere and Chaucer classes at the +Working Men's College... She had quaint etchings of some of the monkeys at +the zoological gardens, and told me she was more interested in them than +any of the other animals, they exhibit traits so distinctly human. She +declared, while her husband and friends laughingly teased her for the +assertion, that she had seen a sick monkey, parched with fever, absolutely +refuse the water he longed for, until the keeper had handed it to a friend +who was suffering more than he. As an illustration of their quickness, she +told me, in a very dramatic manner, of a nurse who shook two of her little +charges for some childish misdemeanor while in the monkey house. No one +noticed the monkeys looking at her, but pretty soon every old monkey in the +house began shaking her children, and kept up the process until the little +monkeys had to be removed for fear their heads would be shaken off. I felt +no incongruity between her conversation and her books. She talked as she +wrote; in descriptive passages, with the same sort of humor, and the same +manner of linking events by analogy and inference. The walls were covered +with pictures. I remember Guido's Aurora, Michael Angelo's prophets, +Raphael's sibyls, while all about were sketches, landscapes and crayon +drawings, gifts from the most famous living painters, many of whom are +friends of the house. A grand piano, opened and covered with music, +indicated recent and continual use." + +One of her intimate friends says that "in every line of her face there was +powder, and about her jaw and mouth a prodigious massiveness, which might +well have inspired awe had it not been tempered by the most gracious smile +which ever lighted up human features, and was ever ready to convert what +otherwise might have been terror into fascination!" We are told that "an +extraordinary delicacy pervaded her whole being. She seemed to live upon +air, and the rest of her body was as light and fragile as her countenance +and intellect were massive." One of the results of this large brain and +fragile body was, that she was never vigorous in health. Only her quiet, +simple life, and avoidance of all excitement in regular work, enabled her +to accomplish so much as she did. Her conversation was rich and attractive. +She talked much as she wrote, was a good listener, never obtruded her +opinions, and always had a noble moral purpose in her words. + +An American lady has given an interesting account of her home and of her +conversation. "No one," says Mrs. Field, "who had ever seen her could +mistake the large head (her brain must be heavier than most men's) covered +with a mass of rich auburn hair. At first I thought her tall; for one could +not think that such a head could rest on an ordinary woman's shoulders. +But, as she rose up, her figure appeared of but medium height. She received +us very kindly. In seeing, for the first time, one to whom we owed so many +happy hours, it was impossible to feel towards her as a stranger. All +distance was removed by her courtesy. Her manners are very sweet, because +very simple and free from affectation. To me her welcome was the more +grateful as that of one woman to another. There is a sort of free-masonry +among women, by which they understand at once those with whom they have any +intellectual sympathy. A few words, and all reserve was gone. 'Come, sit by +me on this sofa,' she said; and instantly, seated side by side, we were +deep in conversation. It is in such intimacy one feels the magnetism of a +large mind informed by a true woman's heart; then, as the soul shines +through the face, one perceives its intellectual beauty. No portrait can +give the full expression of the eye any more than of the voice. Looking +into that clear, calm eye, one sees a transparent nature, a soul of +goodness and truth, an impression which is deepened as you listen to her +soft and gentle tones. A low voice is said to be an excellent thing in a +woman. It is a special charm of the most finely cultured English ladies. +But never did a sweeter voice fascinate a listener,--so soft and low that +one must almost bend to hear. You can imagine what it was thus to sit for +an hour beside this gifted woman and hear talk of questions interesting to +the women of England and America. But I should do her great injustice if I +gave the impression that there was in her conversation any attempt at +display. There is no wish to shine. She is above that affectation of +brilliancy which is often mere flippancy. Nor does she seek to attract +homage and admiration. On the contrary, she is very averse to speak of +herself, or even to hear the heartfelt praise of others. She does not +engross the conversation, but is more eager to listen than to talk. She has +that delicate tact--which is one of the fine arts among women--to make +others talk, suggesting topics the most rich and fruitful, and by a word +drawing the conversation into a channel where it may flow with broad, free +current. Thus she makes you forget the celebrated author, and think only of +the refined and highly cultivated woman. You do not feel awed by her +genius, but only quickened by it, as something that calls out all that is +better and truer. While there is no attempt to impress you with her +intellectual superiority, you naturally feel elevated into a higher sphere. +The conversation of itself floats upward into a region above the +commonplace. The small-talk of ordinary society would seem an impertinence. +There is a singular earnestness about her, as if those mild eyes looked +deep into the great, sad, awful truths of existence. To her, life is a +serious reality, and the gift of genius a grave responsibility." + +Mrs. Lewes was in the habit for many years of receiving her friends on +Sunday afternoons from two to six o'clock. These gatherings came to be +among the most memorable features of London literary life. A large number +of persons, both men and women, attended her receptions, and among them +many who were well known to the scientific or literary world. Especially +were young men of aspiring minds drawn hither and given a larger +comprehension of life. She had no political or fashionable connections, +says Mr. F.W.H. Myers, "but nearly all who were most eminent in art, +science, literature, philanthropy, might be met from time to time at her +Sunday-afternoon receptions. There were many women, too, drawn often from +among very different traditions of thought and belief, by the unfeigned +goodness which they recognized in Mrs. Lewes's look and speech, and +sometimes illumining with some fair young face a _salon_ whose grave talk +needed the grace which they could bestow. And there was sure to be a +considerable admixture of men not as yet famous,--probably never to be +so,--but whom some indication of studies earnestly pursued, of sincere +effort for the good of their fellow-men, had recommended to 'that +hopeful interest which'--to quote a letter of her own--'the elder mind, +dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to those +younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.' +It was Mr. Lewes who on these occasions contributed the cheerful +_bonhomie_, the observant readiness, which are necessary for the facing of +any social group. Mrs. Lewes's manner had a grave simplicity, which rose in +closer converse into an almost pathetic anxiety to give of her best--to +establish a genuine human relation between herself and her interlocutor--to +utter words which should remain as an active influence for good in the +hearts of those who heard them. To some of her literary admirers, this +serious tone was distasteful; they were inclined to resent the prominence +given to moral ideas in a quarter from which they preferred to look merely +for intellectual refreshment. Mrs. Lewes's humor, though fed from a deep +perception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, except in intimate +moments, any buoyant or contagious quality, and in all her talk--full of +matter and wisdom, and exquisitely worded as it was--there was the same +pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was more welcome to those +whose object was distinctively to _learn_ from her, than to those who +merely wished to pass an idle and brilliant hour. To her, these mixed +receptions were a great effort. Her mind did not move easily from one +individuality to another, and when she afterward thought that she had +failed to understand some difficulty which had been laid before her,--had +spoken the wrong word to some expectant heart,--she would suffer from +almost morbid accesses of self-reproach." A further idea of these +conversations may be gathered from Mr. Kegan Paul's account. "When London +was full," he says, "the little drawing-room in St. John's Wood was now and +then crowded to overflowing with those who were glad to give their best of +conversation, of information, and sometimes of music, always to listen with +eager attention to whatever their hostess might say, when all that she said +was worth hearing. Without a trace of pedantry, she led the conversation to +some great and lofty strain. Of herself and her works she never spoke; of +the works and thoughts of others she spoke with reverence, and sometimes +even too great tolerance. But these afternoons had the highest pleasure +when London was empty, or the day was wet, and only a few friends were +present, so that her conversation assumed a more sustained tone than was +possible when the rooms were full of shifting groups. It was then that, +without any premeditation, her sentences fell as fully formed, as wise, as +weighty, as epigrammatic, as any to be found in her books. Always ready, +but never rapid, her talk was not only good in itself, but it encouraged +the same in others, since she was an excellent listener, and eager to +hear." + +At these gatherings the most noted of the English disciples of Comte were +to be found, and among them Frederic Harrison, Prof. E.S. Beesley, Dr. +Congrove, the director of the London Church of Humanity, and Prof. W.K. +Clifford. The English positivists were represented by Herbert Spencer, +Prof. T.H. Huxley and Moncure D. Conway. The realistic school of poets and +artists came in the persons of its most representative men. Dante Rosetti +and Millais, Tourguénief and Burne Jones, DuMaurier and Dr. Hueffner +illustrated most of its phases. The great world of general literature sent +Sir Arthur Helps, Sir Theodore Martin, Anthony Trollope, C.G. Leland, +Justin McCarthy, Frederic Myers, Prof. Mark Pattison and many another. The +rarer guests included Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. It was no +inconsiderable influence which could draw together such a company and hold +it together for many years. Of the part played in these gatherings by the +hosts, Miss Mathilde Blind has given an account. Lewes acted "as a social +cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the fascination of his manners, +diffused that general sense of ease and _abandon_ so requisite to foster an +harmonious flow of conversation. He was inimitable as a _raconteur_, and +Thackeray, Trollope and Arthur Helps were fond of quoting some of the +stories which he would dramatize in the telling. One of the images which, +on these occasions, recurs oftenest to George Eliot's friends is that of +the frail-looking woman who would sit with her chair drawn close to the +fire, and whose winning womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one +who had the privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with +its strongly marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life +than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves +more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of +expression, especially softening the too prominent under lip and massive +jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with gray, whose smooth bands made a kind +of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with lappets of +rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her gray-blue +eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute sensitiveness as +her long, thin, beautifully shaped hands. She had a pleasant laugh and +smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely sympathetic in quality; +it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang or played before more than +one or two friends. Though her conversation was perfectly easy, each +sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed, as the style of her +published works." + +Among the persons who gathered at The Priory on Sunday afternoons there +came to be a considerable number of those who were Mrs. Lewes's devoted +disciples. They hung upon her words, they accepted her views of life, her +philosophy became theirs. That she would have admitted such discipleship +existed there is no reason to believe, and it is certain she did not +attempt to bring it about or even desire it. So great, however, was her +power of intellect, so noble her personal influence, it was impossible that +ardent young natures could refrain from devotion to such genius and speedy +acceptance of its teachings. The richness of her moral and intellectual +nature aided largely in this heroine worship, but she impressed herself on +other minds because she was so much an individual, because her personality +was of a kind to command reverence and devotion. It was not merely young +and impulsive natures who were thus attracted and inspired, for Edith +Simcox says that "men and women, old friends and new, persons of her own +age and of another generation, the married and the single, impulsive +lovers and hard-headed philosophers, nay, even some who elsewhere might +have passed for cynics, all classes alike yielded to the attractive force +of this rare character, in which tenderness and strength were blended +together, and as it were transfused with something that was all her +own--the genius of sweet goodness." Perhaps her influence was so great on +those it reached because it demanded high and noble life and thought of her +disciples. Her moral ideal was a high one, and she had literary and +artistic standards that demanded all the effort of both genius and talent, +while her culture was such as to be exacting in its requirements. So we +find Miss Simcox saying that Mrs. Lewes, in her friendships, "had the +unconscious exactingness of a full nature. She was intolerant of a vacuum +in the mind or character, and she was indifferent to admiration that did +not seem to have its root in fundamental agreement with those principles +she held to be most 'necessary to salvation.' Where this sympathy existed, +her generous affection was given to a fellow-believer, a fellow-laborer, +with singularly little reference to the fact that such full sympathy was +never unattended with profound love and reverence for herself as a living +witness to the truth and power of the principles thus shared. To love her +was a strenuous pleasure; for in spite of the tenderness for all human +weakness that was natural to her, and the scrupulous charity of her overt +judgments, the fact remained that her natural standard was ruthlessly out +of reach, and it was a painful discipline for her friends to feel that she +was compelled to lower it to suit their infirmities. The intense humility +of her self-appreciation, and the unfeigned readiness with which she would +even herself with any sinner who sought her counsel, had the same effect +upon those who would compare what she condemned in herself with what she +tolerated in them. And at the same time, no doubt, this total absence of +self-sufficiency had something to do with the passionate tenderness with +which commonplace people dared to cherish their immortal friend." + +As has already been suggested, her womanliness is a more prominent +characteristic of Mrs. Lewes's mind than its great intellectual power. Her +sympathy was keen and most sensitive, her modesty and humility were almost +excessive, and her tenderness of nature was a woman's own. She gave her +sympathy readily and freely to the humble and unfavored. She had no taint +of intellectual aristocracy, says one of her friends. Faithful, devoted +love; the sacredness of simple duties and plain work; earnest help of other +souls,--these were among the daily lessons of her life and teaching. "How +strong was the current of her sympathy in the direction of all humble +effort," exclaims one of her friends, "how reluctantly she checked +presumption! The most ordinary and uninteresting of her friends must feel +that had they known nothing of her but her rapid insight into and quick +response to their inmost feelings she would still have been a memorable +personality to them. This sympathy was extended to the sorrows most unlike +anything she could ever by any possibility have known--the failures of life +obtained as large a share of her compassion as its sorrows. The wish to +console and cheer was indeed rooted in the most vital part of her nature." +Another of her friends has said that "she possessed to a marvellous degree +the divine gifts of charity, and of attracting moral outcasts to herself, +whose devils she cast out, if I may be permitted the expression, by +shutting her eyes to their existence. In her presence you felt wrapped +round by an all-embracing atmosphere of sympathy and readiness to make the +least of all your short comings, and the most of any good which might be in +you. But great as was her personality, she shrank with horror from +intruding it upon you, and, in general society, her exquisitely melodious +voice was, unhappily for the outside circles, too seldom raised beyond the +pitch of something not much above a whisper. Of the rich vein of humor +which runs through George Eliot's works there was comparatively little +trace in her conversation, which seldom descended from the grave to the +gay. But although she rarely indulged in conversational levity herself, she +was most tolerant of it, and even encouraged its ebullition, in others, +joining heartily in any mirth which might be going on." + +She made her younger admirers feel the deeper influence of her great +personality by inspiring them with the largest moral purposes. To awaken +and to arouse the moral nature seems always to have been her purpose, and +to lead it to the highest attainable results. Earnest young minds never +"failed to feel in her presence that they were for the time, at all events, +raised into a higher moral level, and none ever left her without feeling +inspired with a stronger sense of duty, and positively under the obligation +of striving to live up to a higher standard of life." Hence her personal +influence was considerable, though she led the close life of a student, and +did not go into general society at all. This high moral earnestness made +her a prophet to her friends, as in her books it made her a great moral +teacher to the world at large. Those who had the privilege of an intimate +acquaintance with Mrs. Lewes have pronounced the woman greater than her +books. She was not only a great writer but a great woman. Human nature in +its largest capacities was represented in her, for she rose above the +limitations of sex; and she is thought of less as a great woman than as a +large human personality. Hers was a massive nature, emphatic, individual, +many-sided. Genius of a very high order, though not the highest, was hers, +while she was possessed of a broad culture and great learning. Seldom does +genius carry with it talents so varied and well-trained or a culture so +full and thorough. And her culture was of that kind which entered into +every fibre of her nature and became a part of her own personality. It was +thoroughly digested and absorbed into good healthy red blood, and became a +quickened, sustained motive to the largest efforts. How vital this love of +culture was, may be seen when we are told that "she possessed in an eminent +degree that power which has led to success in so many directions, of +keeping her mind unceasingly at the stretch without conscious fatigue. She +would cease to ponder or to read when other duties called her, but never +because she herself felt tired. Even in so complex an effort as a visit to +a picture gallery implies, she could continue for hours at the same pitch +of earnest interest, and outweary strong men. Nor was this a mere habit of +passive reception. In the intervals between her successive compositions her +mind was always fusing and combining its fresh stores." + +She had culture, moral power and earnestness in a high degree, warmth of +sympathy and sensitiveness to all beauty, but she had no saintliness. +Profound as was her reverence for moral purity, and lofty as was her moral +purpose, she was not a saint, and holiness was not a characteristic of her +nature. This clear and high sense of moral truth everywhere appears in her +life and thought. "For the lessons most imperatively needed by the mass of +men, the lessons of deliberate kindness, of careful truth, of unwavering +endeavor,--for these plain themes one could not ask a more convincing +teacher than she. Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with +the bent of her soul. The deeply lined face, the too marked and massive +features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way +was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed entirely from within. +Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external +harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined +themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to +speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave +appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence +of a wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice which best revealed her, a +voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her +uttered words with the mystery of a world that must remain untold. And then +again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion +would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in +unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not +one to be soon forgotten. It has not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls +to whose childlike confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was +the look of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks are laid, +and which finds in their accomplishment its only imagination of joy." + +Another side of her influence on persons is expressed by the representative +of that publishing house which gave her books to the world. "In addition to +the spell which bound the world to her by her genius, she had a personal +power of drawing to herself, in ties of sympathy and kindly feeling, all +who came under her influence. She never oppressed any one by her talents; +she never allowed any one to be sensible of the depth and variety of her +scholarship; she knew, as few know, how to draw forth the views and +feelings of her visitors, and to make their sympathies her own. There was a +charm in her personal character which of itself was sufficient to +conciliate deep and lasting regard. Every one who entered her society left +it impressed with the conviction that they had been under the influence of +a sympathy and tenderness not less remarkable than the force of her mental +power.... Her deep and catholic love for humanity in its broadest and best +sense, which was in itself the strongest quickening motive of her genius, +will maintain her influence in the future as in the present." + +Hers was a somewhat sensitive, shrinking nature, with no self-assumption, +and without the taint of egotism. She had a modest estimate of her own +great literary creations, and shrank from all mention of them and from the +homage paid to her as an author. After the publication of _Romola_ she was +one day reading French to a girl companion in the garden of a Swiss hotel, +when a lady drew near to listen to the silvery tones of her voice. Noticing +this, she said, "Do you understand?" The lady answered, "I do not care for +the matter; I only came to listen to your voice." "Do you like it?" was +then inquired. When the lady expressed the pleasure it gave her, Mrs. Lewes +took her hand and warmly said, "I thank you. I would rather you would +compliment my voice than my _Romola_." [Footnote: This story is not +authenticated; it may be taken for what it is worth, though it appears to +be characteristic.] + +It has been truly said of her that above all novelists, with the exception +of Goethe, she was supreme in culture. She had a passion for knowledge, and +zeal in the pursuit of learning. She was a lover of books, but not a +scholar in the technical and exact sense. Delighting in literature, art, +music, and all that appeals to the imagination, rather than in mere +information, yet she was a thinker of original powers, with a keen +appreciation of philosophy, and ability to tread its most difficult paths +with firm step. She had an intimate acquaintance with the literatures of +Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and she was well read in the classics of +Greece and Rome. She was "competently acquainted" with the different +systems of philosophy, and she had mastered their problems while thinking +out her own conclusions. Having no professional knowledge of the sciences, +she was a diligent reader of scientific books, and was familiar with all +the bearings of science on philosophy and religion. Her books show an +intimate knowledge of modern thought in many of its phases, as it bears +upon physical, economic, historical and intellectual science. With all her +learning, however, she retained a woman's sympathy with life, beauty and +poetry. Her knowledge was never dry and technical, but warm and imaginative +with genius and poetry. [Footnote: Her scholarly habits, and her realistic +tendencies, usually made George Eliot very painstaking and accurate, but an +occasional slip of pen or memory is to be noted in her books. In +Theophrastus Such she credited to the Apologia of Plato what is really +contained in the Phaedo. The motto to chapter seventeen of Daniel Deronda +was quoted, in the first edition, as from In Memoriam instead of Locksley +Hall. In an early chapter of Felix Holt she made the parson preach from the +words, "Break up the fallow ground of your hearts." The words of scripture +are, "Break up your fallow ground." In Adam Bede a clergyman is made to +take the words of the Prayer Book, "In the midst of life we are in death," +for his text.] + +Her culture may be compared with Mrs. Browning's, who was also an extensive +reader and widely informed. The poet as well as the novelist acquired her +learning because of her thirst for knowledge, and mainly by her own +efforts; but she preferred the classics to science, and literature to +philosophy. Mrs. Browning was the wiser, George Eliot the more learned. The +writings of Mrs. Browning are less affected by her information than George +Eliot's; and this is true because she was of a more poetical temperament, +because her imagination was more brilliant and creative. + +Mrs. Lewes was an enthusiastic lover of art, and especially of music. She +never tired in her interest in beholding fine paintings, and music was the +continual delight of her life. She was a tireless frequenter of picture +galleries, and every fine musical entertainment in London was sure to find +her, in company with Mr. Lewes, an enthusiastic listener. Good acting also +claimed not a little of her interest, and she carefully studied even the +details of the dramatic art, so that she was able to give a critical +appreciation to the acting she enjoyed. Indeed, she had given to her mind +that rounded fulness of attainment, and developed all her faculties +with that due proportion, which Fichte so earnestly preached as the +characteristic of true culture. "Her character," says Edith Simcox, "seemed +to include every possibility of action and emotion; no human passion was +wanting in her nature, there were no blanks or negations; and the +marvellous thing was to see how, in this wealth of impulses and desires, +there was no crash of internal discord, no painful collisions with other +human interests outside; how, in all her life, passions of volcanic +strength were harnessed in the service of those nearest her, and so +inspired by the permanent instinct of devotion to her kind, that it seemed +as if it were by her own choice they spent themselves there only where +their force was welcome. Her very being was a protest against the opposing +and yet cognate heresies that half the normal human passions must be +strangled in the quest of virtue, and that the attainment of virtue is a +dull and undesirable end, seeing that it implies the sacrifice of most that +makes life interesting." She had her own temptations and her imperfections. +With these she struggled bravely, and set herself to the hard task of +correction and discipline. Her culture was not merely one of books, but it +was also one of moral discipline and of strenuous spiritual subjection. It +was one of stern moral requirements and duties, as well as one of large +sympathy with all that is natural and beautiful. + +It was a quiet life of continuous study and authorship which Mrs. Lewes led +in The Priory, and it was varied from year to year only by her visits to +the continent and by her summer residence in Surrey. One of her summer +retreats, at the village of Shotter Mill, has been described, as well as +her life there. The most picturesque house in the place is known as +Brookbank, and here she spent a summer, that of 1871. It is described as +"an old two-storied cottage, the front of the house being half-covered with +trailing rose-trees. The rooms are low but pleasant, and furnished in a +simple, comfortable manner. We have often endeavored," says the writer of +this account, "to glean some information regarding George Eliot's life at +Shotter Mill, but she and Mr. Lewes lived in such seclusion that there was +very little to be told. They seldom crossed their threshold during the day, +but wandered over the commons and hills after sundown. They were very +anxious to lodge at the picturesque old farm, ten minutes' walk beyond +Brookbank, but all available room was then occupied. However, George Eliot +would often visit the farmer's wife, and, sitting on a grassy bank just +beside the kitchen door, would discuss the growth of fruit and the quality +of butter in a manner so quiet and simple the good country folks were +astonished, expecting very different conversation from the great novelist. +The farmer was employed to drive them two or three times a week. They +occasionally visited Tennyson, whose home is only three miles distant, +though a rather tedious drive, since it is up hill nearly all the way. +George Eliot did not enjoy the ride much, for the farmer told us that, +'withal her being such a mighty clever body,--she were very nervous in a +carriage--allays wanted to go on a smooth road, and seemed dreadful feared +of being thrown out.' George Eliot was writing _Middlemarch_ during her +summer at Brookbank, and the term for which they had the cottage expired +before they wished to return to London. The Squire was away at the time, so +they procured permission to use his house during the remainder of the +visit. In speaking of them he said, 'I visited Mr. and Mrs. Lewes several +times before they went back to town, and found the authoress a very +agreeable woman, both in manner and appearance; but her mind was evidently +completely absorbed in her work; she seemed to have no time for anything +but writing from morning till night. Her hand could hardly convey her +thoughts to paper fast enough. It was an exceptionally hot summer, and yet +through it all Mrs. Lewes would have artificial heat placed at her feet to +keep up the circulation. Why, one broiling day I came home worn out, +longing for a gray sky and a cool breeze, and on going into the garden I +found her sitting there, her head just shaded by a deodara on the lawn, +writing away as usual. I expostulated with her for letting the midday sun +pour down on her like that. 'Oh,' she replied, 'I like it. To-day is the +first time I have felt warm this summer.' So I said no more, and went my +way.' And thus nearly all we could learn about George Eliot was that she +loved to bask in the sun and liked green peas. She visited some of the +cottagers, but only those living in secluded places, who knew nothing of +her. Just such people as these she used in her graphic and realistic +sketches of peasant life. With regard to the surrounding country, George +Eliot said that it pleased her more than any she knew of in England." + +In these summer retreats she continued steadily at her work, and she +greatly delighted in the quiet and rest. Other summers were spent at +Witley, in the same county, where the fine scenery, lovely drives and +wide-reaching views from the hill-tops were to her a perpetual delight. +At this place a house was bought, and there was a project of giving up the +London residence and of visiting the city only for occasional relaxation. +This project was not carried out, for soon after their return from Witley +in the autumn of 1878, Mr. Lewes was taken ill, and died in November. His +death was a great blow to Mrs. Lewes, and he was deeply mourned, so much so +as to seriously impair her health. The state of her mind at this trying +period is well indicated in a letter written to Prof. David Kaufmann. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, +April 17, '79. + +MY DEAR SIR,--Your kind letter has touched me very deeply. I confess that +my mind has more than once gone out to you as one from whom I should like +to have some sign of sympathy with my loss. But you were rightly inspired +in waiting till now, for during many weeks I was unable even to listen to +the letters which my generous friends were continually sending me. Now, at +last, I am eagerly interested in every communication that springs out of an +acquaintance with my husband and taskworks. + +I thank you for telling me about the Hungarian translation of his History +of Philosophy, but what would I not have given if the volumes could have +come a few days before his death; for his mind was perfectly clear, and he +would have felt some joy in that sign of his work being effective. I do not +know whether you enter into the comfort I feel that he never knew he was +dying, and fell gently asleep after ten days of illness in which the +suffering was comparatively mild..... + +One of the last things he did at his desk was to despatch a manuscript of +mine to the publishers. The book (not a story and not bulky) is to appear +near the end of May, and as it contains some words I wanted to say about +the Jews, I will order a copy to be sent to you. + +I hope that your labors have gone on uninterruptedly for the benefit of +others, in spite of public troubles. The aspect of affairs with us is +grevious--industry languishing, and the best part of our nation indignant +at our having been betrayed into an unjustifiable war (in South Africa). + +I have been occupied in editing my husband's MSS., so far as they are left +in sufficient completeness to be prepared for publication without the +obtrusion of another mind instead of his. A brief volume on _The Study of +Psychology_ will appear immediately, and a further volume of psychological +studies will follow in the autumn. But his work was cut short while he +still thought of it as the happy occupation of far-stretching months. Once +more let me thank you for remembering me in my sorrow, and believe me + +Yours with high regard, +M.E. LEWES. + +Writing to a friend soon after Lewes's death, who had also lost her +husband, she said,-- + + There is but one refuge--the having much to do. Nothing can make the + burden to be patiently borne, except the gradual adaptation of your + soul to the new conditions. + +The much to do she partly found in editing the uncompleted _Problems +of Life and Mind_, and in establishing a studentship for original +investigation in physiology, known as "The George Henry Lewes Studentship." +Its value is about two hundred pounds, and it is open to both sexes. These +labors enabled her to do honor to one she had trusted through many years, +whose name and fame she greatly revered, and to recover the even poise of +her life. She carefully managed the business affairs he had left in her +hands, and she provided for his children. + +A year and a half after the death of Lewes, May 6, 1880, she was married at +the church of St. George's, Hanover Square, to John Walter Cross, the +senior partner in a London banking firm, whom she had first met in 1867, +and who had been a greatly valued friend both to herself and Lewes. Though +much younger than herself, he had many qualities to recommend him to her +regard. A visit to the continent after this ceremony lasted for several +months, a considerable portion of the time being spent in Venice. On their +return to London in the autumn after spending a happy summer in Surrey, +they went to live in the house of Mr. Cross at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The +old habits of her life were taken up, her studies were resumed, a new novel +was begun, her friends came as usual on Sunday afternoons, and many years +of work seemed before her, for her health had greatly improved. On Friday, +December 17, 1880, she attended the presentation of the _Agamemnon_ of +Aeschylus, in the original Greek, with the accompaniments of the ancient +theatre, by the undergraduates of Balliol College, Oxford. She was very +enthusiastic about this revival of ancient art, and planned to read anew +all the Greek dramatists with her husband. The next day she attended a +popular concert at St. James Hall, and listened with her usual intense +interest. Sitting in a draught, she caught cold, but that evening she +played through much of the music she had heard in the afternoon. The next +day she was not so well as usual, yet she met her friends in the afternoon. +On Monday her larynx was slightly affected, and a physician was called, but +no danger was apprehended. Yet her malady gained rapidly. On Tuesday night +she was in a dangerous condition, and on Wednesday the pericardium was +found to be seriously diseased. Towards midnight of that day, December 22, +after a period of unconsciousness, she quietly passed away. She was buried +on the 29th, in the unconsecrated portion of Highgate Cemetery, by the side +of George Henry Lewes. The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Dr. +Sadler, a radical Unitarian minister, who spoke of her great genius, and +quoted her own words about a future life in the life of humanity. His +address contained many references to her personal characteristics, such as +could only come from an intimate friend. He said,-- + +"To those who are present it is given to think of the gentleness, and +delicate womanly grace and charm, which were combined with 'that breadth of +culture and universality of power which,' as one has expressed it, 'have +made her known to all the world.' To those who are present it is given to +know the diffidence and self-distrust which, notwithstanding all her public +fame, needed individual sympathy and encouragement to prevent her from +feeling too keenly how far the results of her labors fell below the +standard she had set before her. To those who are present too it may be +given--though there is so large a number to whom it is not given--to +understand how a nature may be profoundly devout, and yet unable to accept +a great deal of what is usually held as religious belief. No intellectual +difficulties or uncertainties, no sense of mental incapacity to climb the +heights of infinitude, could take from her the piety of the affections or +'the beliefs which were the mother-tongue of her soul.' I cannot doubt that +she spoke out of the fulness of her own heart when she put into the lips of +another the words, 'May not a man silence his awe or his love and take to +finding reasons which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than any +reasons to be found!' How patiently she toiled to render her work in all +its details as little imperfect as might be! How green she kept the +remembrance of all those companions to whom she felt that she owed a +moulding and elevating influence, especially in her old home, and of him +who was its head, her father! How her heart glowed with a desire to help to +make a heaven on earth, to be a 'cup of strength' to others, and when her +own days on earth should have closed, to have a place among those + + "'Immortal dead who still live on + In minds made better by their presence; live + In pulses stirred to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn + For miserable aims that end with sell; + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues.' + +"How she thus yearned 'to join the choir invisible, whose music is the +gladness of the world!' All this is known to those who had the privilege of +being near her." + +The address was preceded by a simple burial service, and was followed by a +prayer, all being given in the chapel of the cemetery. The coffin, covered +with the finest floral tributes, was then borne to the grave, where the +burial service was completed, and was followed by a prayer and the +benediction. Although the day was a disagreeable one and rain was falling, +the chapel was crowded, and many not being able to gain admittance stood +about the open grave. Beside her personal friends and her family there were +present many persons noted for their literary or scientific attainments, On +the lid of the coffin was this inscription: + + MARY ANN CROSS. + ("George Eliot") + Born 22d Nov., 1819; died 22d Dec., 1880. + + Quilla fonte + Che spande di parlay si largo flume. + +[Footnote: From Dante, and has been rendered into English thus: + + That fountain + Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech.] + + +The novel which had been begun was left a mere fragment, and in accordance +with what it was thought would have been her wish, was destroyed by her +family. Perhaps it was better that her dislike of unfinished work should be +so respected. + + + + +VI. + + +LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES. + +George Eliot was a painstaking, laborious writer. She did not proceed +rapidly, so carefully did she elaborate her pages. Her subjects were +thoroughly studied before the pen was taken in hand, patiently thought out, +planned with much care, and all available helps secured that could be had. +She threw her whole life into her work, became a part of the scenes she was +depicting; her life was absorbed until the work of writing became a painful +process both to body and mind. "Her beautifully written manuscript," says +her publisher, "free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately +and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the +inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any +of her facts or impressions from second hand; and thus, in spite of the +number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in +her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the +work's sake which she makes prominent characteristics of Adam Bede and +Stradivarius." + +When a book was completed, so intense had been her application and the +absorption of her life in her work, a period of despondency followed. When +a correspondent praised _Middlemarch_, and expressed a hope that even a +greater work might follow, she replied, "As to the 'great novel' which +remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future +books." Again, she wrote of the depression which succeeded the completion +of each of her works,-- + + Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I + can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The + responsibility of writing grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as + the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is + difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into + imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really + needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to + one's self to do it. + +Owing probably somewhat to this tendency to take a despondent view +concerning her own work, and to distrust of the leadings of her own +genius, was her habit of never reading the criticisms made on her books. +She adopted this rule, she tells one correspondent, "as a necessary +preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying her +power of writing." To another, who had written her in appreciation of her +books, she wrote this note, in which she alludes to the same habit of +shunning criticism: + + +MY DEAR MISS WELLINGTON,--The signs of your sympathy sent to me across the +wide water have touched me with the more effect because you imply that you +are young. I care supremely that my writing should be some help and +stimulus to those who have probably a long life before them. + +Mr. Lewes does not let me read criticisms on my writings. He always reads +them himself, and gives me occasional quotations, when be thinks that they +show a spirit and mode of appreciation which will win my gratitude. He has +carefully read through the articles which were accompanied by your kind +letter, and he has a high opinion of the feeling and discernment exhibited +in them. Some concluding passages which he read aloud to me are such as I +register among the grounds of any encouragement in looking backward on what +I have written, if not in looking forward to my future writing. + +Thank you, my dear young friend, whom I shall probably never know otherwise +than in this spiritual way. And certainly, apart from those relations in +life which bring daily duties and opportunities of lovingness, the most +satisfactory of all ties is this effective invisible intercourse of an +elder mind with a younger. + +The quotation in your letter from Hawthorne's book offers an excellent type +both for men and women in the value it assigns to that order of work which +is called subordinate but becomes ennobling by being finely done. +[Footnote: A reference to Hilda's ceasing to consider herself an original +artist in the presence of the great masters. "Beholding the miracles of +beauty which the old masters had achieved, the world seemed already rich +enough in original designs and nothing more was so desirable as to diffuse +these selfsame beauties more widely among mankind.'--So Hilda became a +copyist."] Yours, with sincere obligations, + +M.E. LEWES. + +By the way, Mr. Lewes tells me that you ascribe to me a hatred of blue +eyes--which is amusing, since my own eyes are blue-gray. I am not in any +sense one of the "good haters;" on the contrary, my weaknesses all verge +toward an excessive tolerance and a tendency to melt off the outlines of +things. + +THE PRIORY, +21 North Bank, Regent's Park, Jan. 16, '73. + +[Footnote: From The Critic of December 31, 1881. This letter was addressed +to Miss Alice Wellington, now Mrs. Rollins.] + +Her sensitiveness was great, and contact with an unappreciative and +unsympathetic public depressing to a large degree. It was a part of that +shrinking away from the world which kept her out of society, and away from +all but a select few whose tastes and sympathies were largely in accordance +with her own. Besides, she distrusted that common form of criticism which +presumes to tell an author how he ought to have written, and assumes to +itself an insight and knowledge greater than that possessed by genius +itself. Concerning the value of such criticism she wrote these pertinent +words: + + I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing + is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have + so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under + in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification + coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in + attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining + circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the + treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest. + +To the same correspondent she used even stronger words concerning her +dislike of ordinary criticism. + + Do not expect "criticism" from me. I hate "sitting in the seat of + judgment," and I would rather try to impress the public generally with + the sense that they may get the best result from a book without + necessarily forming an "opinion" about it, than I would rush into + stating opinions of my own. The floods of nonsense printed in the form + of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of our times--a chief + obstacle to true culture. + +It is not to be forgotten, however, that George Eliot had done much +critical work before she became a novelist, and that much of it was of a +keen and cutting nature. Severely as she was handled by the critics, no one +of them was more vigorous than was her treatment of Young and Cumming. Even +in later years, when she took up the critical pen, the effect was felt. Mr. +Lecky did not pass gently through her hands when she reviewed his +_Rationalism in Europe_. Her criticisms in _Theophrastus Such_ were +penetrating and severe. + +For the same reason, she read few works of contemporary fiction, that her +mind might not be biassed and that she might not be discouraged in her own +work. Always busy with some special subject which absorbed all her time and +strength, she could give little attention to contemporary literature. To +one correspondent she wrote,-- + + My constant groan is, that I must leave so much of the greatest writing + which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time. + +The style adopted by George Eliot is for the most part fresh, vital and +energetic. It is pure in form, rich in illustrations, strong and expressive +in manner. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, and she is +sometimes turgid and dry, again gaudy and verbose. Sententious in her +didactic passages, she is pure and noble in her sentiment, poetical and +impressive in her descriptions of nature. Her diction is choice, her range +of expression large, and she admirably suits her words to the thought she +would present. There is a rich, teeming fulness of life in her books, the +canvas is crowded, there is movement and action. An abundance of passion, +delicate feeling and fine sensibility is expressed. + +The critics have almost universally condemned the plots of George Eliot's +novels for their want of unity. They tell us that the flow of events is +often not orderly, while improbable scenes are introduced, superfluous +incidents are common, the number of characters is too great, and the +analysis of character impedes the unity of events. These objections are not +always vital, and sometimes they are mere objections rather than genuine +criticisms. Instances of failure to follow the best methods may be cited in +abundance, one of which is seen in the first two chapters in _Daniel +Deronda_ being placed out of their natural order. The opening scenes in +_The Spanish Gypsy_ seem quite unnecessary to the development of the plot, +while the last two scenes of the second book are so fragmentary and +unconnected with the remainder of the story as to help it but little. In +the middle of _Adam Bede_ are several chapters devoted to the birthday +party, which are quite unnecessary to the development of the action. +_Daniel Deronda_ contains two narratives which are in many respects almost +entirely distinct from each other, and the reader is made to alternate +between two worlds that have little in common. There is much of the +improbable in the account of the Transome estate in _Felix Holt_, while the +closing scenes in the life of Tito Melema in _Romola_ are more tragical +than natural. Yet these defects are incidental to her method and art rather +than actual blemishes on her work. For the most part, her work is +thoroughly unitary, cause leads naturally into effect, and there is a moral +development of character such as is found in life itself. Her plots are +strongly constructed, in simple outlines, are easily comprehended and kept +in mind, and the leading motive holds steadily through to the end. Her +analytical method often makes an apparent interruption of the narrative, +and the unity of purpose is frequently developed through the philosophic +purport of the novel rather than in its literary form. Direct narrative is +often hindered, it is true, by her habit of studying the remote causes and +effects of character, but she never wanders far enough to forget the real +purpose had in view. She holds the many elements of her story well under +command, she concentrates them upon some one aim, and she gives to her +story a tragic unity of great moral splendor and effect. Even the diverse +elements, the minute side-studies and the profuse comments, are all woven +into the organic structure, and are essential to the unfoldment of the +plot. They seem to be quite irrelevant interruptions until we look back +upon the completed whole and study the perfected intent of the story. Then +we see how essential they are to the epic finish of the novel, and to that +total effect which a work of genius creates. Then it is seen that a +dramatic unity and well-studied intent hold together every part and make a +completed structure of great beauty. + +Her dramatic skill is great, and her dialogues thoroughly good. Her +characters are full of power and life, and stand out as distinct +personalities. The conversation is sprightly, strong and wise. Probably no +novelist has created so many clearly cut, positive, intensely personal +characters as George Eliot, and this individualism is depicted as acting +within social and hereditary limits; hence dramatic action is constantly +arising. Shakspere and Browning only surpass her in dramatic power, as in +the creation of character. Yet her method of producing character differs +essentially from that of Shakspere, Homer and all the great creators. She +describes character, while they present it. Homer gives no description of +Helen; but of her beauty and her person we learn all the more because we +are left to find them out from the influence they produce. We know Hamlet +because he lives before us, and impresses his personality upon every +feature of the great drama in which he appears. George Eliot's manner is to +describe, to minutely portray, and to dissect to the last muscle and nerve. + +She has also a rich and racy humor, sensitive and sober, refined and +delicate. She does not caricature folly with Dickens, or laugh at weakness +with Thackeray; but she shows us the limitations of life in such a manner +as to produce the finest humor. She is never repulsive, grotesque or +vulgar; but wise, laughter-loving and sympathetic. Her humor is pure and +homely as it is delicate and exquisite; and it is invariably human and +noble. She has an intense love and a wonderful appreciation of the +ludicrous, sees whatever is incongruous In life, and makes her laughter +genial and joyous. Her humor is the very quintessence of human experience, +strikes deadly blows at what is unjust and untrue. It is both intellectual +and moral, as Professor Dowden suggests. "The grotesque in human character +is reclaimed from the province of the humorous by her affections, when that +is possible, and is shown to be a pathetic form of beauty. Her humor +usually belongs to her entire conception of character, and cannot be +separated from it." She laughs at all, but sneers at no one,--for she has +keen sympathy with all. + +George Eliot is not so good a satirist as she is humorist. Her humor is as +fresh and delightful as a morning in May, but her satire is nearly always +labored. She is too much in sympathy with human nature to laugh at its +follies and its weaknesses. Its joys, its bubbling humor and delight she +can appreciate, as well as all the pain and sorrow that come to men and +women; and she can fully enter into the life of her characters of every +kind, and portray their inmost motives and impulses; but the foibles of the +world she cannot treat in the vein of the satirist. In her earlier books +she is said to have been under the influence of Thackeray, but her satire +is heavy, and lacks his light touch and his tender undertone of compassion. +Here is a good specimen of her earlier attempts to be satirical: + + When a man is happy enough to win the affections of a sweet girl, who + can soothe his cares with crochet, and respond to all his most + cherished ideas with beaded urn-rugs and chair-covers in German wool, + he has, at least, a guarantee of domestic comfort, whatever trials may + await him out of doors. What a resource it is under fatigue and + irritation to have your drawing-room well supplied with small mats, + which would always be ready if you ever wanted to set anything on them! + And what styptic for a bleeding heart can equal copious squares of + crochet-work, which are useful for slipping down the moment you touch + them? [Footnote: Janet's Repentance, chapter III.] + +Similar to this is the account of Mrs. Pullett's grief. + + It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity + Introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization--the + sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow + of a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with + several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate + ribbon-strings--what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened + child of civilization the abandonment characteristic of grief is + checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an + interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and + eyes half-blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too + devious step through a door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves, + too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility produces a + composition of forces by which she takes a line that just clears the + door-post. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her + strings and throws them languidly backward--a touching gesture, + indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry + moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm. As the tears + subside a little, and with her head leaning backward at an angle that + will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when + grief, which has made all things else a weariness, has itself become + weary; she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and adjusts their + clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying to + her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state. [Footnote: + Mill on the Floss, chapter VII.] + +In her later books the strained efforts at satire are partially avoided, +and though the satirical spirit is not withdrawn in any measure, yet it is +more delicately managed. It is less open, less blunt, but hardly more +subtle and penetrative. It is still a strained effort, and it is quite too +hard and bare in statement. We are told in _Middlemarch_ that + + Mrs. Bulstrode's _naïve_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the + nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the + consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a + sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable + seriousness. + +Such a turning of sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, +and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton +justly calls it, which is found in all of George Eliot's books:-- + + Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the + things whence its subtile interlacings are swung--are scarcely + perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from + blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and + lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs + and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life toward another, visions of + completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web + from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience + supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure--in spite, too, of + medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes + presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of + scientific inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic + love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose. + [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XXXVI.] + +This introduction of a scientific illustration will serve to bring another +tendency of George Eliot's to our attention. She makes a frequent use of +her large learning and culture in her novels. In the earlier ones a Greek +quotation is to be found here and there, while in the later, German seems +to have the preference. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she describes Bob +Jakin's thumb as "a singularly broad specimen of that difference between +the man and the monkey." Such references to recent scientific speculations +are not unfrequent. If they serve to show the tendencies of her mind +towards knowledge and large thought, they also indicate a too ready +willingness to imbibe, and to use in a popular manner, what is not +thoroughly assimilated truth. The force of such an illustration as the +following must be lost on most novel-readers:-- + + Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings toward + women than toward grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife + in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the + chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive + races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to + speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage tie. + [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter VI.] + +It is doubtful whether any reader will quite catch the meaning of this +sentence: + + Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of + prematrimonial acquaintanceship? [Footnote: Ibid, chapter II.] + +Many of her critics have asserted that this use of the language of science, +and the adoption of the speculative ideas of the time, had largely +increased upon George Eliot in her later books; but this is not true. In +her _Westminster Review_ essays both tendencies are strongly developed. In +one of them she says, "The very chyme and chyle of a rector are conscious +of the gown and band." Again, she says,-- + + The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of + ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy required + for spontaneous activity; the voltaic pile is not strong enough to + produce crystallization. + +It is not just to George Eliot, however, to refer to such mere casual +blemishes, without insisting on the largeness of thought, the wealth of +knowledge, and the comprehensive understanding of human experience with +which her books abound. She often turns aside to discuss the problems +suggested by the experiences of her characters, to point out how the effect +of their own thoughts and deeds re-act upon them, and to inculcate the +highest ethical lessons. In one of her "asides" she seems to reject this +method, in referring to Fielding. + + A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the + happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his + place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is + observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions + as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial + chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to + bring his arm-chair to the proscenium, and chat with us in all the + lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were + longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer + afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter + evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and + if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as + if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house. I, at least, have so + much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were + woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be + concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that + tempting range of relevancies called the universe. [Footnote: + Middlemarch, chapter XV.] + +She does not ramble away from her subject, it is true; but she likes to +pause often to discuss the doings of her personages, and to pour forth some +tender or noble thought. To many of her readers these bits of wisdom and of +sentiment are among the most valuable portions of her books, when taken in +their true environment in her pages. She has a purpose larger than that of +telling a story or of describing the loves of a few men and women. She +seeks to penetrate into the motives of life, and to reveal the hidden +springs of action; to show how people affect each other; how ideas mould +the destinies of the individual. To do all this in that large, artistic +spirit she has followed, requires that there shall be something more +than narration and conversation. That she has now and then commented +unnecessarily, and in a too-learned manner, is a very small detraction from +the interest of her books. + +In _Adam Bede_ she turns aside for a whole chapter to defend her method of +depicting accurately, minutely, in the simplest detail, the feelings, +motives, actions and surroundings of very commonplace and uninteresting +people. Her reasons for this method in novel-writing apply to all her +works, and are worthy of the author of _Adam Bede_ and _Silas Marner_. + + I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could + create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the + morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a + harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields--on + the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your + indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and + helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your + outspoken, brave justice. + + So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things + seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, + which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. + Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a + delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and the + larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility, which we + mistook for genius, is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real + unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that, + even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to + say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much + harder than to say something fine about them which is _not_ the exact + truth. + + It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in + many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a + source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous + homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my + fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic + suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn without shrinking, from + cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls and heroic warriors, to an + old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, + while the noonday light, softened, perhaps, by a screen of leaves, + falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel + and her stone jug, and all those cheap, common things which are the + precious necessaries of life to her: or I turn to that village wedding, + kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the + dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and + middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and + probably with quart pots in their hands, but with expression of + unmistakable contentment and good-will. "Foh!" says my idealistic + friend, "what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these + pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low + phase of life! what clumsy, ugly people!" + + But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, + I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have + not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, + squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions, are not + startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love among + us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the + Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; + yet, to my certain knowledge, tender hearts have beaten for them, and + their miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in + secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron who could + never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of + yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered + kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of + young heroes of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite + sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, + and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a + wife who waddles. Yes! thank God; human feeling is like the mighty + rivers that bless the earth; it does not wait for beauty--it flows with + resistless force, and brings beauty with it. + + All honor and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate + it to the utmost in men, women and children--in our gardens and in our + houses; but let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret + of proportion, but in the secret of deep sympathy. Paint us an angel, + if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the + celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face + upward, and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not + impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the regions of + Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those + heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house--those rounded-backs + and stupid, weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done + the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their + brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this + world there are so many of these common, coarse people, who have no + picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should + remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of + our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a + world of extremes. Therefore let Art always remind us of them; + therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a + life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see + beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly + the light of heaven falls on them. + + There are few prophets in the world--few sublimely beautiful women--few + heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such + rarities; I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day + fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great + multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to + make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or + romantic criminals half so frequent as your common laborer, who gets + his own bread, and eats it vulgarly, but creditably, with his own + pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy + connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a + vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal + in red scarf and green feathers; more needful that my heart should + swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the + faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman + of my own parish, who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent, and in other + respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes + whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract + of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. + [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XVII.] + +In all her earlier novels George Eliot has shown the artistic possibilities +of the humblest lives and situations. In the most ordinary lives, as in the +case of the persons described in _Silas Marner_, and in the least +picturesque incidents of human existence, there is an interest for us +which, when properly brought out, will be sure to absorb our attention. She +has abundantly proved that dramatic situations, historic surroundings and +heroic attitudes are not necessary for the highest purposes of the +novelist. Hers are heart tragedies and spiritual histories; for life has +its tragic, pathetic and humorous elements of the keenest interest under +every social condition. Her realism is relieved, as in actual life, by +love, helpfulness and pathos; by deep sorrow, sufferings patiently borne, +and tender sympathy for others' woes. And if she sometimes sketches with +too free a hand the coarse and repulsive features of life, this fault is +relieved by her tender sympathy with the sorrows and weaknesses of her +characters. She asks her readers not to grudge Amos Barton his lovely wife, +that "large, fair, gentle Madonna," with an imposing mildness and the +unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood. He was a man of very middling +qualities and a quite stupid sort of person, but he loved his wife and made +the most he could of such talents as he had. She pleads in his behalf by +saying,-- + + I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are + nobody's pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a + pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest + Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair. + +Much the larger number of characters in these novels are of the same +unpromising quality. Most of them are ignorant, uncouth and simple-minded; +yet George Eliot gives them a warm place in our hearts, and we rejoice to +have known them all. This ignorant rusticity is discovered to have charms +and attractions of its own. Especially does the reader learn that what is +most human and what is most lovely in personal character may be found +within these rough exteriors and amid these unpromising circumstances. + +Even so fine a character as Adam Bede, one of the best in all her books, +was a workman of limited education and little knowledge of the outside +world. The author does "not pretend that his was an ordinary character +among workmen." Yet such men as he are found among his class, and the noble +qualities he possessed are not out of place among workingmen. Her warm +sympathy with this class, the class in which she was born and reared, and +her earnest desire to do it justice, is seen in what she says of Adam. + + He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared here and there + in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an inheritance of + affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common + industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful, + courageous labor; they make their way upward, rarely as geniuses, most + commonly as painstaking, honest men, with the skill and conscience to + do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible + echo beyond the neighborhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure + to find there some good piece of road, some building, some application + of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform + of parish abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two + generations after them. Their employers were richer for them, the work + of their hands has worn well, and the work of their brains has guided + well the hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel + or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with lime and + red paint; in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honor at + church and at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and + daughters seated round the bright hearth on winter evenings, how + pleased they were when they first earned their twopence a day. Others + there are who die poor, and never put off the workman's coat on + week-days; they have not had the art of getting rich; but they are men + of trust, and when they die before the work is all out of them, it is + as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the master who + employed them says, "Where shall I find their like?" [Footnote: + Chapter XIX.] + +In _Amos Barton_ she states her reasons for portraying characters of so +little outward interest. Amos had none of the more manly and sturdy +qualities of Adam Bede, and yet to George Eliot it was enough that he was +human, that trouble and heartache could come to him, and that he must carry +his share of the burdens and weaknesses of the world. + + The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate, + was, you perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character; and + perhaps I am doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a + man who was so very far from remarkable,--a man whose virtues were not + heroic, and who had no undetected crime within his breast; who had not + the slightest mystery hanging about him, but was palpably and + unmistakably commonplace; who was not even in love, but had had that + complaint many years ago. "An utterly uninteresting character!" I think + I hear a lady reader exclaim,--Mrs. Farthingale, for example, who + prefers the ideal in fiction; to whom tragedy means ermine tippets, + adultery and murder; and comedy, the adventures of some personage who + is quite a "character." + + But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your + fellow-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp. At least + eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in + the last census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily + wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and + liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they + have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their + brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have + not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They + are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is + more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people--many of + them--bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the + painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows, and their sacred joys; + their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they + have mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in + their very insignificance,--in our comparison of their dim and narrow + existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which + they share? + + Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me + to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, + lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull + gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones. In that + case, I should have no fear of your not caring to know what further + befell the Rev. Amos Barton, or of your thinking the homely details I + have to tell at all beneath your attention. + +In her hands the novel becomes the means of recording the history of those +whom no history takes note of, and of bringing before the world its unnamed +and unnoted heroes. Professor Dowden says her sympathy spreads with a +powerful and even flow in every direction. In this effort she has been +eminently successful; and her loving sympathy with all that is human; her +warm-hearted faith in the weak and unfortunate; the graciousness of her +love for the common souls who are faithful and true in their way and in +their places, will excuse much greater literary faults than any into which +she has fallen. The sincere and loving humanity of her books gives them a +great charm, and an influence wide-reaching and noble. + +No one of her imitators and successors has gained anything of like power +which is given to her novels by her intense sympathy with her characters. +Others have described ignorant and coarse phases of life as something to +look at and study, but not to bring into the heart and love. George Eliot +loves her characters, has an intense affection for them, pours out her +motherliness upon them. Not so Daudet or James or Howells, who study +crude life on the surface, and because it is the fashion. There is no +heart-nearness in their work, little of passionate human desire to do +justice to phases of life hitherto neglected. She has in this regard the +genius of Scott and Hugo, who live in and with their characters, and so +make them living and real. She identifies herself with the life she +describes, and never looks at it from without, with curious and cold and +critical gaze, simply for the sake of making a novel. + +She is more at home among villagers than in the drawing-room. A profound +intuition has led her to the very heart of English life among the happier +and worthier classes of working-people. There is no squalor in her books, +no general misery, but always conscience, respectability and home-comforts. +There is something of coarseness in some of her scenes, and a realism too +bare and bald; but for the most part she has come far short of what might +have been done in picturing the repulsive and sensual side of life. In all +her books there is abundant evidence of her painstaking, and of her anxious +desire to be truthful. She has studied life on the spot, and gives to it +the local coloring. In writing _Romola_, she searched into every corner of +Florentine history, custom and thought. She is true to every touch of local +incident and manner. In _Daniel Deronda_, she made herself familiar with +Jewish life, and has given the race aroma to her portraits and scenes. She +is thoroughly a realist, but a realist with a wide and attractive sympathy, +a profound insight into motives and impulses, and a strong imagination. She +is too great a genius to believe that the novelist can describe life as the +geologist describes the strata of the earth. She feels with her characters; +she has that form of insight or imagination which enables her to apprehend +a mind totally unlike her own. This is what saves the history of Hetty from +coarseness and repulsiveness. It is Hetty's own account of her life-woes. +Its infinite pathos, and the tenderness and pity it awakens, destroys our +concern for the other features of the narrative. + +Psychologic analysis seems out of place in a novel, but with George Eliot +it is a chief purpose of her writing. She lays bare the soul, opens its +inmost secrets, and its anatomy is minutely studied. She devotes more space +to the inner life and character of her personalities than to her narratives +and conversations. She traces some of her characters through a long process +of development, and shows how they are affected by the experiences of life. +Her more important characters grow up under her pen, develop under the +influence of thought or sorrow. Novelists usually carry their characters +through their pages on the same level of mind and life; and George Eliot +not only does this with her uncultured characters, but she also shows the +soul in the process of unfolding or expanding. None of her leading +characters are at the end what they were in the beginning; with the most +subtle power she traces the growth of Tito Melema's mind through its +perilous descent into selfish corruption, and with equal or even greater +skill she unfolds the history of Daniel Deronda's development under the +impulse to find for himself a life-mission. In this direction George Eliot +is always great. Her skill is remarkable, albeit she has not sounded either +the highest or the lowest ranges of human capacity. The range within which +her studies are made is a wide one, however, and within it she has shown +herself the master of human motives and a consummate artist in portraying +the soul. She devotes the utmost care to describing some plain person who +appears in her pages for but a moment, and is as much concerned that he +shall be truly presented as if he were of the utmost consequence. More than +one otherwise very ordinary character acquires under this treatment of hers +the warmest interest for the reader. And she describes such persons, +because their influence is subtle or momentous as it affects the lives of +others. Personages and incidents play a part in her books not for the sake +of the plot or to secure dramatic unity, but for the sake of manifesting +the soul, in order that the unfoldment of psychologic analysis may go on. +The unity she aims at is that of showing the development of the soul under +influence of some one or more decisive impulses or as affected by given +surroundings. The lesser characters, while given a nature quite their own, +help in the process of unfolding the personality which gives central +purpose to each of her novels. The influence of opposite natures on each +other, the moulding power of circumstances, and especially the bearings of +hereditary impulses, all play a prominent part in this process of +psychologic analysis. + +Through page after page and chapter after chapter she traces the feelings +and thoughts of her characters. How each decisive event appears to them is +explained at length. Moreover, the most trivial trait of character, the +most incidental impulse, is described in all its particularity. Through +many pages Hetty's conduct in her own bedroom is laid before the reader, +and in no other way could her nature have been so brought to our knowledge. +Her shallow lightness of heart and her vanity could not be realized by +ordinary intercourse with one so pretty and so bright; but George Eliot +describes Hetty's taking out the earrings given her by Arthur, and we see +what she is. The author seeks to open before us the inner life of that +childish soul, and we see into its nature and realize all its capacities +for good and evil. + + Oh, the delight of taking out that little box and looking at the + earrings! Do not reason about it, my philosophical reader, and say that + Hetty, being very pretty, must have known that it did not signify + whether she had any ornaments or not; and that, moreover, to look at + earrings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could + hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to + the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's + natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest + yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were + studying the psychology of a canary-bird, and only watch the movements + of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an + unconscious smile at the earrings nestled in the little box. Ah! you + think, it is for the sake of the person who has given them to her, and + her thoughts are gone back now to the moment when they were put into + her hands. No; else why should she have cared to have earrings rather + than anything else? and I know that she had longed for earrings from + among all the ornaments she could imagine. + +This faculty of soul interpretation may be illustrated by innumerable +passages and from characters the most diverse in nature and capacity. As an +instance of her ability to interpret uncommon minds, those affected in some +peculiar manner, reference may be made to Baldassarre, in _Romola_. The +descriptions of this man's sufferings, the giving way of his mind under +them, and the purpose of revenge which took complete possession of him, +form a study in character unsurpassed. For subtle insight into the action +of a morbid mind, and for a majestic conception of human passion, the +passage wherein Baldassarre finds he can again read his Greek book is most +worthy of attention. + +Her ability to delineate a growing mind, and a mind at work under the +influence of new and rare experiences, is shown in the case of Daniel +Deronda. His quiet love of ease as a boy is described as he sits one day +watching the falling rain, and meditates on the possibility which has been +suggested to him, that his is not to be the life of a gentleman. + + He knew a great deal of what it was to be a gentleman by inheritance, + and without thinking much about himself--for he was a boy of active + perceptions, and easily forgot his own existence in that of Robert + Bruce--he had never supposed that he could be shut out from such a lot, + or have a very different part in the world from that of the uncle who + petted him... But Daniel's tastes were altogether in keeping with his + nurture: his disposition was one in which every-day scenes and habits + beget not _ennui_ or rebellion but delight, affection, aptitudes; + and now the lad had been stung to the quick by the idea that his + uncle--perhaps his father--thought of a career for him which was + totally unlike his own, and which he knew very well was not thought of + among possible destinations for the sons of English gentlemen. + +The mind of this lad expands; ideal desires awake in him; there is a +yearning for a life of noble knight-errantry in some heroic cause. The +reader is permitted to watch from step to step the growth of this longing, +and to behold each new deed by which it is expressed. He craves for a +broader life, but he is surrounded by such a social atmosphere as to make +his longing futile. As a young man who is seeking to know what there is in +the world for him to do, and who is eager for some task that is to end in a +larger life for man, he is again described. + + It happened that the very vividness of his impressions had often made + him the more enigmatic to his friends, and had contributed to an + apparent indefiniteness in his sentiments. His early wakened + sensibility and reflectiveness, had developed into a many-sided + sympathy, which threatened to hinder any persistent course of action: + as soon as he took up any antagonism, though only in thought, he seemed + to himself like the Sabine warriors in the memorable story--with + nothing to meet his spear but flesh of his flesh, and objects that he + loved. His imagination had so wrought itself to the habit of seeing + things as they probably appeared to others, that a strong partisanship, + unless it were against an immediate oppression, had become an + insincerity for him. His plenteous, flexible sympathy had ended by + falling into one current with that reflective analysis which tends to + neutralize sympathy. Few men were able to keep themselves clearer of + vices than he; yet he hated vices mildly, being used to think of them + less in the abstract than as a part of mixed human natures having an + individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to trace with + understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he was fervidly + democratic in his feeling for the multitude, and yet, through his + affections and imagination, intensely conservative; voracious of + speculations on government and religion, yet loath to part with + long-sanctioned forms which, for him, were quick with memories and + sentiments that no argument could lay dead... He was ceasing to care + for knowledge--he had no ambition for practice--unless they could both + be gathered up into one current with his emotions; and he dreaded, as + if it were a dwelling-place of lost souls, that dead anatomy of culture + which turns the universe into a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and + knows, not everything, but everything else about everything--as if one + should be ignorant of nothing concerning the scent of violets except + the scent itself, for which one had no nostril. But how and whence was + the needed event to come?--the influence that would justify partiality, + and make him what he longed to be, yet was unable to make himself--an + organic part of social life, instead of roaming in it like a yearning + disembodied spirit, stirred with a vague, social passion, but without + fixed local habitation to render fellowship real? To make a little + difference for the better was what he was not contented to live + without; but how make it? It is one thing to see your road, another to + cut it. + +He rescues Mirah and sets out in search of her brother. He finds Mordecai, +and gradually a way is opened to him along which his yearning is satisfied. +Step by step the reader is permitted to trace the expansion of his mind. A +window is opened into his soul, and we see its every movement as Daniel is +led on to find the mission which was to be his. When that task is fully +accepted he says to Mordecai,-- + + Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some + ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a + multitude--some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty, + and not to be striven for as a personal prize. + +In her strong tendency to psychologic analysis George Eliot much resembles +Robert Browning. It is the life of passion and ideas which both alike +delight to describe. They greatly differ, however, in their methods of +dissecting the inner life. Browning lays bare the soul in some startling +experience, George Eliot by the slow development of the mind through all +the stages of growth. He is impersonal, but she is always present to make +comments and to expound the causes of growth. Yet her characters are as +clear-cut, as individual, as his. His analysis is the more rapid, subtle +and complete in immediate expression; hers is the more penetrating, +vigorous and interesting. His lightning flash sees the soul through and +through in the present moment; her calmer and intenser gaze penetrates the +long succession of hidden causes by which the soul is shaped to its earthly +destiny. + +Any account of George Eliot which dwells only on her humor and sarcasm, her +realism and her powers of analysis, does her grave injustice. She has also +in rare degree the power of artistic constructiveness, a strong and +brilliant imagination and genius of almost the highest range. She can +create character as well as analyze it, and with that brilliant command of +resources which indicates a high order of genius. She had culture almost +equal to Goethe's, and quite equal to Mrs. Browning's; and she had that +wide sympathy with life which was his, with an equal capacity for their +expression in an artistic reconstruction of human experience. While Mr. R. +H. Hutton is justified in saying that "few minds at once so speculative and +so creative have ever put their mark on literature," yet the critic needs +to beware lest he give the speculative tendency in her mind a place too +prominent compared with that assigned to her creative genius. The poet and +the novelist are so seldom speculative, so seldom put into their creations +the constant burden of great thoughts, that when one appears who does this, +it is likely to be dwelt upon too largely by the critics. George Eliot +speculates about life and its experiences, and it is evident she had a +philosophy of life at her command; but it is quite as true that she soars +on pinions free into the heavens of genius, and brings back the song which +no other has sung, and which is a true song. She has created characters, +she has described the histories of souls, in a manner which will cause some +of her books to endure for all time. If she has allied her genius to +current culture and speculation, it has in that way been given continuity +of purpose and definiteness of aim. The genius is there and cannot be +hidden or obscured; and those who love what is great and noble will be +profoundly attracted by her books. If a great thinker, she is still more +truly a great literary artist; and such is the largeness and gracious power +of her genius that those who do not love her speculations will be drawn to +her in spite of all objections. Her genius is generous, expansive, +illuminative, profound. Her creativeness is an elemental power; new births +are to be found in her books; life has grown under her moulding touch. + + + + +VII. + + +THEORY OF THE NOVEL. + +Before George Eliot began her career as a novelist she had already turned +her attention to what is good and bad in fiction-writing, and had given +expression to her own theory of the novel. What she wrote on this subject +is excellent in itself, but it now has an additional interest in view of +her success as a novelist, and as throwing light on her conception of the +purposes to be followed in the writing of fiction. In what she wrote on +this subject two ideas stand out distinctly, that women are to find in +novel-writing a literary field peculiarly adapted to their capacities, and +that the novel should be a true portraiture of life. + +She was a zealous advocate of woman's capacity to excel as a novelist, and +she saw in this form of literature a field especially adapted to her +greater powers of emotion and sympathy. Very generous and appreciative are +her references to the lady novelists whom she defends, the excellence of +whose work she maintains entitles them to the highest places as literary +artists. In the article on "Lady Novelists" she has drawn attention both to +those qualities in which woman may excel and to those in which she may +fail. In writing later of "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" she criticised +unsparingly those women who write novels without comprehending life or any +of its problems, and who write in a merely artificial manner. The width of +her own culture, the vigor of her critical talent, the largeness of her +conception of life and its interests, are well expressed in these essays. +Only a large mind could have so truly conceived the real nature of woman's +relations to literature, and expressed them in a spirit so intelligent and +comprehensive. She would have the whole of life portrayed, and she believes +only a woman can truly speak for women. But her faith in woman seems not to +have been of the revolutionary character. She rather preferred that women +should achieve a higher social condition by deeds than by words. A great +intellectual career like her own, which places a woman in the front rank of +literary creators, does more to elevate the position of women than any +amount of agitation in favor of suffrage. That she sought for the highest +intellectual achievement, and that she labored to attain the widest results +of scholarship, is greatly to her credit; but more to her credit is it, +that she made no claim upon the public as a woman, but only as a literary +artist. She asked that her work should be judged on its literary merits, as +the product of intellect, and not with reference to her sex. While +believing that woman can do her work best by being true to the instincts, +sympathies and capacities of her sex, yet she would have the same standard +of literary judgment applied to women as to men. Its truthfulness, its +reality, its power to widen our sympathies and enlarge our culture, its +measure of genius and moral power, is the true test to be applied to any +literary work. Such being her conception of the manner in which women +should be judged when becoming literary creators, she had no excuses to +offer for those who make use of prejudices and a false culture in their own +behalf. She says that + + The most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form, + because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the solid + education of women. + +That she believed in the solid education of women is apparent in her own +efforts towards obtaining it for herself, and her conception of what is to +be done with it was large and generous. Mere learning she did not hold to +be an adornment in a woman. The culture must be transmuted into life-power, +and be poured forth, not as oracular wisdom in silly novels, but as +sympathy and enlarged comprehension of the daily duties of life. When +educated women "mistake vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and +affectation for originality," she is not surprised that men regard +rhodomontade as the native accent of woman's intellect, or that they come +to the conclusion that "the average nature of women is too shallow and +feeble a soil to bear much tillage." + + It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very + superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in + the world; but we have not now to contest their opinion--we are only + pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have + volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We + do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by + associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her + knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cultured woman, + like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive + for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in + something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from + which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and + things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right + estimate of herself.... She does not write books to confound + philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight + them, in conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she + understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you _can't_ + understand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw + material of culture,--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest + essence. + +After this estimate of the value of culture to women, it is interesting to +turn to George Eliot's words concerning the legitimate work which women can +perform in literature. What she says on this subject shows that she not +only had culture, but also the wisdom which is its highest result. She saw +that while a woman is to ask for no leniency towards her work because she +is a woman, yet that she is not to imitate men or to ignore her sex. She is +to portray life as a woman sees it, with a woman's sympathies and +experiences. To interpret the feminine side of life is her legitimate +province as a literary artist. + + If we regard literature as the expression of the emotions, the whims, + the caprices, the enthusiasms, the fluctuating idealisms which move + each epoch, we shall not be far wrong; and inasmuch as women + necessarily take part in these things, they ought to give them _their_ + expression. And this leads us to the heart of the question, what does + the literature of women mean? It means this: while it is impossible for + men to express life otherwise than as they know it--and they can only + know it profoundly according to their own experience--the advent of + female literature promises woman's view of life, woman's experience; in + other words, a new element. Make what distinctions you please in the + social world, it still remains true that men and women have different + organizations, consequently different experiences. To know life you + must have both sides depicted. Let him paint what he knows. And if you + limit woman's sphere to the domestic circle, you must still recognize + the concurrent necessity of domestic life finding its homeliest and + truest expression in the woman who lives it. + + Keeping to the abstract heights we have chosen, too abstract and + general to be affected by exceptions, we may further say that the + masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect, + and the feminine by the predominance of the emotions. According to this + rough division, the regions of philosophy would be assigned to men, + those of literature to women. We need scarcely warn the reader against + too rigorous an interpretation of this statement, which is purposely + exaggerated the better to serve as a signpost. It is quite true that no + such absolute distinction will be found in authorship. There is no man + whose mind is shrivelled up into pure intellect; there is no woman + whose intellect is completely absorbed by her emotions. But in most men + the intellect does not move in such inseparable alliance with the + emotions as in most women, and hence, although often not so great as in + women, yet the intellect is more commonly dominant. In poets, artists, + and men of letters, _par excellence_, we observe this feminine trait, + that their intellect habitually moves in alliance with their emotions; + and one of the best descriptions of poetry was that given by Professor + Wilson, as the "intellect colored by the feelings." + + Woman, by her greater affectionateness, her greater range and depth + of emotional experience, is well fitted to give expression to + the emotional facts of life, and demands a place in literature + corresponding to that she occupies in society; and that literature + must be greatly benefited thereby, follows from the definition we have + given of literature. + + But hitherto, in spite of illustrations, the literature of woman has + fallen short of its function, owing to a very natural and a very + explicable weakness--it has been too much a literature of imitation. To + write as men write, is the aim and besetting sin of women; to write as + women, is the real office they have to perform. Our definition of + literature includes this necessity. If writers are bound to express + what they have really known, felt and suffered, that very obligation + imperiously declares they shall not quit their own point of view for + the point of view of others. To imitate is to abdicate. We are in no + need of more male writers; we are in need of genuine female experience. + The prejudices, notions, passions and conventionalisms of men are amply + illustrated; let us have the same fulness with respect to women. + Unhappily the literature of women may be compared with that of Rome: no + amount of graceful talent can disguise the internal defect. Virgil, + Ovid and Catullus were assuredly gifted with delicate and poetic + sensibility; but their light is, after all, the light of moons + reflected from the Grecian suns, and such as brings little life with + its rays, To speak in Greek, to think in Greek, was the ambition of all + cultivated Romans, who could not see that it would be a grander thing + to utter their pure Roman natures in sincere originality. So of women. + The throne of intellect has so long been occupied by men, that women + naturally deem themselves bound to attend the court. Greece domineered + over Rome; its intellectual supremacy was recognized, and the only way + of rivalling it seemed to be imitation. Yet not so did Rome vanquish + Pyrrhus and his elephants; not by employing elephants to match his, but + by Roman valor. + + Of all departments of literature, fiction is the one to which, by + nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women + will of course be found competent to the highest success in other + departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The + domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an + appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for + that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the + feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms the story + of a woman's life." The joys and sorrows of affection, the incidents of + domestic life, the aspirations and fluctuations of emotional life, + assume typical forms in the novel. Hence we may be prepared to find + women succeeding better in _finesse_ of detail, in pathos and + sentiment, while men generally succeed better in the construction of + plots and the delineation of character. Such a novel as _Tom Jones_ or + _Vanity Fair_ we shall not get from a woman, nor such an effort of + imaginative history as _Ivanhoe_ or _Old Mortality_; but Fielding, + Thackeray and Scott are equally excluded from such perfection in its + kind as _Pride and Prejudice_, _Indiana_ or _Jane Eyre_. As an artist + Jane Austen surpasses all the male novelists that ever lived; and for + eloquence and depth of feeling no man approaches George Sand. + + We are here led to another curious point in our subject, viz., the + influence of sorrow upon female literature. It may be said without + exaggeration that almost all literature has some remote connection with + suffering. "Speculation," said Novalis, "is disease." It certainly + springs from a vague disquiet. Poetry is analogous to the pearl which + the oyster secretes in its malady. + + "Most wretched men + Are cradled into poetry by wrong, + They learn in suffering what they teach in song." + + What Shelley says of poets, applies with greater force to women. If + they turn their thoughts to literature, it is--when not purely an + imitative act--always to solace by some intellectual activity the + sorrow that in silence wastes their lives, and by a withdrawal of the + intellect from the contemplation of their pain, or by a transmutation + of their secret anxieties into types, they escape from the pressure of + that burden. If the accidents of her position make her solitary and + inactive, or if her thwarted affections shut her somewhat from that + sweet domestic and maternal sphere to which her whole being + spontaneously moves, she turns to literature as to another sphere. We + do not here simply refer to those notorious cases where literature was + taken up with the avowed and conscious purpose of withdrawing thoughts + from painful subjects; but to the unconscious, unavowed influence of + domestic disquiet and unfulfilled expectations, in determining the + sufferer to intellectual activity. The happy wife and busy mother are + only forced into literature by some hereditary organic tendency, + stronger even than the domestic; and hence it is that the cleverest + women are not those who have written books. + +In the later essay on "Silly Novels" her powers of sarcasm were fully +displayed. It showed keen critical powers, and a clear insight into the +defects inherent in most novel-writing. She spared no faults, had no mercy +for presumption, and condemned unsparingly the pretence of culture. +She described four kinds of silly novels, classing them as being of the +_mind-and-millinery_, the _oracular, the _white-neck-cloth_, and the +_modern-antique_ varieties. All her powers of analysis and insight shown +in her novels appeared in this article. + +Severe as her criticism is, it is always just. It aims at the presentation +of a truer conception of the purpose of novel-writing, and women are +judged simply as literary workers. This criticism is based on the clearest +apprehension of why it is that women fail as novel-writers; that it is not +because they are women, but because they are false to nature and to the +simplest conditions of literary art. These women write poor novels because +they aim at fine writing, and believe they must be learned and +grandiloquent. They ignore what they see about them every day, and which, +if they were to describe it in simple language, would give them real power. +It is this falsity in thought, method and purpose which is so severely +condemned. And it is the very justness of the criticism which makes it +severe, which gives to a true description of these novels the nature of a +stinging sarcasm. That these women are praised by the critics she justly +regards as a sure indication of their incapacity, or a sign of man's +chivalry towards the other sex, which does not permit him to speak the +truth about what he knows to be so false and immature. She also sees that +what women need is to be told the truth, and to be compelled to accept the +just consequences of their work, + + The standing apology for women who become writers without any special + qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres of + occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for + the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to + bad poetry. But society, like "matter" and her Majesty's Government, + and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as + well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes from + necessity, we believe there are three who write from vanity; and + besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact + of working for one's bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind + of literature is not likely to have been produced under such + circumstances. "In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly + novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness. + + Happily we are not dependent on argument to prove that fiction is a + department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully + equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our + memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but + among the very finest;--novels, too, that have a precious specialty, + lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No + educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of + fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid + requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form and yet + be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements--genuine + observation, humor and passion. But it is precisely this absence + of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of + novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very + grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here + certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and + incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute + _technique_ is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of + mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers + for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a + writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have + again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose + to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, + aussi, je joue de la flute;"--a fable which we commend, at parting, to + the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to + the number of "silly novels by lady novelists." + +Her praise of the great novelists is as enthusiastic as her condemnation of +the silly ones is severe. It is interesting to note that in the first of +these papers she selects Jane Austen and George Sand as the chiefest among +women novelists, and that she praises them for the truthfulness of their +portraitures of life, nor is she any the less aware of the defects of these +masters than of the deficiencies of silly women who write novels. She finds +that Jane Austen never penetrates into the deeper spiritual experiences of +life, and that George Sand lacks in that moral poise and purity which is so +necessary to the finest literary effort. Her sketches of these women are as +truthful as they are interesting. + + First and foremost let Jane Austen be named, the greatest artist that + has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery + over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in human nature + Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of + passionate existence into which she has never set foot; but although + this is obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she has + risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not + seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a + perfect orb and vital. Life, as it appears to an English gentlewoman + peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in + her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest + for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual experience of + life; you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel + something of personal affection towards them. The marvellous reality + and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led + Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspere. If the whole force of the + distinction which lies in that epithet _prose_ be fairly appreciated, + no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspere it + would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely + demarcated within the limits of their kind. We do not find such + profound psychological insight as may be found in George Sand (not to + mention male writers), but taking the type to which the characters + belong, we see the most intimate and accurate knowledge in all Miss + Austen's creations. + + Only cultivated minds fairly appreciate the exquisite art of Miss + Austen. Those who demand the stimulus of effects, those who can only + see by strong lights and shadows, will find her tame and uninteresting. + We may illustrate this by one detail. Lucy Steele's bad English, so + delicately and truthfully indicated, would in the hands of another have + been more obvious, more "effective" in its exaggeration, but the loss + of this comic effect is more than replaced to the cultivated reader by + his relish of the nice discrimination visible in its truthfulness. And + so of the rest. _Strong_ lights are unnecessary, _true_ lights being + at command. The incidents, the characters, the dialogue--all are of + every-day life, and so truthfully presented that to appreciate the art + we must try to imitate it, or carefully compare it with that of others. + + We are but echoing an universal note of praise in speaking thus highly + of her works, and it is from no desire of simply swelling that chorus + of praise that we name her here, but to call attention to the peculiar + excellence, at once womanly and literary, which has earned this + reputation. Of all imaginative writers she is the most _real_. Never + does she transcend her own actual experience, never does her pen trace + a line that does not touch the experience of others. Herein we + recognize the first quality of literature. We recognize the second and + more special quality of womanliness in the tone and point of view; they + are novels written by a woman, an Englishwoman, a gentlewoman; no + signature could disguise that fact; and because she has so faithfully + (although unconsciously) kept to her own womanly point of view, her + works are durable. There is nothing of the _doctrinaire_ in Jane + Austen; not a trace of woman's "mission;" but as the most truthful, + charming, humorous, pure-minded, quick-witted and unexaggerated of + writers, female literature has reason to be proud of her. + +And this is her suggestive portrait of the other, drawn with that skill +which is only displayed when one genius interprets another through +community of feeling and purpose. + + Of greater genius, and incomparably deeper experience, George Sand + represents woman's literature more illustriously and more obviously. In + her, quite apart from the magnificent gifts of nature, we see the + influence of sorrow as a determining impulse to write, and the abiding + consciousness of the womanly point of view as the subject matter of her + writings. In vain has she chosen the mask of a man: the features of a + woman are everywhere visible. Since Goethe no one has been able to say + with so much truth, "My writings are my confessions." Her biography + lies there, presented, indeed, in a fragmentary shape and under wayward + disguises, but nevertheless giving to the motley groups the strong and + uumistakable charm of reality. Her grandmother, by whom she was brought + up, disgusted at her not being a boy, resolved to remedy the misfortune + as far as possible by educating her like a boy. We may say of this, as + of all the other irregularities of her strange and exceptional life, + that whatever unhappiness and error may be traceable thereto, its + influence on her writings has been beneficial, by giving a greater + range to her experience. It may be selfish to rejoice over the malady + which secretes a pearl, but the possessor of the pearl may at least + congratulate himself that at any rate the pearl has been produced; and + so of the unhappiness of genius. Certainly few women have had such + profound and varied experience as George Sand; none have turned it to + more account. Her writings contain many passages that her warmest + admirers would wish unwritten; but although severe criticism may detect + the weak places, the severest criticism must conclude with the + admission of her standing among the highest minds of literature. In the + matter of eloquence, she surpasses everything France has yet produced. + There has been no style at once so large, so harmonious, so expressive, + and so unaffected: like a light shining through an alabaster vase, the + ideas shine through her diction; while as regards rhythmic melody of + phrase, it is a style such as Beethoven might have written had he + uttered in words the melodious passion that was in him. But deeper than + all eloquence, grander than all grandeur of phrase, is that forlorn + splendor of a life of passionate experience painted in her works. There + is no man so wise but he may learn from them, for they are the + utterances of a soul in pain, a soul that has been tried. No man could + have written her books, for no man could have had her experience, even + with a genius equal to her own. The philosopher may smile sometimes at + her philosophy, for _that_ is only the reflex of some man whose ideas + she has adopted; the critic may smile sometimes--at her failure in + delineating men; but both philosopher and critic must perceive that + those writings of hers are _original_ and genuine, are transcripts of + experience, and as such fulfil the primary condition of all literature. + +This clear, intellectual apprehension of what woman can effect in +literature, had much to do with George Eliot's own success. Yet it is +doubtful if she was so true, in some directions, to the instincts of her +sex as was George Sand, Mrs. Browning or Charlotte Brontë. Hers was in +large measure an intellect without sex; and though she was a woman in all +the instincts of her heart, yet intellectually she occupied the human +rather than the woman's point of view. With a marvellous insight into the +heart of woman, and great skill in portraying womanly natures, she had a +man's way, the logical and impersonal manner, of viewing, the greater +problems of human existence. Charlotte Brontë more truly represents the +woman's way of viewing life; the trustful way of one educated in the +conventional views of religion. She has given a corrector interpretation of +the meaning of love to woman than George Eliot has been able to present, +and simply because she thought and lived more nearly as other women think +and live. Hers was the genius of spontaneous insight and emotion, that +vibrated to every experience and was moved by every sentiment. Life played +upon her heart like the wind upon an Aescolian harp, and she reflected its +every movement of joy and sorrow. George Eliot studied life, probed into +it, cut it in pieces, constructed a theory of it, and then told us what it +means. In this she was unlike other women who have made a deep impression +on literature. Mrs. Browning had nearly as much culture, was as thoughtful +as she, but more genuinely feminine at the heart-core. Love she painted in +a purer and happier fashion than that adopted by George Eliot, and she had +the warmer impulses of a woman's tenderness. Her account of life is the +truer, because it is the more ideal; and this may be said for Charlotte +Brontë also. George Eliot had the larger intellect, the keener mind, was a +profounder thinker; but her realism held her back from that instinctive +conception of life which realizes its larger ideal meanings. It is not +enough to see what is; man desires to know what ought to be. The poet is +the seer, the one who apprehends, who has that finer eye for facts by which +he is able to behold what the facts give promise of. This ideal vision Mrs. +Browning had, and in so far she was the superior of George Eliot. The same +may be said for George Sand, who, with all her wildness and impurity, was a +woman through and through. She was all heart, all impulse, lived in her +instincts and emotions. She had the abandon, enthusiasm and spontaneity +which George Eliot lacked. If the one represents the head, the other +expresses the heart of woman. George Eliot, as a woman, thought, reasoned, +philosophized; George Sand felt, gave every emotion reign, lived out all +her impulses. What the one lacks the other had; where one was weak the +other was strong. With somewhat of George Sand's idealism and emotional +zeal for wider and freer life, George Eliot would have been a greater +writer. Could she have moulded Dorothea with what is best in Consuelo, she +would have been the rival of the greatest literary artists among men. Yet, +with her limitations, it must be said that George Eliot is the superior of +all other women in her literary accomplishments. If others are her +superiors in some directions, in the totality of her powers she surpasses +all. Even as an interpreter of woman's nature and the feminine side of +life, she does not fail to keep well ahead of the best of feminine writers. +She is more thoroughly the master of her powers, is more self-centred, +looks out upon human experience more calmly and with a more penetrating +gaze. Foremost of the half-dozen women who during the present century have +sought to interpret the feminine side of life, she has done much for her +sex. Daring more than others, she has given a greater promise than any +other of what woman is to accomplish when her nature blossoms out into all +its possibilities. + +The chief rule for novel-writing laid down by George Eliot in these essays +is, that the novel shall be the result of experience and true to nature. +She emphasizes the importance of this condition, and says that the novelist +is bound to use actual experience as his material, and that alone, or else +keep silent. Weak and silly novels are the result of an effort to break +away from this rule; but the writer who ventures to disregard it never can +be other than silly or weak. Novelists, she says, may either portray +experience outwardly through observation, or inwardly through sentiment, or +through a combination of both. + + Observation without sentiment usually leads to humor or satire; + sentiment without observation to rhetoric and long-drawn lachrymosity. + The extreme fault of the one is flippant superficiality, that of the + other is what is called sickly sentimentality. + +All true literature, she says, is based on fact, describes life as it is +lived by men and women, touches and is fragrant with reality. This cardinal +principle of literary art she has defined and illustrated in her own strong +and expressive manner in this _Review_ article. + + All poetry, all fiction, all comedy, all _belles-lettres_, even to the + playful caprices of fancy, are but the expression of experiences and + emotions; and these expressions are the avenues through which we reach + the sacred _adytum_ of humanity, and learn better to understand our + fellows and ourselves. In proportion as these expressions are the forms + of universal truths, of facts common to all nations or appreciable by + all intellects, the literature which sets them forth is permanently good + and true. Hence the universality and immortality of Homer, Shakspere, + Cervantes, Moliere. But in proportion as these expressions are the forms + of individual, peculiar truths, such as fleeting fashions or + idiosyncrasies, the literature is ephemeral. Hence tragedy never grows + old, for it arises from elemental experience; but comedy soon ages, for + it arises from peculiarities. Nevertheless, even idiosyncrasies are + valuable as side glances; they are aberrations that bring the natural + orbit into more prominent distinctness. + + It follows from what has been said, that literature, being essentially + the expression of experience and emotion--of what we have seen, felt + and thought--that only _that_ literature is effective, and to be prized + accordingly, which has _reality for its basis_ (needless to say that + emotion is as real as the three-per-cents), _and effective in + proportion to the depth and breadth of that basis_. + +In writing? of the authors of _Jane Eyre_ and _Mary Barton_, she shows how +important to her mind it is that the novel should have its basis in actual +experience, and that it should be an expression of reality. + + They have both given imaginative expression to actual experience--they + have not invented, but reproduced; they have preferred the truth, such + as their own experience testified, to the vague, false, conventional + notions current in circulating libraries. Whatever of weakness may be + pointed out in their works will, we are positive, be mostly in those + parts where experience is deserted, and the supposed requirements of + fiction have been listened to; whatever has really affected the public + mind is, we are equally, certain, the transcript of some actual + incident, character or emotion. Note, moreover, that beyond this basis + of actuality these writers have the further advantage of deep feeling + united to keen observation. + +Especially severe is her condemnation of the tendency to introduce only +fashionable or learned people into novels. She says the silly novelists +rarely make us acquainted with "any other than very lofty and fashionable +society," and very often the authors know nothing of such society except +from the reading of other such novels. + + It is true that we are constantly struck with the want of + verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which + they seem to live; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with + any other form of life. If their peers and peeresses are improbable, + their literary men, tradespeople and cottagers are impossible; and + their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing + both what they _have_ seen and heard, and what they have _not_ seen + and heard, with equal faithfulness. + +What is simple, natural, unaffected, she pleads for as the true material of +fiction. How she would apply this idea may be seen in her condemnation of a +novelist who devoted her pages to a defence of Evangelicalism. This writer +is "tame and feeble" because she attempts to depict a form of society with +which she is not familiar. That the common phases of religious life are +capable of affording the richest material for the novelist, George Eliot +has abundantly shown, and what she says of their value in this discussion +of "Silly Novelists" is of great interest in view of her own success in +this kind of portraiture. What she suggested as a fine field for the +novelist was to be the one she herself was so well to occupy. Her success +proved how clearly she comprehended the nature of novel-writing, and how +well she understood the character of the material with which the best +results can be attained. + + It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist than any other, + gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and carriages. The real + drama of Evangelicalism--and it has abundance of fine drama for any one + who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it--lies among the + middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood + to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather + than in the mighty? Why, then, cannot our Evangelical novelists show + us the operation of their religious views among people (there really + are many such in the world) who keep no carriage, "not so much as a + brass-bound gig," who even manage to eat their dinner without a silver + fork, and in whose mouths the authoress's questionable English would be + strictly consistent? Why can we not have pictures of religious life + among the industrial classes in England as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's + pictures of religious life among the negroes? + +Was this question a prophecy? It indicates that the writer's attention +had already been directed to the richness of this material for the purposes +of the novelist. After reading these words we see why she took up the +common life of the English village as she had herself been familiar with +it from childhood. In order to be true to her own conception of the novel, +there was no other field she could occupy. That she understood the +picturesqueness of this form of life no reader of her novels will doubt, +or that she saw and understood its capacities for artistic delineation. +The opening paragraphs of her _Westminster Review_ article on the "Natural +History of German Life" afford further evidence of her insight and +wisdom on this subject. They also afford evidence of her hatred of the +conventional and the artificial in art, literature and life. The spirit of +imitation and mannerism common to the eighteenth century was in every way +repugnant to her. She could have had only contempt for the literary art of +a Pope or a Boileau. The nature of her realism, and the conception she had +of its importance, may be understood from these paragraphs, for in them she +has unfolded her theory more clearly than in anything else she has written, +and with that genius for sympathetic description which is so marked in her +novels. + + How little the real characteristics of the working-classes are known to + those who are outside them, how little their natural history has been + studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our art as well as by our + political and social theories. Where, in our picture exhibitions, shall + we find a group of true peasantry? What English artist even attempts to + rival in truthfulness such studies of popular life as the pictures of + Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo? Even one of the greatest + painters of the pre-eminently realistic school, while in his picture of + "The Hireling Shepherd" he gave us a landscape of marvellous + truthfulness, placed a pair of peasants in the foreground who were not + much more real than the idyllic swains and damsels of our chimney + ornaments. Only a total absence of acquaintance and sympathy with our + peasantry could give a moment's popularity to such a picture as "Cross + Purposes," where we have a peasant girl who looks as if she knew + L.E.L.'s poems by heart, and English rustics whose costumes seem to + indicate that they are meant for ploughmen with exotic features that + remind us of a handsome _primo tenore_. Rather than such cockney + sentimentality as this as an education for the taste and sympathies, we + prefer the most crapulous group of boors that Teniers ever painted. But + even those among our painters who aim at giving the rustic type of + features, who are far above the effeminate feebleness of the "Keepsake" + style, treat their subjects under the influence of traditions and + prepossessions rather than of direct observation. The notion that + peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a + smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound + teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village children + necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from + the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature instead + of life. The painter is still under the influence of idyllic + literature, which has always expressed the imagination of the + cultivated and town-bred, rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic + ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic + shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers + dance in the chequered shade, and refresh themselves, not immoderately, + with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual + ploughmen thinks them jocund; no one who is well acquainted with the + English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no + sense of beauty beams, no humor twinkles,-the slow utterance and the + heavy slouching walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal, the + camel, than of the sturdy countryman with striped stockings, red waist + coat and hat aside, who represents the traditional English peasant. + Observe a company of haymakers, when you see them at a distance, + tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon + creeps--slowly with its increasing burthen over the meadow, and the + bright green space which tells of work done gets larger and larger, you + pronounce the scene "smiling," and you think that these companions in + labor must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give + animation. Approach nearer, and you will certainly find that haymaking + time is a time of joking, especially it there are women among the + laborers; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and + expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your idyllic + conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence of the + mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the northern peasant, + except tipsy revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for the + English clown exists at the bottom of the third quart-pot. + + The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket books and + never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty + has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake that an + unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that + slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true + that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical + cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn + in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging + letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into + filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not + subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least + established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make + men moral, something more is requisite than to turn them out to grass. + + Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin's indignation, are + surely too frank an idealization to be misleading; and since popular + chorus is one of the most effective elements of the opera, we can + hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant laced bodices and picturesque + motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of colliers in + their pit costume, or a ballet of charwomen and stocking-weavers. But + our social novels profess to represent the people as they are, and the + unreality of their representations is a grave evil. The greatest + benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is + the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations + and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already + in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can + give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention + to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material + of moral sentiment. When Scott takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's + cottage, or tells the story of The Two Drovers,--when Wordsworth + sings to us the reverie of Poor Susan,--when Kingsley shows us Alton + Locke gazing yearningly over the gate which leads from the highway + into the first wood he ever saw,--when Harnung paints a group of + chimney-sweepers,--more is done towards linking the higher classes + with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, + than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the + nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and + extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our + personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he + undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsification here is far + more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not + so very serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent + fashions--about the manners and conversation of beaux and duchesses; + but it _is_ serious that our sympathy with the perennial joys and + struggles, the toil, the tragedy and the humor in the life of our more + heavily laden fellow-men,--should be perverted, and turned towards a + false object instead of the true one. + + This perversion is not the less fatal because the misrepresentation + which gives rise to it has what the artist considers a moral end. The + thing for mankind to know is, not what are the motives and influences + which the moralist thinks _ought_ to act on the laborer or the artisan, + but what are the motives and influences which do act on him. We want to + be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental + peasant, but for the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan + in all his suspicious selfishness. + + We have one great novelist who is gifted with the utmost power of + rendering the external traits of our town population; and if he could + give us their psychological character--their conceptions of life, and + their emotions--with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his + books would be the greatest contribution art has ever made to the + awakening of social sympathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Plornish's + colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while + there is the same startling inspiration in his description of the + gestures and phrases of "Boots," as in the speeches of Shakspere's mobs + or numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from the humorous and external to + the emotional and tragic, without becoming as transcendent in his + unreality as he was a moment before in his artistic truthfulness. But + for the precious salt of his humor, which compels him to reproduce + external traits that serve, in some degree, as a corrective to his + frequently false psychology, his preternaturally virtuous poor children + and artisans, his melodramatic bootmen and courtesans, would be as + noxious as Eugene Sue's idealized proletaires in encouraging the + miserable fallacy that high morality and refined sentiment can grow + out of harsh social relations, ignorance and want; or that the + working-classes are in a condition to enter at once into a millennial + state of _altruism_, wherein every one is caring for every one else, + and no one for himself. + + If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our + sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and + direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid + conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social + questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of + men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations,--the + dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which + appeals principally to their moral sensibilities,--the aristocratic + dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" by a sort + of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity and veneration as + we grow prize turnips, by an artificial system of culture,--none of + these diverging mistakes can co-exist with a real knowledge of the + people, with a thorough study of their habits, their ideas, their + motives. The landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the mining + agent, have each an opportunity for making precious observations on + different sections of the working-class, but unfortunately their + experience is too often not registered at all, or its results are too + scattered to be available as a source of information and stimulus to + the public mind generally. If any man of sufficient moral and + intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be vitiated by a + foregone conclusion, or by a professional point of view, would devote + himself to studying the natural history of our social classes, + especially of the small shop-keepers, artisans and peasantry,--the + degree in which they are influenced by local conditions, their maxims + and habits, the points of view from which they regard their religious + teachers, and the degree in which they are influenced by religious + doctrines, the interaction of the various classes on each other, and + what are the tendencies in their position towards disintegration or + towards development,--and if, after all this study, he would give us + the result of his observations in a book well nourished with specific + facts, his work would be a valuable aid to the social and political + reformer. + +The estimates given in these essays of the writings of Jane Austen, George +Sand, Charlotte Brontë and Thackeray, show the soundness of George Eliot's +critical judgment. She fully appreciated Jane Austen's artistic skill, as +she did George Sand's impassioned love of liberty and naturalness. She also +saw how tame are Miss Austen's scenes, how humanly imperfect are +Thackeray's characters. Her own work is wanting in Jane Austen's artistic +skill and finish, but there is far more of originality and character in her +books, more of thought and purpose. Miss Austen tells her story wonderfully +well, but her books are all on the same level of social mediocrity and +flatness. No fresh, strong, natural, aspiring life is to be found in one of +them. George Eliot has not Jane Austen's artistic skill, but she has +thought, depth of purpose, originality of expression and conception, and a +marvellous creative insight into character. She is less passionate and bold +than George Sand, not the same daring innovator, more rational and +sensible. She is not so much a poet, has little of George Sand's power of +improvisation, much less of eloquence and abandon. She has more literary +skill than Charlotte Brontë, less originality, but none of her crudeness. +She has not so much of the subtle element of genius, but more of solidity +and thought. + +Her theories concerning the novel place George Eliot fully in sympathy with +what may very properly be called the British school of fiction. The natural +history of man is the subject matter used by this school; and to describe +accurately, minutely, some portion of the human race, some social +community, is its main object. Richardson, Fielding, Miss Austen and +Thackeray are the masters in this school, who have given direction to its +aims and methods. They have sought to accomplish in novel-writing somewhat +the same results as those aimed at by Wordsworth and Browning in poetry, to +follow the natural, to make much of the common, to describe things as they +are. They are realists both in method and philosophy, though differing +widely from the minuteness and coarseness of Tourguénief and Zola, in that +they show a large element of the ideal interfused with the real. This +school is seldom coarse, vulgar or sensuous, does not mistake the depraved +and beastly for the natural. Its members delight in simple scenes, plain +life, common joys; the scenes, life and joys which are open to every +Englishman. They have made use of the facts lying immediately about them, +those with which they were the most familiar. They have broken away from +the traditional theories of life, the manners of books of etiquette and the +rules of fashionable society, for the life which is natural and instinct +with impulses of its own. The life of the professions is described, local +dialects and provincialisms appear, places and scenery are carefully +painted, and the disagreeable and painful become elements in these novels, +because common to humanity. + +To this special theory of the novel, as it had been worked out by the +English masters of prose-poetry, George Eliot added nothing essential. +Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Austen, Miss Mitford, Fielding and Richardson +had preceded her along the way she was to follow. Their methods became +hers, she accepted their influence, and her work was done in the spirit +they had so ably illustrated. In one direction, however, she far surpassed +any one of her masters, and gave to the novel a richness of power and +fulness of aim it had not attained to with any of her predecessors. George +Eliot combined other methods with that of naturalism, not adhering rigidly +to the purpose of painting life as it appears on the surface. Not only from +the pre-Raphaelites, but from such romanticists as Scott, did she learn +much. Past scenes became natural, and history was discovered to be a vast +element in the thought of the present. Scott's power of reviving the past +in all its romantic and picturesque features, which gave him such capacity +for re-creating the life that had once passed away, was not possessed by +George Eliot. Still, if not a romancist, she realized how mighty is the +shaping power of the past over the present. For this reason, she endeavored +to recast old scenes, to revive in living shapes the times that had gone +by. The living movements of the present, its efforts at reform, its cries +for liberty, its searchings after a freer and purer life, also became a +prominent element in her novels. If in this tendency she somewhat enlarged +upon the methods of her masters, yet she was quite in sympathy with many +who came just before her, and with many more who were her contemporaries. +In another direction she kept along the way followed by many of her +co-workers, and brought philosophy and socialistic speculation to the aid +of the naturalistic method. Indeed, she so far departed from that method, +and from the soundest theories of art, as to become to some extent a +_doctrinaire_. + +Her novels, like much of the poetry of the same period, are eclectic in +spirit, combining with the naturalistic methods those of the historic, +socialistic, culture and speculative schools. Art and culture for their own +sake combined in her novels with the purpose to use history and social life +obedient to a distinct conception of their meanings. To describe life +accurately there must be a clear conception of what life means. Genius +never works aimlessly; and in seeing life as it is, always sees that it has +a tendency and direction. A mind so thoughtful as George Eliot's, with so +strong a love of speculative interest in it, was likely to give to +novel-writing done by her a large philosophic element. Yet her philosophy +is nearly always subject to her imagination and to her naturalism. Her love +of nature, her intimate interest in life and its elemental problems, her +passionate sympathy with all human passions and experiences, saves her from +becoming a mere _doctrinaire_, and gives to her speculations a pathetic, +living interest. The poetic elements of her novels are so many as to +subordinate the philosophic to the true purposes of art. + +In one direction George Eliot departed from the methods of her +predecessors, and to so great an extent as to be herself the originator of +a new school of fiction. She followed the bent of her time for analysis and +psychologic interpretation. It is here more than anywhere else she differs +from Charlotte Brontë and George Sand. These two great novelists create +character by direct representation, by making their persons live and act. +George Eliot shows her characters to the reader by analyzing their motives +and by giving the history of their development. The disadvantages of the +analytic method are apparent when George Eliot is compared with Scott. +Unique, personal and human are his creations, instinct with all human +emotions, and profoundly real. It is only the poetic side of life which he +sees, not its philosophic. George Eliot wanted to know the meanings of +things, and this very desire brings a largeness into her books which is not +found in Scott's. She was much the more thoughtful of the two, the one who +tried to realize to the intellect what life means. Yet her method of doing +this is not always the best one for the poet or the novelist. Scott was no +realist, and yet George Eliot has not been more accurate than he. Indeed, +he is far more truly accurate in so far as he paints the soul as well as +the body of life. The sad endings of her novels grew out of a false theory, +and from her inability to see anything of spiritual reality beyond the +little round of man's earthly destiny. She did not accept the doctrine that +art is to be cultivated only for art's sake, for art was always to her the +vehicle of moral or philosophic teaching. The limitations of her art +largely lay in the direction of her agnosticism. Scott and George Sand gain +for their work a great power and effect by their acceptance of the +spiritual as real. There is a light, a subtle aroma, a width of vision, a +sense of reality, in their work from this source, which is wanting in +George Eliot's. The illimitable mystery beyond the region of the real is +the greatest fact man has presented to him, and that region is a reality in +all the effects it works on humanity. No poet can ignore it or try to limit +it to humanity without a loss to his work. It is this subtle, penetrative, +aromatic and mystic power of the ideal which is most to be felt as lacking +in the works of George Eliot. Much as we may praise her, we can but feel +this limitation. Great as is our admiration, we can but feel that there is +a higher range of poetic and artistic creation than any she reached. + +The quotations presented from her early writings prove that George Eliot +began her career as a novelist with a fully elaborated conception of the +purposes of the novel and of the methods to be followed in its production. +She had thoroughly studied the subject, had read many of the best works of +the best writers, and had formed a carefully digested theory of the novel. +That she could do this is rather an indication of critical than of creative +power. Her novels everywhere betray the greatness of her reasoning powers, +that she was a thinker, that she had strong powers of intellectual +analysis, and that she had a logical, accurate mind. Had her mind taken no +other direction than this, however, she never could have become a great +novelist. These essays indicated something beside powers of reasoning and +psychological analysis. They also indicated her capacity for imaginative +insight into the motives and impulses of human nature, and an intuitive +comprehension of what is most natural to human thought and action. They +showed appreciation of sympathy and feeling, and delicate perception of the +finer cravings and tendencies of even the commonest souls. They gave +promise of so much creative power, her friends saw that in novel-writing +she was to find the true expression of her large qualities of mind and +heart. The person who could so skilfully point out the faults in the poor +novels rapidly issuing from the press, and realize the true indications of +a master's power in the creations of the literary artists, might herself +possess the genius necessary to original work of her own. Her early essays +are now chiefly of value for this promise they give of larger powers than +those which could be fully expressed in such work. They prophesied the +future, and made her friends zealous to overcome her own reluctance to +enter upon a larger work. She doubted her own genius, but it was not +destined to remain unfruitful. + + + + +VIII. + + +POETIC METHODS. + +Had George Eliot written nothing else than the poems which bear her name, +she would have been assigned a permanent place among the poets. Having +first attained her rank in the highest order of novelists, however, her +poetry suffers in comparison with her prose. The critics tell us that no +person gifted with supreme excellence in one form of creative expression +has ever been able to attain high rank in another. They forget that Goethe +was great both in prose and poetry; that his _Wilhelm Meister_ is of +scarcely inferior genius to his _Faust_. They also forget that Victor Hugo +holds the first place among the French poets of the present century, at the +same time that he is the greatest of all French novelists. It would be well +for them also to remember that Scott held high rank as a poet before he +began his wonderful career as a novelist. A contemporary of George Eliot's, +to name a single instance of another kind, was equally excellent as poet +and painter. Dante Rossetti made for himself a lasting place in both +directions, and in both he did work of a high order. + +In reality, the novel much resembles the narrative or epic poem; and if a +work of true genius, it is difficult to distinguish it from the poem except +as they differ in external form. The novel has for its main elements those +qualities of imagination, description, high-wrought purpose, which are also +constituents of much of the best poetry. The novel is more expansive than +the poem, one of the chief characteristics of which is condensation; its +theme may take a wider range, and it may embrace those cruder and more +common features of life which are inappropriate to the poem. The novelist +can make a greater use of humor, he can give more detail to description, +and portrayal of character can be carried to a much greater extent, than is +usual with the poet. The poet requires a subject more sublime, inspiring +and naturally beautiful than the novelist, who seeks what is the more +human, nearer the level of daily social existence, and full of the +affecting even if ruder interests and passions of life. The novel is so +similar to the poem, and in so many ways requires such similar qualities of +mind for its production, that there is no inherent reason why the same +person cannot do equally good work in both. The supposition is that the +poet may become a novelist, or the novelist a poet, in all cases except +where there is some outward disqualification. The novelist may not have the +sense of rhythmical form and of metrical expression; and the poet may not +possess that constructive faculty which builds up plots, incidents and +characters. In nearly all respects but these the two forms of creative +genius so nearly assimilate each other, it is to be expected a novelist may +turn poet if he have a large imagination and a stimulating capacity for +metrical expression. + +Novelists of strong imagination and a ready command of expressive words, +barely escape writing poetry when they only purpose to write prose. This is +true of Hugo, Auerbach, Dickens and George Eliot, again and again. The glow +of creation, the high-wrought impulse of imagination, the ideal conception +of life, all move the novelist in the direction of poetry. With much effort +he keeps meter and rhyme out of his prose, but simile and metaphor, +condensed expression, unusual words, poetic compounds, alliteration, +sublime and picturesque expression, will intrude themselves. Dickens even +permits meter and rhyme to conquer him, and weakens his style in +consequence. He grows sentimental, and the real strength of pure prose is +lost. George Eliot is often poetical in expression, touches the very +borders of poetry continually, but she seldom permits herself to lapse from +the strong, energetic and impressive prose which she almost uniformly +writes. Specimens of this noble poetic-prose may be found very often in her +pages. While it would be difficult by any transposition of words to turn it +into poetry, as may often be done in the case of Dickens's prose, yet it +contains most of the elements of a high order of poetry. In the account of +the death of Maggie and Tom is to be found a fine specimen of her style, +the last words being good iambics. + + The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace + never to be parted; living through again, in one supreme moment, the + days when they _had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the + daisied fields together_. + +In the first paragraph of the thirty-third chapter of _Adam Bede_ is a +sentence which makes a successful stanza in iambics by the addition of a +single word. + + The woods behind the chase, + And all the hedgerow trees, + Took on a solemn splendor _then_ + Under the dark low-hanging skies. + +It is very seldom, however, that George Eliot permits anything like meter +in her prose, and she is usually very reticent of rhythm. There is fervor +and enthusiasm, imagination and poetic insight, but all kept within the +limits of robust and manly prose. This capacity of prose to serve most of +the purposes of poetry may be seen in a marked degree in all of George +Eliot's novels. In the account of Adam Bede's love for Hetty this subtle +power of words and ideas to give the charm and impression of poetry without +rhythm or rhyme is exhibited in a characteristic manner. + + I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, + dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came + out of the very strength of his nature, and not out of any inconsistent + weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite + music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings + of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can + penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in + one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the + tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome + years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation + all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your + present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your + past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon + by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the + liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her + lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music; what can one say + more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's + soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than + the thought that prompted them; it is more than a woman's love that + moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off, mighty love + that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the + rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their + prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness + and peace. [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XXXIII.] + +Love, music and beautiful landscapes continually inspire the poetic side of +her nature; and these themes, which are constantly recurring in her +chapters, draw forth her imagination and give fervor and enthusiasm to her +expression. Her love of nature is deep and most appreciative of all its +transformations and beauties. This sensitiveness to the changes of the +outward world is a large element in her mind, and indicates the reality of +her poetic gifts. This may be seen in a passage such as the following:-- + + The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, + lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and + pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty, and to + spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a + particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from + childhood; the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and + trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in + mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope + of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the + huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of + approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering + wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and + valleys, with wondrous modulations of light and shadow, such as we + travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more + beautiful. These are the things that made the gamut of joy in landscape + to midland-bred souls--the things they toddled among, or perhaps + learned by heart, standing between their father's knees while he drove + leisurely. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XII.] + +It is nature as affecting man, and man as transformed into a creature of +feeling and passion by the mysterious conditions of his existence, which +oftenest arouses the poetic fervor in her. The enthusiasm of high resolves, +yearnings after the pure and beautiful, and love's regenerating power, give +to her themes which kindle poetic expression to a glow. The vision of +Mordecai on Blackfriars' bridge affords a fine example of her love of the +ideal in moral purpose, and shows how stimulating it is to her imagination. +It is a poetic picture of the finest quality she has given in this chapter, +one that could easily have been made to find expression in verse of great +beauty; but it is poetry in thought and spirit alone, not in form or +structure. It is true prose in form, strong in its fulness of detail, knit +together with words of the right texture, built up into a true prose image +of beauty in thought. + + Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images that his coherent + trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to + sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments; nay, they + often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage + from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually + thought of the Being answering to his need as one distinctly + approaching or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a + golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai's + habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a + favorite resort of his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some + one of the bridges, especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he + was bending over watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper + room looking out on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his + imagination spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a + far-stretching scene; his thought went on in wide spaces, and whenever + he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky. + Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriars' bridge, and gazing meditatively, + the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half + luminous, the grand dim masses or tall forms of buildings which were + the signs of world-commerce, the on-coming of boats and barges from the + still distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent + themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to + which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our + spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of + Mordecai's longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light + in the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his + imagination toward fuller detail he ceased to see the figure with its + back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became discernible; + the words youth, beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity, + turned into hardly individual but typical form and color: gathered from + his memory of faces seen among the Jews of Holland and Bohemia, and + from the paintings which revived that memory. Reverently let it be said + of this mature spiritual need that it was akin to the boy's and girl's + picturing of the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire + are feeble compared with the passionate current of an ideal life + straining to embody itself, made intense by resistance to imminent + dissolution. The visionary form became a companion and auditor, keeping + a place not only in the waking imagination, but in those dreams of + lighter slumber of which it is truest to say, "I sleep, but my heart is + awake"--when the disturbing trivial story of yesterday is charged with + the impassioned purpose of years. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chapter + XXXVIII.] + +Many times in her prose George Eliot has recognized the true character of +poetry, and she has even given definitions of it which show how well she +knew its real nature. She makes Will Ladislaw say that-- + + To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of + quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand + playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in + which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling + flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. [Footnote: Middlemarch, + chapter XXII.] + +She thinks poetry and romance are as plentiful in the world as ever they +were, that they exist even amidst the conditions created by invention and +science; and if we do not find them there it is only because poetry and +romance are absent from our own minds. If we have not awe and tenderness, +wonder and enthusiasm, poetry cannot come near us, and we shall not be +thrilled and exalted by it. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chanter XIX.] Yet it +is not difficult to see that George Eliot is not a poet in the fullest +sense, because hers is not thoroughly and always a poetic mind, because she +reasons about things too much. The poet is impressed, moved, thrilled and +exalted, and pours out his song from his feelings and transfused with +emotion. George Eliot was given to speculation, loved exactness of +expression, and kept too close to the real. She had not that lightness of +touch, that deftness and flexibility of expression, and that versatility of +imaging forth her ideas, which the real poet possesses. Her mind moved with +a ponderous tread, which needed a prose style large and stately as its true +medium of expression. While she had poetic ideas in abundance, and an +imaginative discernment of nature and life, she had not the full gift of +poetic speech. She lacked inspiration as well as flexibility of thought, +her imagination was not sufficiently rich, and she had not the full sense +of rhythmic harmony. + +George Eliot first began to write in verse, as was to be expected of one +gifted with an imagination vigorous as hers. Her love of music, her keen +perception of the beauties of nature, her love of form and color, gave +added attraction and impetus in the same direction. That she did not +continue through many years to write poetry seems to have been partly the +result of her intense interest in severer studies. The speculative cast of +her mind predominated the poetical so nearly as to turn her away from the +poetic side of life to find a solution for its graver and more intricate +problems. Her return to the poetic form of expression may be accounted for +partly as the result of a greater confidence in her own powers which came +from success, and partly from a desire for a new and richer medium of +utterance. + +So far as can be judged from the dates of her poems, as appended to many of +them, "How Lisa Loved the King" was the earliest written. This was written +in the year of the publication of _Romola_, and was followed the next year +by the first draft of _The Spanish Gypsy_. The poetical mottoes of _Felix +Holt_, however, were the first to be published; and not until these +appeared did the public know of her poetic gifts. _The Spanish Gypsy_ was +not published until 1868, and "How Lisa Loved the King" appeared the +following year. + +The original mottoes in _Felix Holt_ gave good hint of George Eliot's +poetic gifts. They are solid with thought, pregnant with the ripe wisdom of +daily experience, significant for dramatic expression, or notable for their +humor. They are rather heavy and ponderous in style, though sonorous in +expression. A stately tread, a largeness of expression, an air of weighty +meaning, appear in nearly all these mottoes. As a specimen of the more +philosophic, the following will indicate the truthfulness of this +description:-- + + Truth is the precious harvest of the earth, + But once, when harvest waved upon a land, + The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar, + Locusts, and all the swarming, foul-born broods, + Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws, + And turned the harvest into pestilence, + Until men said, What profits it to sow? + +Her capacity for dramatic expression, in which a rich comprehension of +life is included, may be seen in these lines: + + 1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth + That makes a vice of virtue by excess. + + 2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins + Be loss of virtue? + + 1ST CITIZEN. All things cool with time-- + The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find + A general level, nowhere in excess. + + 2D CITIZEN. 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought, + That future middlingness. + +Wisdom alloyed with humor appears in another motto: + + "It is a good and soothfast saw; + Half-roasted never will be raw; + No dough is dried once more to meal. + No crock new-shapen by the wheel; + You can't turn curds to milk again + Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then; + And having tasted stolen honey, + You can't buy innocence for money." + +Mr. Buxton Forman says, that "in the charming headings to the chapters of +_Felix Holt_ it seemed as though the strong hand which had, up to that +point, exercised masterly control over the restive tendency of high prose +to rear up into verse, had relaxed itself just for the sake of a holiday, +and no more. These headings did not bear the stamp of original poetry upon +them. Forcible as were some, admirable in thought and applicability to the +respective chapters as were all, none bore traces of that clearly defined +individuality of style betrayed by all great and accomplished practitioners +of verse, in even so small a compass as these headings. Some of them +possess the great distinctive technical mark of poetry,--condensation; but +this very condensation is compassed not in an original and individual +method, but in the method of some pre-existent model; and it is hardly +necessary to enforce that power of assimilation or reproduction, however +large, is no infallible index of self-existent poetical faculty." This +critic finds traces of Shakspere, Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning in these +mottoes, and thinks they are all imitative, even when they are best. It is +too easy, however, to dispose of a piece of literary work in this manner, +and such criticism is very apt to have little meaning in it. George Eliot +has proven herself far too original, both in prose and poetry, to make such +a criticism of much value. Even if the charge of imitation is a valid one, +it is far more probable that it was conscious and purposed, than that +George Eliot's poetic gifts could only be exercised when impelled by the +genius of some other. To give the impression of quotation may have been a +part of George Eliot's purpose in writing these mottoes, which are original +enough, and thoughtful enough, to have been attributed to any of the great +poets. The real defects of her poetry lie in quite another direction than +that of a lack of originality. She has enough to say that is fresh and +interesting, she has no need to consult others for what she is to utter; +but she has not the fervor of expression, the impressive touch, which +separates poetry from prose. There is intellectual power enough, thought +even in excess, but she does not soar and sing. She walks steadily, +majestically along on the ground, she has no wings for the clear ether. +Indeed, she is too much a realist to breathe in that upper air of pure +song; it is too fine and delicate for one who loves the solid facts of +earth so well as she. + +If George Eliot often wrote prose which is almost poetry, she also wrote +poetry which is almost prose. The concentrated, image-bearing phrases of +poetry are wanting oftentimes in her verse. There is meter but no other +quality of poetry, and not a few passages could be printed as prose with +scarce a suspicion to the reader that they were intended for poetry. Mr. +Buxton Forman has given a passage from _The Spanish Gypsy_ in this way, +adding only six insignificant words, and restoring _i_ to _is_ in two +instances. He rightly says that the passage printed in prose "would surely +be read by any one who saw it for the first time, without any suspicion +that it merely required the excision of six little words and two letters to +transform it to verse; no single expression betraying the secret that the +passage is from a poem." + + _Do_ you hear the trumpet! There _is_ old Eamon's + blast. No bray but his can shake the air so well. He takes his + trumpeting as solemnly as _an_ angel charged to wake the + dead; thinks war was made for trumpeters, and _that_ their + great art _was_ made solely for themselves who understand + it. His features have all shaped themselves to blowing, and when + his trumpet _is either_ bagged or left at home he seems + _like_ a chattel in a broker's booth, a spoutless + watering-can, a promise to pay no sum particular! + +George Eliot had not full command of poetic expression. This frequently +appears, not only in the fact that many lines are simply prose in thought, +but in the defects of the poetic form. Some lines are too short and others +too long, some having four and some six feet. An instance of the former is +to be found in these words between Don Silva and the Prior, forming one +line: + + Strong reasons, father. + Ay, but good? + +Of the latter: + + And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion. + +Still more suggestive are the expedients she resorts to in order to +complete the line. Lopez is made to say,-- + + Santiago! Juan, thou art hard to please. + I speak not for my own delighting, I. + I can be silent, I. + +Very near this, Lopez is spoken of in this line: + + That was not what he drew his sword at--he! + +Such defects as these are not, certainly, of vital importance, and may +doubtless be found in even the greatest poets; but they are noticeable here +because of one texture with that which limits the quality of her poetic +art. The principal criticism to be made on her poetry is that it was +composed and did not create itself out of a full poetic mind. It was +wrought out, was the result of study and composition, is wanting in +spontaneity and enthusiasm. The most serious defect of her poetry is also +the most marked defect of her prose, and this is a want of the ideal +element. She was a realist by nature, and could not free herself from the +tendency to look at the world on its surface only. + +In her poetry George Eliot is much more a _doctrinaire_ than in her novels. +All her poems, except a few of the shorter ones, are devoted to the +inculcation of some moral or philosophic teaching. The very effort she was +obliged to make to give herself utterance in poetry predisposed her to +intellectual subjects and those of a controversial nature. For this reason +her verse has a special interest for those who are attracted to her +teachings. Her pen was freer, more creative, in her great novels than in +her poems. In fact, her novels, especially _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on the +Floss_, are much more poetical than much she did in verse. In her verse she +tried to present the more spiritual side of life, to make living and +effective her own conceptions of the unseen and eternal. Yet she was +burdened constantly in this effort by the fact that she had a new theory of +the spiritual and ideal side of life to interpret. The poets who win the +homage of mankind, and conquer all hearts to themselves, take the accepted +interpretations of the great spiritual problems of life as the basis of +their work and give those a larger, loftier meaning through their poetic +and ideal insight and capacity of interpretation. They shun theories which +must be expounded and interpretations for which no one is prepared. It is +here George Eliot is seriously at fault as a poet, however much she may be +commended as a teacher and reformer. Perhaps the truest piece of poetic +work she did was _Agatha_, in which, however, there is a greater reliance +than in most of her poems, on the accepted interpretations of spiritual +beliefs. In portraying the trust, childlike and simple, of an old woman, +and in endeavoring to realize the poetic elements of that trust and +simplicity, she was very effective. In such work as this she would have +been much more successful, from the strictly poetic point of view, than she +has been, if she had not attempted to give her theories a clothing in +verse. In her "Brother and Sister" she was also very successful, but +especially so in the "Two Lovers." There is an exquisite charm and power in +some of these minor poems. Where the heart was free, and the intellect was +not dominant and insistent on the importance of its theories, there was +secured a genuine poetic beauty. There is true poetry in these lines: + + Two lovers by a moss-grown spring: + They lean soft cheeks together there, + Mingled the dark and sunny hair, + And heard the wooing thrushes sing. + Oh budding time! + Oh love's blest prime! + + Two wedded from the portal stept: + The bells made happy carrollings, + The air was soft as passing wings, + White petals on the pathway slept. + Oh pure-eyed bride! + Oh tender pride! + +There is a beauty and majesty in the poem on subjective immortality which +is likely to make it, as it has already become, the one popular poem among +all she wrote. There is a stimulus, enthusiasm and abandon about it which +is attained but seldom in her other verses. The love of humanity, its +passionate longing to sacrifice self for the good of all, is acceptable to +much of the thought and purpose of the present time; and its spirit of +sacrifice is one which may commend it to all earnest souls. In the more +extended poems there is genuine accomplishment just in proportion as the +leading purpose was artistic rather than philosophic or moral. + +Difficult as it was for a successful novelist to secure applause as a poet, +George Eliot overcame the distrust of her admirers and gained also a not +unmerited place as a poet. Her verse has been a real addition to her work, +and is likely to command an increasing interest in the future. That it is +not always successful from the merely artistic point of view, that it is +not to be placed by the side of the best poetry of the time, is no reason +why it will not appeal to many minds and enlist its own company of +admirers. Next after the universal poets are those who appeal to a select +circle and charm a particular class of minds. Among these George Eliot will +stand as one of the foremost and one of those most worthy of homage. As the +poet of positivism, she will long delight those in sympathy with her +teachings. It would be extravagant praise to call her a second Lucretius, +and yet that which has given the Roman author his place among poets will +also give George Eliot rank in the same company. With all his merits as a +poet, it has not been his poetic power, or his love of nature, or his worth +as an interpreter of human nature, which has given Lucretius his reputation +as a poet. With real poetic power,--for he would have been a much smaller +man without this,--he combined a philosophic mind and a daring genius for +speculation. The poetry gave charm and ideal grandeur to the speculations, +and the philosophy made the poetry full of meaning and earnest intellectual +purpose. He read life and nature with a keener eye and a more profound +penetration than others of his time; he tried to grasp the secret of the +universe, and because of it he left behind the touch of a strong mind. In +some such way as this, George Eliot's poetry is likely to be read in the +future. As poetry merely, it cannot take high rank; but for the sake of its +philosophy, which is conceived as a poet would conceive it, there is +promise that its future is to be one that is lasting. Even for poetry there +must be thought, and the larger, profounder it is the better for the +poetry, if it is imaginatively conceived and expressed. It is not thought, +or even philosophy, which annuls poetry, but want of ideal and creative +insight. To Goethe, Wordsworth or Browning there was a gain by enlargement +of intellectual materials, but these were suffused in true poetic fire, and +came forth a new creation. In so far as George Eliot has attained this +result is she a poet, and is she sure of the future suffrages of those who +accept her philosophy. At the least, her admirers must rejoice at the +enlarged range of expression she secured by the use of the poetic form. + + + + +IX. + + +PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE. + +George Eliot was pre-eminently a novelist and a poet; but she is also the +truest literary representative the nineteenth century has yet afforded of +its positivist and scientific tendencies. What Comte and Spencer have +taught in the name of philosophy, Tyndall and Haeckel in the name of +science, she has applied to life and its problems. Their aims, spirit and +tendencies have found in her a living embodiment, and re-appear in her +pages as forms of genius, as artistic creations. They have experimented, +speculated, elaborated theories of the universe, drawn out systems of +philosophy; but she has reconstructed the social life of man through her +creative insight. What they mean, whither they lead, is not to be +discovered nearly so plainly in their books as in hers. She is their +interpreter through that wonderful insight, genius and creative power which +enabled her to see what they could not themselves discover,--the effect of +their teachings on man as an individual and as a social being. + +Whoever would know what the agnostic and evolution philosophy of the time +has to teach about man, his social life, his moral responsibilities, his +religious aspirations, should go to the pages of George Eliot in preference +to those of any other. The scientific spirit, the evolution philosophy, +live in her pages, reveal themselves there in all their strength and in all +their weakness. She was a thinker equal to any of those whose names stand +forth as the representatives of the philosophy she accepted, she was as +competent, as they to think out the problems of life and to interpret +social existence in accordance with their theories of man and nature. +Competent to grasp and to interpret the positive philosophy in all its +details and in all its applications, she also had that artistic spirit of +reconstruction which enabled her to apply to life what she held in theory. +Along with the calm philosophic spirit which thinks out "the painful riddle +of the earth," she had the creative spirit of the artist which delights in +portraying life in all its endeavors, complexities and consequences. She +not only accepted the theory of hereditary transmission as science has +recently developed it, and as it has been enlarged by positivism into a +shaping influence of the past upon the present, but she made this law vital +with meaning as she developed its consequences in the lives of her +characters. To her it was not merely a theory, but a principle so pregnant +with meaning as to have its applications in every phase of human +experience. Life could not be explained without it; the thoughts, deeds and +aspirations of men could be understood only with reference to it; much that +enters into human life of weal and woe is to be comprehended only with +reference to this law. In regard to all the other evolution problems and +principles her knowledge was as great, her insight as clear, and her +constructive use of them as original. + +A new theory of life and the universe may be intellectually accepted as +soon as its teachings are comprehended; but the absorption of that theory +into the moral tissues, so that it becomes an active and constant impulse +and motive in feeling and conduct, is a long and difficult process. It +takes generations before it can associate itself with the instinctive +impulses of the mind. It is one thing to accept the theory of universal law +as an intellectual explanation of the sequences of phenomena, but it is +quite another to be guided by that theory in all the most spontaneous +movements of feeling, conscience and thought. A few minds are able to make +such a theory at once their own by virtue of genius of a very instinctive +and subtle order; but for the great majority of mankind this result can +only be reached after generations of instruction. The use made of such +theories by the poets and novelists is a sure test of their popular +acceptance. When the poets accept such a theory, and naturally express +themselves in accordance with its spirit, the people may soon feel and +think according to its meaning. + +The theory of evolution will not easily adjust the human mind to its +conclusions and methods. It is therefore very remarkable that George Eliot, +the contemporary of Comte, Spencer, Darwin, Lewes and Tyndall, should be +able to give a true literary expression to their speculations. She has not +only been able to follow these men, to accept their theories and to +understand them in all their implications and tendencies, but she has so +absorbed these theories into her mind, and so made them a part of all its +processes, that she has painted life thoroughly in accordance with their +spirit. Should the teachings of the evolutionists of to-day be finally +accepted, and after a few generations become the universally received +explanations of life and the universe, it is not likely any poet or +novelist will more genuinely and entirely express their spirit than George +Eliot has done. The evolutionary spirit and ways of looking at life became +instinctive to her; she saw life and read its deepest experiences wholly in +the light shed by this philosophy. For this reason her writings are of +great value to those who would understand the evolution philosophy in its +higher phases. + +George Eliot accepted the intellectual conclusions of evolution, and the +outline thus afforded she filled in with feeling and poetry. She +interpreted the pathos, the tragedy, the aspirations of life in the light +of this philosophy. Accepting with a bold and undismayed intellect the +implications and consequences of evolution, rejecting or abating no least +portion of it, she found in it a place for art, poetry and religion; and +she tried to show how it touches and moulds and uplifts man. She shrank +from nothing which would enable her to reveal how man is to live in such a +universe as she believed in; she saw all its hardness, cruelty, anguish and +mystery, and resolutely endeavored to show how these enter into and help to +form his destiny. In doing this she followed the lead of the positivists in +the acceptance of feeling as the basis and the true expression of man's +inner life. The emotional life is made the essential life; and all its +phases of manifestation in art, poetry and religion are regarded as of +great importance. George Eliot viewed the higher problems of life from this +point of view, giving to the forms in which the emotional side of man's +nature is expressed a supreme importance. Religion, as the response of +feeling to the mystery of existence, occupied a most important place in her +philosophy. That her interpretation of the emotional elements of life is +the true one, that she has discovered their source or their real ideal +significance, may well be doubted; but there is every reason for believing +that she realized their great value, and she certainly tried in an earnest +spirit to make them helpful in the life of ideal beauty and truthfulness. + +All that agnostic science and the evolution philosophy had to teach, George +Eliot accepted, its doctrine of descent, its new psychology, and its +theories of society and human destiny. Its doctrine of experience, its +ethical theories, were equally hers. Yet into her interpretation of +existence went a woman's heart, the widest and tenderest sympathy, and a +quick yearning purpose to do what good she could in the world. She saw with +the lover's eyes, motherhood revealed itself in her soul, the child's trust +was in her heart. The new philosophy she applied to life, revealed its +relations to duty, love, sorrow, trial and death. To her it had a deep +social meaning, a vital connection with the heart, its hopes and its +burdens, and for her it touched the spiritual content of life with reality. +It was in this way she became the truest interpreter of the evolution +philosophy, the best apostle of the ethics taught by agnostic science. She +not only speculated, she also felt and lived. Philosophy was to her more +than an abstract theory of the universe; into it entered a tender sympathy +for all human weakness, a profound sense of the mystery of existence, and a +holy purpose to make life pure and true to all she could reach. This larger +comprehension gives a new significance to her interpretation of evolution. +It makes it impossible that this philosophy should be fully understood +without a study of her books. + +It is because George Eliot was not a mere speculative thinker that her +teachings become so important. The true novelist, who is gifted with +genius, who creates character and situation with a master's hand, must have +some theory of life. He must have some notion of what life means, what the +significance of the pathos and tragedy of human experience, and why it is +that good and evil in conduct do not produce the same results. Such a +theory of life, if firmly grasped and worked out strongly, becomes a +philosophy. Much depends with the novelist on that philosophy, what it +places foremost, what it sees destiny to mean. It will affect his insight, +give shape to his plots, decide his characters, guide his ethical +interpretations, fix his spiritual apprehension. It was because George +Eliot adopted a new and remarkable philosophy, one that teaches much which +the instincts of the race have rejected, and repudiates much which the race +has accepted as necessary to its welfare, that her teachings become so +noteworthy. Genius first of all she had, and the artist's creative power; +but the way she used these, and the limitations she put upon them by her +philosophy, give her books an interest which not even her wonderful genius +could alone produce. That philosophy is in debate; and it is not yet +decided whether it is mainly false because growing out of wrong methods, +or if it be in reality a true explanation of existence. Its revolutionary +character, its negative spirit, its relations to ethics and religion, +make it remarkable, and even startling. Profound thinkers, men of +commanding philosophic apprehension and power of generalization, have +accepted it; physical science has largely lent its aid to the support of +its conclusions. Yet on its side genius, imagination, creative instinct, +artistic apprehension, have not given their aid. Without them it is +defective, and cannot command the ideal sentiments and hopes of the race. +First to fill this gap came George Eliot, and she yet remains its only +great literary ally and coadjutor. Tyndall, Haeckel and DuBois Raymond can +give us science; but this is not enough. Comte, Mill and Spencer can give +us philosophy; but that is inadequate. They have also essayed, one and all, +to say some true word about morals, religion and the social ideals; but +they have one and all failed. They are too speculative, too far away from +the vital movements of life, know too little of human experience as it +throbs out of the heart and sentiments. They can explain their theories +in terms of science, ethics and philosophy; but George Eliot explains them +in terms of life. They have speculated, she has felt; they have made +philosophies, she has created ideal characters and given us poetry; they +have studied nature, she has studied experience and life; they have tried +to resolve the mind into its constituent elements; she has entered into the +heart and read its secrets; they have looked on to see what history meant, +she has lived all heart tragedies and known all spiritual aspirations. + +George Eliot was not a mere disciple of any of the great teachers of +evolution. Though of their school, and largely in accord and sympathy with +them, yet she often departed from the way they went, and took a position +quite in opposition to theirs. Her standpoint in philosophy was arrived at +quite independently of their influence, and in many of its main features +her philosophy was developed before she had any acquaintance either with +them or their books. She wrote concerning John Stuart Mill, [Footnote: +Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' "Last words from George Eliot," is Harper Magazine +for March 1882. The names of Mill and Spencer are not given in this +article, but the words from her letters so plainly refer to them that they +have been quoted here as illustrating her relations to these men.]-- + + I never had any personal acquaintance with him, never saw him to my + knowledge except in the House of Commons; and though I have studied his + books, especially his _Logic_ and _Political Economy_ with much + benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked epoch + in my life. + +Concerning another leading positivist she has said,-- + + Of [Herbert Spencer's] friendship I have had the honor and advantage + for twenty years, but I believe that every main bias of my mind had + been taken before I knew him. Like the rest of his readers, I am, of + course, indebted to him for much enlargement and clarifying of thought. + +Not long previous to her death, in reading Bridges' version of _The General +View of Positivism_, she expressed her dissent more often than her assent, +and once she said,-- + + I cannot submit my intellect or my soul to the guidance of Comte. + +George Eliot did not take up her residence in London until her +thirty-second year, and previous to that time her acquaintance with the +positivist leaders must have been slight. Before that age the opinions of +most persons are formed, and such was the case with George Eliot. It is +likely her opinions underwent many changes after this date, but only in the +direction of those already established and in modification of the +philosophy already accepted. She became an evolutionist without the aid of +those men who are supposed to be the originators of this theory. Every new +idea or new way of interpreting nature and life grows into form gradually, +and under the influence of many different minds. The evolution philosophy +was long accepted before it became a doctrine or was formulated into a +philosophy. The same influences worked in many quarters to produce the same +conclusions. It was given to George Eliot to come under a set of influences +which led her to accept all the leading ideas of evolution before she had +any opportunity to know that philosophy as it has been elaborated by the +men whose names are most often connected with it. A brief account of the +successive philosophic influences which most directly and personally +touched her mind will largely help towards the comprehension of her +teachings. + +The most intimate friend of her youth, who gave her a home when trouble +came with her family, and stimulated her mind to active inquiry after +truth, was a philosopher of no mean ability. Charles Bray not only was the +first philosopher she knew, but her opinions of after years were mainly in +the direction he marked out for her. In his _Philosophy of Necessity_, +published in 1841, he maintained that the only reality is the _Great +Unknown_ which we name God, that all natural laws are actions of the first +cause. He taught that the world is created in our own minds, the result of +some unknown cause without us, which we call matter; but it is thus God +mirrors himself to us. "All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we +call laws of nature are but attributes of Deity." Matter is known to us +only as the cause of sensations, while the soul is the principle of +sensation, dependent upon the nervous system; the nervous system depending +upon life, and life upon organization. All knowledge comes to man through +the action of the external world upon the senses; all truth, all progress, +come to us out of experience. "Reason is dependent for its exercise upon +experience, and experience is nothing more than the knowledge of the +invariable order of nature, of the relations of cause and effect." All acts +of men are ruled by necessity. Pain produces our ideas of right and wrong, +and happiness is the test of all moral action. There are no such things +as sin and evil, only pains and pleasures. Evil is the natural and +necessary limitation of our faculties, and our consequent liability to +error; and pain, which we call evil, is its corrective. Nothing, under the +circumstances, could have happened but that which did happen; and the +actions of men, under precisely the same circumstances, must always issue +in precisely the same results. Death, treated of in a separate chapter, is +shown to be good, and a necessary aid to progress. Society is regarded as +an organism, and man is to find his highest life in the life of others. +"The great body of humanity (considered as an individual), with its soul, +the principle of sensation, is ever fresh and vigorous and increasing in +enjoyment. Death and birth, the means of renewal and succession, bear +the same relation to this body of society as the system of waste and +reproduction do to the human body; the old and useless and decayed material +is carried out, and fresh substituted, and thus the frame is renovated +and rendered capable of ever-increasing happiness.... The minds, that is +to say, the ideas and feelings of which they were composed, of Socrates, +Plato, Epicurus, Galileo, Bacon, Locke, Newton, are thus forever in +existence, and the immortality of the soul is preserved, not in +individuals, but in the great body of humanity.... To the race, though +not to individuals, all beautiful things are preserved forever; all that +is really good and profitable is immortal." + +Nearly every idea here presented was accepted by George Eliot and +re-appears in her writings. In Bray's later books much also is to be found +which she embraced. He therein says that all outside of us is a delusion of +the senses. [Footnote: This summary of Bray's philosophy is condensed from +an article in the Westminster Review for April, 1879.] The senses conspire +with the intellect to impose upon us. The constitution of our faculties +forces us to believe in an external world, but it has no more reality than +our dreams. Each creature is the creator of its own separate, different +world. The unity of outward things is imposed on them by the faculty of +individuality, and is a mere fiction of the mind. Matter is a creature of +the imagination, and is a pure assumption. It is the centre of force, as +immaterial as spirit, as ethereal and unsubstantial. As centres of force +imply locality, and locality space, so space must have an extension of its +own. Not so; it is a pure creation of the mind. The same holds true of +time. The world of mind, the moral world as well, are our own creations. +Man has no power over himself; nothing could have been otherwise than as +it is. Repentance and remorse are foolish regrets over what could not have +been otherwise. All actions and motives are indifferent; only in their +consequences can any distinction be observed between them. Such as minister +to man's pleasure he calls good; such as produce pain he calls evil. + Thereis no good but pleasure, and no evil but pain. Hence there is no +distinction between moral and physical evil. Morality is the chemistry of +the mind, its attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes. God is an +illusion, as are all moral conclusions based on his existence, Nor has +man any reality; he is the greatest illusion and delusion of all. The +faculty of individuality gives us all our ideas and feelings, and creates +for us what we call our minds. A mind is an aggregate of a stream of +consciousness. Ideas, feelings, states of consciousness, do not inhere in +anything; each is a distinct entity. "Thinking is," is what we should say, +not "I think." Here we are at the ground fact of what constitutes being, on +solid footing; consciousness cannot deceive us. Thinking is, even if mind +and matter, self and not-self, are illusory. It is, even if we deny both +the external and internal causes of consciousness. We know our own +consciousness, that alone. All is inference beside. When we consider what +inferences are most probable, we are led to build up a constructive +philosophy. Consciousness says we have a body, body a brain, and pressure +on the brain stops consciousness; hence a close connection between the +brain and consciousness. The two go together, and in the brain we must lay +the foundation of our philosophy. The mental faculties create the world of +individual consciousness, it the outside world. We know only what is +revealed in consciousness. Matter and mind are one. Life and mind are +correlates of physical force; they are the forms assumed by physical force +when subjected to organic conditions. Yet there is no such thing as mere +physical force. Every atom of matter acts intelligently; it has so acted +always. The conscious intelligence of the universe has subsided into +natural law, and acts automatically. This universal agent of life in all +things is God. All consciousness and physical force are but "the varied +God." There is in reality no agent but mind, conscious or unconscious. God +is nature; matter is mind solidified. Matter is force as revealed by the +senses. It is the body, force is the soul. In nature, as in man, body and +soul are one and indivisible. Mind builds up organisms. There is a living +will, conscious or unconscious, in all things. The One and All requires the +resignation of the individual and personal, of all that is selfish, to the +Infinite whole. + +The basis of Bray's philosophy was idealism and pantheism, assuming form +under the influence of modern science. He quoted Emerson frequently, and +the school of thought Emerson represents affected him greatly. On the other +hand, he was then a strong phrenologist, had imbibed much of the teaching +of Combe's _Constitution of Man_, and he eagerly embraced those notions of +the relations of body and mind which have been propagated in the name of +physical science. + +The same double influence is to be seen at work upon the next thinker who +was destined to give direction to George Eliot's philosophy. Feuerbach was +a disciple of Hegel, whose influence is deeply marked through all his +earlier writings. He also was affected by physical science, and he found in +sensationalism an element for his system. To him all thought is the product +of experience; he founded his ideas on materials which can be appropriated +only through the activity of the senses. The external world affects the +senses and generates feeling, feeling produces ideas. Feeling re-acts upon +the external world, interprets it according to its own wants. Feeling is +thus the source of all knowledge; feeling is the basis alike of religion +and philosophy. Feuerbach, as well as Bray, finds that man creates the +outward world in consciousness; all that is out of man which he can know, +is but a reflection of what is in him. This conception of consciousness, +this pure idealism, becomes the source of Feuerbach's philosophy of +religion. He says that religion is based on the differences between man and +the brute; man has consciousness, which is only present in a being to whom +his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought. Man thinks, +converses with himself, is at once I and Thou, can put himself in the place +of another. Religion is identical with self-consciousness, and expresses +man's sense of the infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about +himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to +bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. +Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that +all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of +that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of +God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man +lives mainly in feeling, finds there the sources of all his mental and +moral life, he comes to regard feeling as the divinest part of his nature, +the noblest and most excellent; so it becomes to him the organ of the +divine. When man thinks what is infinite he in reality does nothing more +than to perceive and affirm that to him feeling has an infinite power. +If you feel the infinite, you feel and affirm the infinitude of the power +of feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect objective to itself; +the object of feeling is feeling objective to itself. God is pure, +unlimited, free feeling. In religion, consciousness of the object and +self-consciousness coincide. The object of any subject is nothing else than +the subject's own nature taken objectively. God is like our thoughts and +dispositions; consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God +is self-knowledge. Religion is the unveiling of a man's hidden treasures, +the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love +secrets. It is to the understanding Feuerbach attributes man's capacity for +objectifying himself or of attributing to the outward world those qualities +which really exist only within. Man's consciousness of God is nothing else +than his consciousness of his species. "Man has his highest being, his God, +in himself; not in himself as an individual, but in his essential nature, +his species. No individual is an adequate representative of his species, +but only the human individual is conscious of the distinction between the +species and the individual. In the sense of this distinction lies the root +of religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is nothing +else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, the yearning to +be free from himself, _i.e._, from the limits and defects of his +individuality. Individuality is the self-conditioning, the self-limitation +of the species. Thus man has cognizance of nothing above himself, of +nothing beyond the nature of humanity; but to the individual man this +nature presents itself under the form of an individual man. All feelings +which man experiences towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral +feelings which man has towards man, are of a religious nature. Man feels +nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man." The dogmas of +Christianity are interpreted by Feuerbach from this standpoint of +conceiving religion as a projection of feeling upon the outward world. So +he explains the incarnation as man's love for man, man's yearning to help +his fellows, the renunciation and suffering man undergoes for man. The +passion of Christ represents freely accepted suffering for others in love +of them. The trinity typifies the participated, social life of the species; +it shows the father, mother and son as the symbols of the race. The _logos_ +or son is the nature of the imagination made objective, the satisfaction of +the need for mental images, the reflected splendor of the imagination. +Faith in providence is faith in one's own worth; it indicates the divine +reality and significance of our own being. Prayer is an expression of the +power of feeling, a dialogue of man with his own heart. Faith is confidence +in the reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or laws +of nature and reason. Its specific object is miracle; faith and miracle are +absolutely inseparable. That which is objectively miracle is subjectively +faith. Faith is the miracle of feeling; it is nothing else than belief in +the absolute reality of subjectivity. The power of miracle is the power of +the imagination, for imagination corresponds to personal feeling; it sets +aside all limits, all laws painful to the feelings, and thus makes +objective to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction of his +subjective wishes. The belief in miracle accepts wishes as realities. In +fact, the fundamental dogmas of Christianity are simply realized wishes of +the heart. This is true, because the highest law of feeling is the +immediate unity of will and deed, of wishing and reality. To religion, what +is felt or wished is regarded as real. In the Redeemer this is realized, +wish becomes fact. All things are to be wrought, according to religion, by +belief. Thus the future life is a life where feeling realizes every desire. +Its whole import is that of the abolition of the discordance which exists +between wish and reality. It is the realization of a state which +corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison with himself. The +other world is nothing more than the reality of a known idea, the +satisfaction of a conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish. "The sum of +the future life is happiness, the everlasting bliss of personality, which +is here limited and circumscribed by nature. Faith in the future life is +therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the limits of nature; +it is faith in the eternity and infinitude of personality, and not of +personality viewed in relation to the idea of the species, in which it +forever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of personality as belonging +to already existing individuals; consequently, it is the faith of man in +himself. But faith in the kingdom of heaven is one with faith in God; the +context of both ideas is the same; God is pure absolute subjectivity +released from all natural limits; he is what individuals ought to be and +will be; faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and +truth of his own nature; the Divine Being is the subjective human being in +his absolute freedom and unlimitedness." + +It is not probable that George Eliot confined her philosophic studies to +the writings of Charles Bray and Feuerbach, but it is quite certain that in +their books which she did faithfully study, are to be found some of the +leading principles of her philosophy. What gives greater confirmation to +the supposition that her philosophy was largely shaped under their +influence is the fact that her intimate friend, Sara Hennell, drew from the +same sources for the presentation of theories quite identical with hers. +Sara Hennell's _Thoughts in Aid of Faith_, published in 1860, is an attempt +to show that the religious sentiments may be retained when the doctrines of +theology are intellectually rejected, that a disposition of the heart akin +to Paul's may be present though conviction be extinct. In securing this +result, she too takes Feuerbach as her guide, and his teachings she claims +are fully corroborated by the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Religion she +regards as the result of the tendency of man's mind towards philosophy, the +outgrowth of the activity of his mental faculties seeking satisfaction for +themselves in explaining the world given for his contemplation and study. +"The growth of religion in the human intelligence (thereby distinguished +from mere blind emotion), is coincident with, or rather immediately +consequent upon, the power of forming abstract ideas; that is to say, it is +a generalization effected by the operation of the intellect upon the +sentiments and emotions, when these have attained to so great extent and +distinctness as to become self-conscious." Man early objectifies the +qualities he finds in himself and his fellows, regards them as entities, is +prostrated in awe and worship before them, conceives them to be gods. He +attributes to outward objects his subjective states, and regards them as +like himself, only infinitely more powerful. His emotions he believes are +caused by these objective beings, and he thinks he is inspired, that the +gods are at work within him. Feeling becomes the voice of God, the +revelator of religions and theologies. Christianity Miss Hennell regards as +"the form in which the religious affections, struggling against earthly +limitations, have created for themselves the satisfaction they demand, and, +therefore, in so far, real, just as the affections are real." Feeling, she +says, is real as logic, and must equally have its real foundation. That is, +feeling gives us the truth, actually answers to the realities of things as +man can know them. She is here an ontologist, and she is convinced that +feeling is a direct witness of the deeper knowledge and reality which man +seeks in religion. The permanency and validity of religion she believes in, +and she testifies to its wholesome and ennobling effect upon the race. +"Christianity, having formed an actual portion of the composition both of +our own individual experience and of the world's history, can no more be +annihilated out of them than the sum of what we learned during a certain +number of years of our childhood, from the one, or the effects of any +notable occurrence, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, or the Norman +invasion, from the other;--Christianity on every view, whether of its truth +or falsity, and consequently of its good or bad effect, has undoubtedly +contributed to make us what we are; without it we should have grown into +something incalculably different from our present selves.... And how can it +be otherwise than real to us, this belief that has nourished the souls +of us all, and seems to have moulded actually anew their internal +constitution, as well as stored them up with its infinite variety of +external interests and associations? What other than a very real thing has +it been in the life of the world, sprang out of, and again causing to +spring forth, such volumes of human emotion? making a current, as it were, +of feeling, that has drawn within its own sphere all the moral vitality of +so many ages. In all this reality of influence there is indeed the +testimony of Christianity having truly formed an integral portion of the +organic life of humanity." + +Though Miss Hennell is so earnest a believer in Christianity, yet she +totally rejects the idea of any objective reality corresponding to its +dogmas. This conclusion is based on the philosophic notion, which she +shares with Bray, Feuerbach, George Eliot, Spencer and Lewes, that man has +no real knowledge whatever except that which is given in consciousness. +This philosophy, shared in common by these persons, is called by Lewes +"reasoned realism," and by Spencer "transfigured realism." It accepts the +reality of an outward world, but says that all man knows of it is, that it +produces impressions on his senses which are transmuted into sensations. +Sensations produce feelings, and feelings become ideas. According to +Spencer, the steps of knowledge are three: the co-ordinating of sensations +in a living organism; the registering of impressions within the organism in +such a way as to build up a store of experiences; the transmission of the +organism and its susceptibilities to offspring. Miss Hennell accepts +Spencer's theory that feeling is the source of all our knowledge. Not only, +as she says, does it "constitute the essential and main vitality of our +nature," but when it is stored up in the human organism and inherited, it +becomes the vital source out of which all moral and religious truth is +built up. Experience, transformed into inherited feeling, takes on the form +of those intuitions which "are the only reliable ground of solid belief." +"These sentiments which are born within us, slumbering as it were in our +nature, ready to be awakened into action immediately they are roused by +hint of corresponding circumstances, are drawn out of the whole of previous +human existence. They constitute our treasured inheritance out of all the +life that has been lived before us, to which no age, no human being who has +trod the earth and laid himself to rest with all his mortal burden upon her +maternal bosom, has failed to add his contribution. No generation has had +its engrossing conflict, surely battling out the triumphs of mind over +material force, and through forms of monstrous abortions concurrent with +its birth, too hideous for us now to bear in contemplation, moulding the +early intelligence by every struggle, and winning its gradual powers,--no +single soul has borne itself through its personal trial,--without +bequeathing to us of its fruit. There is not a religious thought that we +take to ourselves for secret comfort in our time of grief, that has not +been distilled out of the multiplicity of the hallowed tears of mankind; +not an animating idea is there for our fainting courage that has not +gathered its inspiration from the bravery of the myriad armies of the +world's heroes. All this best of humanity's hard earnings has been hoarded +with generous care by our _alma natura naturans_; so that at last, in our +rich ages, the _mens naturafa_ opens its gaze with awful wonder upon its +environment of spiritual possessions." + +The intimate sympathy of George Eliot and Miss Hennell indicates that they +followed much the same studies, and it is certain they arrived at very +similar conclusions. That the one was directly influenced or led by the +other there seem to be no reasons for believing. All that is probable is, +that there was a close affinity of thought and purpose between them, and +that they arrived at similar philosophical conclusions. The same is to be +said in regard to George Eliot's relations to George Henry Lewes. Her +theories of life, as has been already clearly indicated, were firmly fixed +before she knew him, and her philosophical opinions were formed. The +similarity of their speculative opinions doubtless had something to do with +bringing them together; and it is certain that the tenor of their thoughts, +their views about life, and their spiritual aspirations, were very much +alike, giving promise of a most thorough sympathy in all their intellectual +and moral pursuits. If she was influenced by him, he was quite as much +influenced by her. Lewes accepted the philosophical side of Comte's +Positive Philosophy, but the religious side of it he rejected and strongly +condemned. In his _History of Philosophy_, he says, "Antagonism to the +method and certain conclusions of the _Politique positive_ led me for many +years to regard that work as a deviation from the Positive Philosophy in +every way unfortunate. My attitude has changed now that I have learned +(from the remark of one very dear to me) to regard it as an Utopia, +presenting hypotheses rather than doctrines, suggestions for inquirers +rather than dogmas for adepts--hypotheses carrying more or less of truth, +and serviceable as a provisional mode of colligating facts, to be confirmed +or contradicted by experience." It is altogether probable, as in this case, +that George Eliot gave Lewes the suggestive aid of her acute mind. If she +was aided by him, it was only as one strong mind aids another, by collision +and suggestion rather than by direct teaching. + +Lewes may have had the effect to deepen and establish firmly the +conclusions already reached by George Eliot, and a consideration of his +philosophy must confirm this conjecture. He, too, makes feeling the basis +of all knowing. From this point, however, he diverges widely from Herbert +Spencer and the other English empiricists. Spencer regards matter and mind +as two phases of an underlying substance, which he presents as the unknown +and unknowable. Lewes at once denies the duality implied in the words +matter and mind, motion and feeling, and declares these are one and the +same thing, objectively or subjectively presented. Feeling is motion, and +motion is feeling; mind is the spiritual aspect of the material organism, +and matter is the objective aspect of feeling. Feeling is not the cause of +motion, as idealism would suggest; and motion does not cause or turn into +feeling, as materialism teaches. The two are absolutely identical; there is +no dualism or antithesis. In the same way, cause and effect are but two +aspects of one phenomenon; there is no separation between them, but one and +the same thing before and after. He applies this idea to the conception of +natural law, and declares it to be only the persistence of phenomena; that +is, the persistence of feeling. He denies that there is any absolute behind +phenomena; the absolute is in the phenomena, which is the only reality. The +phenomenal universe is simply a group of relations, nothing more; and what +seems to be, really exists, because the relations are real. + +It is not necessary here to enter into a full presentation of Lewes's +philosophy, but his theories about the functions of feeling are of +importance, in view of George Eliot's acceptance of them. They have been +summarized into the statement that "all truths are alike feelings, ideally +distinguishable according to the aspects under which they are viewed. There +is no motion apart from feeling, for the motion _is_ the feeling; there is +no force apart from matter which compels it to moves for the force _is_ the +matter, as matter is motion--differently viewed; there is no essence or +substance which determines the properties, for the substance is the whole +group of properties; there are no causes outside of effects, no laws +outside the processes, no reality outside the phenomena, no absolute +outside the relative, which determine things to be as they are and not +otherwise, for all these are but different sides of one and the same +thing." The central thought presented by Lewes is, that "for us there is +nothing but feeling, whose subjective side is sensations, perceptions, +memories, reasonings, the ideal constructions of science and philosophy, +emotions, pleasures, pains; whose objective side is motion, matter, force, +cause, the absolute." The outcome of this theory is, it enables Lewes to +believe that the inner and outer practically agree, that our feelings give +a sufficiently correct picture of the universe. In reality, the two do not +agree, and even "science is in no respect a plain transcript of reality;" +but so intimate are feeling and the outer world, that the inward report is +to be regarded as practically a correct one. + +In many ways Lewes differed from his contemporaries, disagreeing again and +again with Spencer, Bain and Huxley. He often seems much nearer Schelling +than Haeckel. He differs from Schelling in his demand for verification and +the inductive method, and in claiming that all his conclusions are the +result of scientific experiments and deductions. He agrees with Schelling +in his rejection of mechanical processes and in his acceptance of a vital, +organic method in nature and in social development. He differs from many of +the other leaders of speculative science in his rejection of reflex action, +maintaining that the brain is not the only seat of sensation, and that all +cerebral processes are mental processes. With equal vigor he rejects the +theory of animal automatism, and the assertion that animal actions can be +completely expressed and accounted for in terms of nervous matter and +motion. The laws of the mind, he maintained, are not to be deduced from +physiological processes, but with them must be joined the psychical +processes of the individual and the social man. He separates man by an +impassable barrier from the lower animals, this gulf between them being due +to human society and to the social acquisition of language. In the social +factor he finds an important element of psychology, and one that must +always come in to overturn any mechanical theories of mental activity. + +It has been very truly said, that Lewes must be credited with the doctrine +of the dependence of the human mind on the social medium. Others had hit +upon this idea, and it had been very well developed by Spencer and Comte; +but Lewes gave it a wider and profounder interpretation than any other. One +of his critics says that Lewes "has the sort of claim to have originated +this theory that Bacon has to be considered the discoverer of the inductive +method." He not only held with Spencer and other evolutionists, that the +human mind is the product of experience in contact with the outer world, +that experience transmitted by heredity and built up into mental processes +and conclusions; but he maintained that the social medium is a much greater +and more important factor. The past makes the present; the social life +develops the individual. Our language, our thought, as individuals, are the +product of the collective life of the race. "We are to seek in the social +organism for all the main conditions of the higher functions, and in the +social medium of beliefs, opinions, institutions, &c., for the atmosphere +breathed by the intellect. Man is no longer to be considered simply as an +assemblage of organs, but also as an organ in a collective organism. From +the former he derives his sensations, judgments, primary impulses; from the +latter, his conceptions, theories and virtues. This is very clear when we +learn how the intellect draws both its inspiration and its instrument from +the social needs. All the materials of intellect are images and symbols, +all its processes are operations on images and symbols. Language--which is +wholly a social product for a social need--is the chief vehicle of +symbolical operation, and the only means by which abstraction is +affected.... Language is the creator and sustainer of that ideal world in +which the noblest part of human activity finds a theatre, the world of +thought and spiritual insight, of knowledge and duty, loftily elevated +above that of sense and appetite. Into this ideal world man absorbs the +universe as in a transfiguration. It is here that he shapes the programme +of his existence; and to that programme he makes the real world conform. +It is here he forms his highest rules of conduct. It is here he plants +his hopes and joys. It is here he finds his dignity and power. The ideal +world becomes to him the supreme reality." Lewes said that what a man +thinks "is the necessary product of his organism and external conditions." +The "organism itself is the product of its history; it is what it has +become; it is a part of the history of the race." Because man is a creature +of feeling he is susceptible to the influences of the outer world, and +from the influences and experiences thus received the foundations of his +mental life are laid. The structure erected on this foundation, however, is +the product of man's social environment. As a social being, he inherits +mental capacities, and all the instruments of mental, moral and social +development, as these have been produced in the past. The social structure +takes up and preserves the results of individual effort; and social +capacity enlarges mental and moral power quite beyond what mere inheritance +produces. + +Lewes assigned as high a value to introspection as to observation in +psychology, and said that whatever place is assigned to the one in +scientific method must be assigned to the other. He therefore accorded a +high value to imagination and intuition, and to all ideal constructions of +life and its meanings which are based on science. All knowledge grows out +of feeling, and must be expressible again in feeling, if it is to have any +value. Accordingly, man's life is of little value apart from sentiment, and +the emotional nature must always be satisfied. As Lewes begins his +philosophy in feeling, he holds that the final object of philosophy is to +develop feeling into a perfect expression, in accordance with the ideal +wants of man's nature. In other words, the final and supreme object of +philosophy is the expression of religion and the founding of a moral and +spiritual system of life. He believed that religion will continue to +regulate the evolution of humanity, and in "a religion founded on science +and expressing at each stage what is known of the world and of man." As +much as any zealous Christian believer he accepted man's need of spiritual +culture and religious development. At the same time, his philosophy +rejected a substantive absolute, or any other spiritual realities or +existences apart from the universe given in feeling and consciousness. +Accordingly, man must find his ideal satisfactions, his spiritual realities +and moral ideals, within the limits of the universe as known to philosophy, +and in the organic life of the race. + +George Eliot was also largely influenced by the teachings of Auguste Comte. +The place he assigned to positive knowledge and the inductive method, to +feeling, to development and the influence of the past upon the present, +were all accepted by her in an enthusiastic spirit. Altruism commanded her +hearty belief, and to its principles she devoted her life. Comte's +conceptions in regard to sentiment, and the vital importance of religion +and social organization, had her entire assent. She differed from him in +regard to spiritual and social organization, and she could not accept his +arbitrary and artificial methods. One of the leaders of positivism in +England [Footnote: Some Public Aspects of Positivism, the annual address +before the Postivist Society, London, January 1, 1881, by Professor E.G. +Beesley, of University College.] has given this account of her relations to +its organized movements and to its founder: + +"Her powerful intellect had accepted the teaching of Auguste Comte, and she +looked forward to the reorganization of belief on the lines which he had +laid down. Her study of his two great works was diligent and constant. The +last time I saw her--a few days before her death--I found that she had just +been reading over again, with closest attention, that wonderful treatise, +_The General View of Positivism_, a book which always seems full of fresh +wisdom, however often one comes back to it. She had her reservations, no +doubt. There were details in Comte's work which did not satisfy her. But +all who knew her were aware--and I speak from an acquaintance of eighteen +years--that she had not only cast away every shred of theology and +metaphysics, but that she had found refuge from mere negativism in the +system of Comte. She did not write her positivism in broad characters on +her books. Like Shakspere, she was first an artist and then a philosopher; +and I imagine she thought it to be her business as an artist rather to +paint humanity as it is than as she would have it to be. But she could not +conceal her intellectual conviction, and few competent persons read her +books without detecting her standpoint. If any doubt could have existed, it +was set at rest by that noble poem on 'Subjective Immortality,' the +clearest, and at the same time the most beautiful, expression that has yet +been given to one of the most distinctive doctrines of positivism; a +composition of which we can already say with certainty that it will enter +into the positivist liturgies of all countries and through all time. +Towards positivism as an organization, a discipline,--in short, as a +church,--her attitude must be plainly stated. She had much sympathy with +it, as she showed by regularly subscribing to positivist objects, as, for +instance, to the fund of the central organization in Paris presided over by +M. Laffitte. But she sought membership neither in that nor any other +church. Like most of the stronger and thoroughly emancipated minds in this +period of transition and revolutionary disturbance, she looked not beyond +her own conscience for guidance and authority, but judged for herself, +appealing to no external tribunal from the solitary judgment-seat within. I +do not for a moment suppose that she looked on the organization of a church +as unattainable; but she did not regard it as attained." + +Another of her friends [Footnote: W.M.W. Call in the Westminster Review +for July, 1881.] has indicated very clearly the nature and extent of her +dissent from Comte. He remarks that "her apologetic representation of the +_Politique_ as an _Utopia_ evinces that she did not admit the cogency of +its reasoning, or regard the entire social reconstruction of Comte as +demonstrably valid. Her dissatisfaction with some of his speculations, as +expressed to ourselves in the spring of 1880, was very decided.... All +membership with the positivist community she steadily rejected. That a +philosophy originally so catholic as that of Comte should assume a +sectarian character, was a contingency she foreboded and deprecated." In +this last remark we doubtless have the explanation of George Eliot's +dissent from Comte. She believed in an organic, vital development of a +higher social structure, which will be brought about in the gradual +evolution of humanity. Comte's social structure was artificial, the +conception of one mind, and therefore as ill adapted to represent the wants +of mankind as any other system devised by an individual thinker. His +philosophy proper, his system of positive; thought, she accepted with but +few reservations. Her views in this direction, as in many others, were +substantially those presented by Lewes in his many works bearing on +positivism. She was profoundly indebted to Comte, although in her later +years she largely passed beyond his influence to the acceptance of the new +evolution philosophy. In fact, she belonged to that school of English +positivists which has only accepted the positive philosophy of Comte, and +which has rejected his later work in the direction of social and religious +construction. Lewes was the earliest of English thinkers to look at Comte +in this way; but other representative members of the school are John Stuart +Mill, George Eliot, Frederic Harrison and John Morley. Zealously accepting +Comte's position that philosophy must limit itself to positive data and +methods, they look upon the "Religion of Humanity," with Prof. Tyndall, as +Catholicism minus Christianity, and reject it. + +She certainly came nearer to Comte in some directions than to Herbert +Spencer, for the latter has not so fully recognized those elements of the +mental and social life which most attracted her attention. Her theory of +duty is one which he does not accept. He insists in his _Data of Ethics_ +that duty will become less and less _obligatory_ and necessary in the +future, because all action will be in harmony with the impulses of the +inner man and with the conditions of the environment. This conclusion is +entirely opposed to the moral-theory of George Eliot, and is but one +instance of their wide divergence. He insists, in his _Study of Sociology_, +that the religious consciousness will not change its lines of evolution. He +distinctly rejects the conclusion arrived at by George Eliot, that there is +no Infinite Reality knowable to man, and that the substance and reality of +religion is purely subjective. "That the object-matter of religion," he +says, "can be replaced by another object-matter, as supposed by those who +think the 'religion of humanity' will be the religion of the future, is a +belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction. However dominant +may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never +exclude the sentiment alone properly called religious, awakened by that +which is behind humanity and behind all other things." George Eliot was +content with humanity, and believed that all religion arises out of the +subjective elements of human life. At the same time that she made religion +a development from feeling, she limited the moral law to emotional +sanctions. On the contrary, Spencer is much more a rationalist, and insists +on the intellectual basis both of morals and of religion. He makes less of +feeling than she; and in this fact is to be found a wide gulf of separation +between them. She could have been no more content with his philosophy than +she was indebted to it in the construction of her own. As much one as they +are in their philosophic basis and general methods, they are antagonistic +in their conceptions about man and in the place assigned to nature in the +development of religion. To George Eliot, religion is the development of +feeling. To Spencer, it is the result of our "_thought_ of a power of which +humanity is but a small and fugitive product." In these, as in other +directions, they were not in sympathy. Her realism, her psychologic method, +her philosophic theories, her scientific sympathies, she did not derive +from him, diligently as she may have studied his books. + +George Eliot agreed with Comte and all other positivists in setting aside +every inquiry into causes, and limiting philosophy to the search after +laws. The idea of causes is idealistic, and a cause of any kind whatever +is, according to these thinkers, not to be found. "The knowledge of laws," +says Comte, "is henceforth to take the place of the search after causes." +In other words, it is impossible for man to find out _why_ anything is, he +can only know _how_ it is. George Eliot entirely agreed with Comte as to +the universal dominion of law. She also followed him in his teachings about +heredity, which he held to be the cause of social unity, morality, and the +higher or subjective life. His conception of feeling as the highest +expression of human life confirmed the conclusions to which she had already +arrived from the study of Feuerbach. She was an enthusiastic believer in +the Great Being, Humanity; she worshipped at that shrine. More to her than +all other beliefs was her belief that we are to live for others. With Comte +she said, "Altruism alone can enable us to live in the highest and truest +sense." She would have all our doctrines about _rights_ eliminated from +morality and politics. They are as absurd, says Comte, as they are immoral. + +George Eliot had a strong tendency towards philosophical speculations. +While yet a student she expressed an ardent desire that she might live to +reconcile the philosophy of Locke with that of Kant. In positivism, as +developed and modified by Lewes, she found that reconciliation. She went +far towards accepting the boldest speculations of the agnostic science of +the time, but she modified it again and again to meet the needs of her own +broader mind and heart. Yet it is related of her that in parting with one +of the greatest English poets, probably Tennyson, when he said to her, +"Well, good-by, you and your molecules," she replied, "I am quite content +with my molecules." Her speculations led to the rejection of anything like +a positive belief in God, to an entire rejection of faith in a personal +immortality, and to a repudiation of all idealistic conceptions of +knowledge derived from supersensuous sources. Her theories are best +represented by the words environment, experience, heredity, development, +altruism, solidarité, subjective immortality. These speculations confront +the reader in nearly every chapter of her novels, and they gave existence +to all but a very few of her poems. + + + + +X. + + +DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS. + +Science was accepted by George Eliot as furnishing the method and the proof +for her philosophic and religious opinions. She was in hearty sympathy with +Spencer and Darwin in regard to most of their speculations, and the +doctrine of evolution was one which entirely approved itself to her mind. +All her theories were based fundamentally on the hypothesis of universal +law, which she probably interpreted with Lewes, in his _Foundations of a +Creed_, as the uniformities of Infinite Activity. Not only in the physical +world did she see law reigning, but also in every phase of the moral and +spiritual life of man. In reviewing Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_, she +used these suggestive words concerning the uniformity of sequences she +believed to be universal in the fullest sense: + + The supremely important fact that the gradual reduction of all + phenomena within the sphere of established law, which carries as a + consequence the rejection of the miraculous, and has its determining + current in the development of physical science, seems to have engaged + comparatively little of his attention; at least he gives it no + prominence. The great conception of uniform regular sequence, without + partiality and without caprice--the conception which is the most potent + force at work in the modification of our faith, and of the practical + form given to our sentiments--could only grow out of that patient + watching of external fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions, + which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical science. + [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, May, 1865.] + +The uniformities of nature have the effect upon man, through his nervous +organization, of developing a responsive feeling and action. He learns to +respond to that uniformity, to conform his actions to it. The habits thus +acquired are inherited by his children, and moral conduct is developed. +Heredity has as conspicuous a place in the novels of George Eliot as in the +scientific treatises of Charles Darwin. She has attempted to indicate the +moral and social influences of heredity, that it gives us the better part +of our life in all directions. Heredity is but one phase of the uniformity +of nature and the persistence of its forces. That uniformity never changes +for man; his life it entirely ignores. He is crushed by its forces; he is +given pain and sorrow through its unpitying disregard of his tender nature. +Not only the physical world, but the moral world also, is unfailing in the +development of the legitimate sequences of its forces. There is no +cessation of activity, no turning aside of consequences, no delay in the +transformation of causes into necessary effects. + +George Eliot never swerves from this conception of the universe, physical +and moral; everywhere cause is but another name for effect. The unbending +order adopts man into its processes, helps him when he conforms to them, +and gives him pain when he disregards them. The whole secret of man's +existence is to be found in the agreement of his life with the invariable +sequences of nature and moral activity; harmony with them brings true +development, discord brings pain and sorrow. The unbending nature of law, +and man's relations to it, she has portrayed in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," +when describing Tina's sorrows. + + While this poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy + for it, Nature was holding on her calm inexorable way, in unmoved and + terrible beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the + tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was + making brilliant day to busy nations oil the other side of the + expectant earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and + broadening onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships + were laboring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the + fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest, and + sleepless statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. + What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, + rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest + centre of quivering life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as + the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has + fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought food, and has found the + nest torn and empty. + +The effect of the uniformities of nature upon man, as George Eliot regarded +them, is not quite that which would be inferred from these words alone. +While she believed that nature is as unbending and pitiless as is here +indicated, yet that unbending uniformity, which never changes its direction +for man, is a large influence towards the development of his higher life. +It has the effect on man to develop feeling which is the expression of all +that is best and most human in his life. + +George Eliot believed that the better and nobler part of man's life is to +be found in feeling. It is the first expression which he makes as a +sentient being, to have emotions; and his emotions more truly represent him +than the purely intellectual processes of the mind. She would have us +believe that feeling is rather to be trusted than the intellect, that it is +both a safer and a surer guide. In _Middlemarch_ she says that "our good +depends on the quality and breadth of our emotions." Her conception of the +comparative worth of feeling and logic is expressed in _Romola_ with a +characteristic touch. + + After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence + of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong + agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great + world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in + the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and + hope. + +In _Daniel Deronda_, when considering the causes which prevent men from +desecrating their fathers' tombs for material gain, she says, "The only +check to be alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold +that sentiments are the better part of the world's wealth." To the same +effect is her saying in _Theophrastus Such_, that "our civilization, +considered as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril without +the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings." She expresses the +conviction in _Adam Bede_, that "it is possible to have very erroneous +theories and very sublime feelings;" and she does not hesitate through +all her writings to convey the idea, that sublime feelings are much to +be preferred to profound thoughts or the most perfect philosophy. She +makes Adam Bede say that "it isn't notions sets people doing the right +thing--it's feelings," and that "feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Feeling +gives us the only true knowledge we have of our fellow-men, a knowledge +in every way more perfect than that which is to be derived from our +intellectual inquiries into their natures and wants. In _Janet's +Repentance_ this power of feeling to give us true knowledge of others, +to awaken us to the deeper needs of our own souls, when we come in contact +with those who are able to move and inspire us, is eloquently presented. + + Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not + calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, + effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is + quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing + tasselled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes + cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot + make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe + upon us with warm breath; they touch us with soft responsive hands; + they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing + tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, + its faith and its love. Then their presence is a power; then they shake + us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, + as flame is drawn to flame. [Footnote: Chapter XIX.] + +She returns to the same subject when considering the intellectual theories +of happiness and the proportion of crime there is likely to occur in the +world. She shows her entire dissent from such a method of dealing with +human woe, and she pleads for that sympathy and love which will enable us +to feel the pain of others as our own. This fellow-feeling gives us the +most adequate knowledge we can have. + + It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that "there is more joy + in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just + persons that need no repentance." And certain ingenious philosophers + of our own day must surely take offence at a joy so entirely out of + correspondence with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has + been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for the woes of + another--that has "learned pity through suffering"--is likely to find + very imperfect satisfaction in the "balance of happiness," "doctrine of + compensations," and other short and easy methods of obtaining thorough + complacency in the presence of pain; and for such a heart that saying + will not be altogether dark. The emotions I have observed are but + slightly influenced by arithmetical considerations: the mother, when + her sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from her one after + another, and she is hanging over her last dead babe, finds small + consolation in the fact that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a + necessary average, and that a thousand other babes brought into the + world at the same time are doing well, and are likely to live; and if + you stood beside that mother--if you knew her pang and shared it--it is + probable you would be equally unable to see a ground of complacency in + statistics. Doubtless a complacency resting on that basis is highly + rational; but emotion, I fear, is obstinately irrational; it insists on + caring for individuals; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative + view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a + set-off against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on + the side of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of feeling, + and one must be a great philosopher to have got quite clear of all + that, and to have emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in + which it is evident that individuals really exist for no other purpose + than that abstractions maybe drawn from them--abstractions that may + rise from heaps of ruined lives like the sweet savor of a sacrifice in + the nostrils of philosophers, and of a philosophic Deity. And so it + comes to pass that for the man who knows sympathy because he has known + sorrow, that old, old saying about the joy of angels over the repentant + sinner outweighing their joy over the ninety-nine just, has a meaning + which does not jar with the language of his own heart. It only tells + him that for angels too there is a transcendent value in human pain + which refuses to be settled by equations; that the eyes of angels too + are turned away from the serene happiness of the righteous to bend with + yearning pity on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert where no + water is; that for angels too the misery of one casts so tremendous a + shadow as to eclipse the bliss of ninety-nine. [Footnote: Chapter + XXII.] + +Again, she says in the same story,-- + + Surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that + which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the + heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance + and opinion. Our subtlest analogies of schools and sects must miss the + essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms + of human thought and-work the life-and-death struggles of separate + human beings. + +George Eliot would have us believe, that until we can feel with man, +enter sympathetically into his emotions and yearnings, we cannot know +him. It is because we have common emotions, common experiences, common +aspirations, that we are really able to understand man; and not because of +statistics, natural history, sociology or psychology. The objective facts +have their place and value, but the real knowledge we possess of mankind is +subjective, grows out of fellow-feeling. + +The mental life of man, according to George Eliot, is simply an expansion +of the emotional life. At first the mental life is unconscious, it is +instinctive, simply the emotional response of man to the sequences of +nature. This instinctive life of the emotions always remains a better part +of our natures, and is to be trusted rather than the more formal activities +of the intellectual faculties. In the most highly developed intellects +even, there is a subconscious mental activity, an instinctive life of +feeling, which is rather to be trusted than reason itself. This is a +frequently recurring statement, which George Eliot makes in the firmest +conviction of its truthfulness. It appears in such a sentence as this, in +_The Mill on the Floss_: "Watch your own speech, and notice how it is +guided by your less conscious purposes." In _Daniel Deronda_ it finds +expression in the assertion that "there is a great deal of unmapped country +within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of +our gusts and storms." It is more explicitly presented in _Adam Bede_. + + Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulses by the + name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, + we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all + given to us. + +George Eliot puts into the mouth of Mordecai the assertion that love lies +deeper than any reasons which are to be found for its exercise. In the same +way, she would have us believe that feeling is safer than reason. Daniel +Deronda questions Mordecai's visions, and doubts if he is worth listening +to, except for pity's sake. On this the author comments, in defence of the +visions, as against reason. + + Suppose he had introduced himself as one of the strictest reasoners: do + they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and + illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations, too + hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to + hold the universe. Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an + illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions and propositions, + with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking + will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the + matter to be thought about. And since the unemotional intellect may + carry us into a mathematical dream-land where nothing is but what is + not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its + passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be--the more + comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the + sensibility of the artist seizes combinations which science explains + and justifies. At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be + trusted. [Footnote: Chapter XLI.] + +As explicit is a passage in _Theophrastus Such_, wherein imagination is +regarded as a means of knowledge, because it rests on a subconscious +expression of experience. + + It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward + vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy + constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of experience, + which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the + habitual confusion of probable fact with the fictions of fancy and + transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs + every material object, every incidental fact, with far-reaching + memories and stored residues of passion, bringing into new light the + less obvious relations of human existence. [Footnote: Chapter XIII.] + +Imagination, feeling and the whole inward life are being constantly shaped +by our actions. Experience gives new character to the inward life, and at +the same time determines its motives and its inclinations. The muscles +develop as they are used; what has been once done it is easier to do again. +In the same way, our deeds influence our lives, and compel us to repeat our +actions. At least this is George Eliot's opinion, and one she is fond of +re-affirming. After Arthur had wronged Hetty, his life was changed, and of +this change wrought in his character by his conduct, George Eliot says,-- + + Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we + know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with + inward facts which constitute a man's critical actions, it will be + better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a + terrible coercion in our deeds which may at first turn the honest man + into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this + reason--that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of + the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been + seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which + is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterward with the lens of + apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful + and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe + adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_, and so does an individual + character--until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive + retribution. [Footnote: Chapter XXIX.] + +What we have done, determines what we shall do, even in opposition to +our wills. After Tito Melema had done his first act towards denying his +foster-father, we have this observation of the author's: + + Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act + apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds + never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our + consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on + Tito for the first time. + +When Tito had openly denied that father, at an unexpected moment, we hear +the ever-present chorus repeating this great ethical truth: + + Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we + prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or + evil that gradually determines character. + +As a river moves in the channel made for it, as a plant grows towards the +sunlight, so man does again what he has once done. The impression of his +act is left upon his nature, it is taken up into his motives, it leads to +feeling and impulse, it repeats itself in future conduct. His deed lives in +memory, it lives in weakness or strength of impulse, it lives in disease or +in health, it lives in mental listlessness or in mental vigor. What is +done, determines our natures in their character and tendency for the +future. "A man can never separate himself from his past history," says +George Eliot in one of the mottoes of _Felix Holt_. We cannot rid ourselves +of the effects of our actions; they follow us forever. This truth takes +shape in _Romola_ in these words: + + Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life + of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have + once acted greatly, seems a reason why we should always be noble. But + Tito was feeling the effect of an opposite tradition: he had now no + memories of self-conquest and perfect faithfulness from which he could + have a sense of falling. + +A motto in _Daniel Deronda_ reiterates this oft-repeated assertion. + + Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, + And righteous or unrighteous, being done, + Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself + Be laid in stillness, and the universe + Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more. + +Feeling is to be preferred to logic, according to George Eliot, because it +brings us the results of long-accumulating experiences, because it embodies +the inherited experiences of the race. She was an earnest believer in +"far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion," for she was +convinced that the better part of all our knowledge is brought to us by +inheritance. The deeds of the individual make the habits of his life, they +remain in memory, they guide the purposes of the will, and they give +motives to action. Deeds often repeated give impulse and direction to +character, and these appear in the offspring as predispositions of body +and mind. In this way our deeds "throb in after-throbs" of our children; +and in the same manner the deeds of a people live in the life of the race +and become guiding motives in its future deeds. As the deeds of a person +develop into habits, so the deeds of a people develop into national +tendencies and actions. + +George Eliot was a thorough believer in the Darwinian theories of heredity, +and she has in all her books shown the effects of hereditary conditions on +the individual and even upon a people. Family and race are made to play a +very important part in her writings. Other novelists disregard the +conditions and limitations imposed by heredity, and consider the individual +as unrestricted by other laws than those of his own will; but George Eliot +gives conspicuous prominence to the laws of heredity, both individual and +social. Felix Holt never ceases in her pages to be the son of his mother, +however enlarged his ideas may become and broad his culture. Rosamond Vincy +also has a parentage, and so has Mary Garth. Daniel Deronda is a Jew by +birth, the son of a visionary mother and a truth-seeking father. This +parentage expresses itself throughout his life, even in boyhood, in all his +thought and conduct. Heredity shapes the destiny of Tito Melema, Romola, +Fedalma, Maggie Tulliver, Will Ladislaw, Gwendolen Harleth and many another +character in George Eliot's novels. It is even more strongly presented in +her poems. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she describes Fedalma as a genuine +daughter of her father, as inheriting his genius and tendencies, which are +stronger than all the Spanish culture she had received. When Fedalma says +she belongs to him she loves, and that love + + is nature too, + Forming a fresher law than laws of birth,-- + +Zarca replies,-- + + Unmake yourself, then, from a Zincala-- + Unmake yourself from being child of mine! + Take holy water, cross your dark skin white; + Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks; + Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe: + Unmake yourself--doff all the eagle plumes + And be a parrot, chained to a ring that slips + Upon a Spaniard's thumb, at will of his + That you should prattle o'er his words again! + +Fedalma cannot unmake herself; she has already danced in the plaza, and she +is soon convinced that she is a Zincala, that her place is with her father +and his tribe. The Prior had declared,-- + + That maiden's blood + Is as unchristian as the leopard's, + +and it so proves. His statement of reasons for this conviction expresses +the author's own belief. + + What! Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips + Descend through generations, and the soul + That moves within our frame like God in worlds-- + Convulsing, urging, melting, withering-- + Imprint no record, leave no documents, + Of her great history? Shall men bequeath + The fancies of their palates to their sons, + And shall the shudder of restraining awe, + The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, + Faith's prayerful labor, and the food divine + Of fasts ecstatic--shall these pass away + Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly? + Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain, + And god-enshrining symbols leave no trace + Of tremors reverent? + +This larger or social heredity is that which claims much the larger share +of George Eliot's attention, and it is far more clearly and distinctively +presented in her writings. She gives a literary expression here to the +teachings of the evolutionists, shows the application to life of what has +been taught by Spencer, Haeckel and Lewes. In his _Foundations of a Creed_, +Lewes has stated this theory in discussing "the limitations of knowledge." +"It is indisputable," he says, "that every particular man comes into the +world with a heritage of organized forms and definite tendencies, which +will determine his feeling and thinking in certain definite ways, whenever +the suitable conditions are present. And all who believe in evolution +believe that these forms and tendencies represent ancestral experiences and +adaptations; believe that not only is the pointer born with an organized +tendency to point, the setter to set, the beaver to build, and the bird to +fly, but that the man is born with a tendency to think in images and +symbols according to given relations and sequences which constitute logical +laws, that _what_ he thinks is the necessary product of his organism and +the external conditions. This organism itself is a product of its history; +it _is_ what it has _become_; it is a part of the history of the human +race; it is also specially individualized by the particular personal +conditions which have distinguished him from his fellow-men. Thus +resembling all men in general characters, he will in general feel as +they feel, think as they think; and differing from all men in special +characters, he will have personal differences of feeling and shades of +feeling, thought and combinations of thought.... The mind is built up +out of assimilated experiences, its perceptions being shaped by its +pre-perceptions, its conceptions by its pre-conceptions. Like the body, +the mind is shaped through its history." In other words, experience is +inherited and shapes the mental and social life. What some philosophers +have called intuitions, and what Kant called the categories of the mind, +Lewes regarded as the inherited results of human experience. By a slow +process of evolution the mind has been produced and shaped into harmony +with its environment; the results of inherited experience take the form of +feelings, intuitions, laws of thought and social tendencies. Its intuitions +are to be accepted as the highest knowledge, because the transmitted +results of all human experience. + +As the body performs those muscular operations most easily to which it +is most accustomed, so men as social beings perform those acts and think +those thoughts most easily and naturally to which the race has been longest +accustomed. Man lives and thinks as man has lived and thought; he inherits +the past. In his social life he is as much the child of the past as he is +individually the son of his father. If he inherits his father's physiognomy +and habits of thought, so does he socially inherit the characteristics of +his race, its social and moral life. George Eliot was profoundly convinced +of the value of this fact, and she has presented it in her books in all +its phases. In her _Fortnightly Review_ essay on "The Influence of +Rationalism," she says all large minds have long had "a vague sense" "that +tradition is really the basis of our best life." She says, "Our sentiments +may be called organized traditions; and a large part of our actions gather +all their justification, all their attractions and aroma, from the memory +of the life lived, of the actions done, before we were born." Tradition is +the inherited experience of the race, the result of its long efforts, its +many struggles, after a larger life. It lives in the tendencies of our +emotions, in the intuitions and aspirations of our minds, as the wisdom +which our minds hold dear, as the yearnings of our hearts after a wider +social life. These things are not the results of our own reasonings, but +they are the results of the life lived by those who have gone before us, +and who, by their thoughts and deeds, have shaped our lives, our minds, to +what they are. Tradition is the inherited experience, feeling, yearning, +pain, sorrow and wisdom of the ages. It furnishes a great system of +customs, laws, institutions, ideas, motives and feelings into which we are +born, which we naturally adopt, which gives shape and strength to our +growing life, which makes it possible for us to take up life at that stage +it has reached after the experiences of many generations. George Eliot says +in _Middlemarch_ that "a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality +with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition." We come into a world +made ready for us, and find prepared for our immediate use a vast complex +of customs and duties and ideas, the results of the world's experience. +George Eliot believed, with Comte, that with each generation the influence +of the past over the present becomes greater, and that men's lives are more +and more shaped by what has been. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she makes Don +Silva say that + + The only better is a Past that lives + On through an added Present, stretching still + In hope unchecked by shaming memories + To life's last breath. + +This deep conviction of the blessed influence of the past upon us is well +expressed in the little poem on "Self and Life," one of the most fully +autobiographical of all her poems, where she makes Life bid Self remember + + How the solemn, splendid Past + O'er thy early widened earth + Made grandeur, as on sunset cast + Dark elms near take mighty girth. + Hands and feet were tiny still + When we knew the historic thrill, + Breathed deep breath in heroes dead, + Tasted the immortals' bread. + +In expressive sentences, in the development of her characters, and in many +other ways, she affirms this faith in tradition. In one of the mottoes +in _Felix Holt_ she uses a fine sentence, which is repeated in "A Minor +Prophet." + + Our finest hope is finest memory. + +The finest hope of the race is to be found in memory of its great deeds, as +its saddest loss is to be found in forgetfulness of a noble past. In _The +Mill on the Floss_, when describing St. Ogg's, she attributes its sordid +and tedious life to its neglect of the past and its inspiring memories. + + The mind of St. Ogg's did not look extensively before or after. It + inherited a long past without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the + spirits that walk the streets, Since the centuries when St. Ogg with + his boat, and the Virgin Mother at the prow, had been seen on the wide + water, so many memories had been left behind, and had gradually + vanished like the receding hill-tops! And the present time was like the + level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, + thinking to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giant forces that used + to shake the earth are forever laid to sleep. The days were gone when + people could be greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less change + it: the Catholics were formidable because they would lay hold of + government and property, and burn men alive; not because any sane and + honest parishioner of St. Ogg's could be brought to believe in the + Pope. One aged person remembered how a rude multitude had been swayed + when John Wesley preached in the cattle-market; but for a long while it + had not been expected of preachers that they should shake the souls of + men. An occasional burst of fervor in Dissenting pulpits on the subject + of infant baptism was the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober + times when men had done with change. Protestantism sat at ease, + unmindful of schisms, careless of proselytism; Dissent was an + inheritance along with a superior pew and a business connection; and + Churchmanship only wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish + habit that clung greatly to families in the grocery and chandlering + lines, though not incompatible with prosperous wholesale dealing. + [Footnote: Chapter XII.] + +This faith in tradition, as giving the basis of all our best life, is +perhaps nowhere so expressively set forth by George Eliot as in _The +Spanish Gypsy_. It is distinctly taught by all the best characters in the +words they speak, and it is emphatically taught in the whole purpose and +spirit of the poem. Zarca says his tribe has no great life because it has +no great national memories. He calls his people + + Wanderers whom no God took knowledge of + To give them laws, to fight for them, or blight + Another race to make them ampler room; + Who have no whence or whither in their souls, + No dimmest lure of glorious ancestors + To make a common breath for piety. + +As his people are weak because they have no traditional life, he proposes +by his deeds to make them national memories and hopes and aims. + + No lure + Shall draw me to disown them, or forsake + The meagre wandering herd that lows for help-- + And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture + Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. + Because our race has no great memories, + I will so live, it shall remember me + For deeds of such divine beneficence + As rivers have, that teach, men what is good + By blessing them. I have been schooled--have caught + Lore from Hebrew, deftness from the Moor-- + Know the rich heritage, the milder life, + Of nations fathered by a mighty Past. + +The way in which such a past is made is suggested by Zarca, in answer to a +question about the Gypsy's faith; it is made by a common life of faith and +brotherhood, that gives origin to a common inheritance and memories. + + O, it is a faith + Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts + Faith to each other: the fidelity + Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place + Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share + The scanty water: the fidelity + Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, + Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, + The speech that even in lying tells the truth + Of heritage inevitable as birth, + Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel + The mystic stirring of a common life + Which makes the many one: fidelity + To that deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate + Made through our infant breath when we were born + The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, + Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. + Fear thou that oath, my daughter--nay, not fear, + But love it; for the sanctity of oaths + Lies not in lightning that avenges them, + But in the injury wrought by broken bonds + And in the garnered good of human trust. + And you have sworn--even with your infant breath + You too were pledged. + +George Eliot's faith in tradition, as furnishing the basis of our best +life, and the moral purpose and law which is to guide it, she has +concentrated into one question asked by Maggie Tulliver. + + If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should + have no law but the inclination of the moment. + +Although this question is asked in regard to an individual's past, the +answer to it holds quite as good for the race as for the individual. She +repudiates all theories which give the individual authority to follow +inclination, or even to follow some inner or personal guide. The true +wisdom is always social, always grows out of the experiences of the race, +and not out of any personal inspiration or enlightenment. Tradition +furnishes the materials for reason to use, but reason does not penetrate +into new regions, or bring to us wisdom apart from that we obtain through +inherited experiences. George Eliot compares these two with each other in +_The Spanish Gypsy_ in the words of Sephardo. + + I abide + By that wise spirit of listening reverence + Which marks the boldest doctors of our race. + For Truth, to us, is like a living child + Born of two parents: if the parents part + And will divide the child, how shall it live? + Or, I will rather say: Two angels guide + The path of man, both aged and yet young, + As angels are, ripening through endless years. + On one he leans: some call her Memory, + And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet, + With deep mysterious accords: the other, + Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams + A light divine and searching on the earth, + Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, + Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew + Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp + Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked + But for Tradition; we walk evermore + To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp. + +Man leans on tradition, it is the support of his life, by its strength he +is able to move forward. Reason is a lamp which lights the way, gives +direction to tradition; it is a beacon and not a support. Tradition not +only brings us the wisdom of all past experience, but it develops into a +spiritual atmosphere in which we live, move and have our being. This was +Comte's idea, that the spiritual life is developed out of tradition, that +the world's experiences have produced for us intangible hopes, yearnings +and aspirations; awe, reverence and sense of subtle mystery: mystic trust, +faith in invisible memories, joy in the unseen power of thought and love; +and that these create for us a spiritual world most real in its nature, and +most powerful in its influence. On every hand man is touched by the +invisible, mystical influences of the past, spiritual voices call to him +out of the ages, unseen hands point the way he is to go. He breathes this +atmosphere of spiritual memories, he is fed on thoughts other men have made +for his sustenance, he is inspired by the heroisms of ages gone before. In +an article in the _Westminster Review_ in July, 1856, on "The Natural +History of German Life," in review of W.H. Riehl's books on the German +peasant, and on land and climate, she presents the idea that a people can +be understood only when we understand its history. Society, she says, has +developed through many generations, and has built itself up in many +memories and associations. To change it we must change its traditions. +Nothing can be done _de novo_; a fresh beginning cannot be had. The dream +of the French Revolution, that a new nation, a new life, a new morality, +was to be created anew and fresh out of the cogitations of philosophers, is +not in any sense to be realized. Tradition forever asserts itself, the past +is more powerful than all philosophers, and new traditions must be made +before a new life can be had for society. These ideas are well expressed by +George Eliot in her review of Riehl's books. + + He sees in European society _incarnate history_, and any attempt to + disengage it from its historical elements must, he believes, be simply + destruction of social vitality. What has grown up historically can only + die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. The + external conditions which society has inherited from the past are but + the manifestation of inherited internal conditions in the human beings + who compose it; the internal conditions and the external are related to + each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take + place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both. As a + necessary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must obtain + purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of + hereditary affection and antipathy; which is as easy as to get running + streams without springs, or the leafy shade of the forest without the + secular growth of trunk and branch. + + The historical conditions of society may be compared with those of + language. It must be admitted that the language of cultivated nations + is in anything but a rational state; the great sections of the + civilized world are only approximately intelligible to each other, and + even that, only at the cost of long study; one word stands for many + things, and many words for one thing; the subtle shades of meaning, and + still subtler echoes of association, make language an instrument which + scarcely anything short of genius can wield with definiteness and + certainty. Suppose, then, that the effort which has been again and + again made to construct a universal language on a rational basis has + at length succeeded, and that you have a language which has no + uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of + many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms "familiar with forgotten + years,"--a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects + the purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic + signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of expression to science, + but will never express _life_, which is a great deal more than science. + With the anomalies and inconveniences of historical language, you will + have parted with its music and its passion, with its vital qualities + as an expression of individual character, with its subtle capabilities + of wit, with everything that gives it power over the imagination; and + the next step in simplification will be the invention of a talking + watch, which will achieve the utmost facility and despatch in the + communication of ideas by a graduated adjustment of ticks, to be + represented in writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A + "melancholy language of the future!" The sensory and motor nerves that + run in the same sheath are scarcely bound together by a more necessary + and delicate union than that which binds men's affections, imagination, + wit and humor with the subtle ramifications of historical language. + Language must be left to grow in precision, completeness and unity, as + minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness and sympathy. And there is + an analogous relation between the moral tendencies of men and the + social conditions they have inherited. The nature of European men has + its roots intertwined with the past, and can only be developed by + allowing those roots to remain undisturbed while the process of + development is going on, until that perfect ripeness of the seed which + carries with it a life independent of the root.... + + It has not been sufficiently insisted on, that in the various branches + of social science there is an advance from the general to the special, + from the simple to the complex, analogous with that which is found in + the series of the sciences, from mathematics to biology. To the laws of + quantity comprised in mathematics and physics are superadded, in + chemistry, laws of quality; to those again are added, in biology, laws + of life; and lastly, the conditions of life in general branch out into + its special conditions, or natural history, on the one hand, and into + its abnormal conditions, or pathology, on the other. And in this series + or ramification of the sciences, the more general science will not + suffice to solve the problems of the more special. Chemistry embraces + phenomena which are not explicable by physics; biology embraces + phenomena which are not explicable by chemistry; and no biological + generalization will enable us to predict the infinite specialties + produced by the complexity of vital conditions. So social science, + while it has departments which in their fundamental generality + correspond to mathematics and physics, namely, those grand and simple + generalizations which trace out the inevitable march of the human race + as a whole, and, as a ramification of these, the laws of economical + science, has also, in the departments of government and jurisprudence, + which embrace the conditions of social life in all their complexity, + what may be called its biology, carrying us on to innumerable special + phenomena which outlie the sphere of science, and belong to natural + history. And just as the most thorough acquaintance with physics, or + chemistry, or general physiology, will not enable you at once to + establish the balance of life in your private vivarium, so that your + particular society of zoophytes, molluscs and echinoderms may feel + themselves, as the Germans say, at ease in their skins; so the most + complete equipment of theory will not enable a statesman or a political + and social reformer to adjust his measures wisely, in the absence of a + special acquaintance with the section of society for which he + legislates, with the peculiar characteristics of the nation, the + province, the class whose well-being he has to consult. In other words, + a wise social policy must be based not simply on abstract social + science but on the natural history of social bodies. + +Her conception of the corporate life of the nice has been clearly expressed +by George Eliot in the concluding essay in _Theophrastus Such_. In that +essay she writes of the powerful influence wrought upon national life by +"the divine gift of memory which inspires the moments with a past, a +present and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that +raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute." The +nations which lead the world on to a larger civilization are not merely +those with most genius, originality, gift of invention or talent for +scientific observation, but those which have the finest traditions. As a +member of such a nation, the individual can be noble and great. We should +almost be persuaded, reading George Eliot's eloquent rhetoric on this +subject, that personal genius is of little moment in comparison with a rich +inheritance of national memories. It is indeed true that Homer, Virgil, +Dante, Milton and Shakspere have used the traditions of their people for +the materials of their immortal works, but what would those traditions have +been without the genius of the men who deal with the traditions in a +fashion quite their own, giving them new meaning and vitality! The poet, +however, needs materials for his song, and memories to inspire it. The +influence of these George Eliot well understands in calling them "the deep +suckers of healthy sentiment." + + The historian guides us rightly in urging us to dwell on the virtues of + our ancestors with emulation, and to cherish our sense of a common + descent as a bond of obligation. The eminence, the nobleness of a + people, depends on its capability of being stirred by memories, and for + striving for what we call spiritual ends--ends which consist not in an + immediate material possession, but in the satisfaction of a great + feeling that animates the collective body as with one soul. A people + having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when + it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its + national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and + gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such as are still + demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited + may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when + an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great + precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its + institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which + makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest + with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their + blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all + calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and + thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual + man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, + if not in actual existence yet existing in the past--in memory, as a + departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be + restored.... Not only the nobleness of a nation depends on the presence + of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each + individual citizen. Our dignity and rectitude are proportioned to our + sense of relationship with something great, admirable, pregnant with + high possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to + self-repression and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and + more attractive to our generous part than the securing of personal ease + or prosperity. [Footnote: Theophrastus Such, chapter XVIII.] + +Zealous as is George Eliot's faith in tradition, she is broad-minded enough +to see that it is limited in its influence by at least two causes,--by +reason and by the spirit of universal brotherhood. We have already seen +that she makes reason one of man's guides. In _Romola_ the right of the +individual to make a new course for action is distinctly expressed. Romola +had "the inspiring consciousness," we are told, "that her lot was vitally +united with the general lot which exalted even the minor details of +obligation into religion," and so "she was marching with a great army, she +was feeling the stress of a common life." Yet she began to feel that she +must not merely repeat the past; and the influence of Savonarola, in +breaking with Rome for the sake of a pure and holy life, inspired her. + + To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the + soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law + to appeal to, but in face of a law which is not unarmed with divine + lightnings--lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false. + +It is reason's lamp by which "we walk evermore to higher paths;" and by its +aid, new deeds are to be done, new memories created, fresher traditions +woven into feeling and hope. National memories are to be superseded by the +spirit of brotherhood, for, as the race advances, nations are brought +closer to each other, have more in common, and development is made of +world-wide traditions. Theophrastus Such, in the last of his essays, tells +us that "it is impossible to arrest the tendencies of things towards the +quicker or slower fusion of races." + +The environment of her characters George Eliot makes of very great +importance. She dwells upon the natural scenery which they love, but +especially does she magnify the importance of the social environment, and +the perpetual influence it has upon the whole of life. Mr. James Sully has +clearly interpreted her thought on this subject, and pointed out its +engrossing interest for her. + +"A character divorced from its surroundings is an abstraction. A +personality is only a concrete living whole, when we attach it by a network +of organic filaments to its particular environment, physical and social. +Our author evidently chooses her surroundings with strict regard to her +characters. She paints nature less in its own beauty than in its special +aspect and significance for those whom she sets in its midst. 'The bushy +hedgerows,' 'the pool in the corner of the field where the grasses were +dank,' 'the sudden slope of the old marl-pit, making a red background for +the burdock'--these things are touched caressingly and lingered over +because they are so much to the 'midland-bred souls' whose history is here +recorded; so much because of cumulative recollection reaching back to the +time when they 'toddled among' them, or perhaps 'learnt them by heart +standing between their father's knees while he drove leisurely.' And what +applies to the natural environment applies still more to those narrower +surroundings which men construct for themselves, and which form their daily +shelter, their work-shop, their place of social influence. The human +interest which our author sheds about the mill, the carpenter's shop, the +dairy, the village church, and even the stiff, uninviting conventicle, +shows that she looks on these as having a living continuity with the people +whom she sets among them. Their artistic value is but a reflection of all +that they mean to those for whom they have made the nearer and habitually +enclosing world." The larger influence in the environment of any person, +according to George Eliot, is that which arises from tradition. Cut off +from the sustenance given by tradition, the person loses the motives, the +supports of his life. This is well shown in the case of Silas Marner, who +had fled from his early home and all his life held dear. George Eliot +describes the effect of such a change of environment. + + Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes + find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on + their faith in the Invisible--nay, on the sense that their past joys + and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported + to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their + history, and share none of their ideas--where their mother earth shows + another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their + souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old + faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in + which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, + and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. + [Footnote: Chapter II.] + +She delights to return again and again to the influences produced upon us +by the environment of childhood. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she tells us +how dear the earth becomes by such associations. + + We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood + in it,--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again + every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat + lisping to ourselves on the grass--the same hips and haws on the autumn + hedgerows--the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," + because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth + that sweet monotony where everything is known, and _loved_ because it + is known? + + The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown + foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white + star-flowers, and the blue-eyed speedwell, and the ground-ivy at + my feet--what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid + broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate + fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these + well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, + these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given + to it by the capricious hedgerows--such things as these are the mother + tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the + subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood + left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass + to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, + if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, + which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. + [Footnote: Chapter V.] + +In the backward glance of _Theophrastus Such_ this anchorage of the life in +familiar associations is described as a source of our faith in the +spiritual, even when all the childhood thoughts about those associations +cannot be retained. + + The illusions that began for us when we were less acquainted with evil + have not lost their value when we discern them to be illusions. They + feed the ideal better, and in loving them still, we strengthen, the + precious habit of loving something not visibly, tangibly existent, but + a spiritual product of our visible, tangible selves. + +In the evolution philosophy she found the reconciliation between Locke and +Kant which she so earnestly desired to discover in girlhood. The old school +of experimentalists did not satisfy her with their philosophy; she saw +that the dictum that all knowledge is the result of sensation was not +satisfactory, that it was shallow and untrue. On the other hand, the +intellectual intuition of Schelling was not acceptable, nor even Kant's +categories of the mind. She wished to know why the mind instinctively +throws all experiences and thoughts under certain forms, and why it must +think under certain general methods. She found what to her was a perfectly +satisfactory answer to these questions in the theory of evolution as +developed by Darwin and Spencer. Through the aid of these men she found the +reconciliation between Locke and Kant, and discovered that both were wrong +and both right. So familiar has this reconciliation become, and so wide is +its acceptance, that no more than a mere hint of its meaning will be needed +here. This philosophy asserts, with Locke, that all knowledge begins in +sensation and experience; but with Kant, it affirms that knowledge passes +beyond experience and becomes intuitional. It differs from Kant as to the +source of the intuitions, pronouncing them the results of experience built +up into legitimate factors of the mind by heredity. Experience is inherited +and becomes intuitions. The intuitions are affirmed to be reliable, and, to +a certain extent, sure indications of truth. They are the results, to use +the phrase adopted by Lewes, of "organized experience;" experience verified +in the most effective manner in the organism which it creates and modifies. +According to this philosophy, man must trust the results of experience, but +he can by no means be certain that those results correspond with actuality. +They are actual for him, because it is impossible for him to go beyond +their range. Within the little round created by "organized experience," +which is also Lewes's definition of science, man may trust his knowledge, +because it is consistent with itself; but beyond that strict limit he can +obtain no knowledge, and even knows that what is without it does not +correspond with what is within it. In truth, man knows only the relative, +not the absolute; he must rely on experience, not on creative reason. + +George Eliot would have us believe that the sources of life are not inward, +but outward; not dependent on the deep affirmations of individual reason, +or on the soul's inherent capacity to see what is true, but on the effects +of environment and the results of social experience. Man is not related to +an infinite world of reason and spiritual truth, but only to a world of +universal law, hereditary conditions and social traditions. Invariable law, +heredity, feeling, tradition; these words indicate the trend of George +Eliot's mind, and the narrow limitations of her philosophy. Man is not only +the product of nature, but, according to this theory, nature limits his +moral capacity and the range of his mental activity. Environment is +regarded as all-powerful, and the material world as the _source_ of such +truth as we can know. In her powerful presentation of this philosophy of +life George Eliot indicates her great genius and her profound insight. At +the same time, her work is limited, her genius cramped, and her imagination +crippled, by a philosophy so narrow and a creed so inexpansive. + + + + +XI. + + +RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES. + +As a great literary creator, George Eliot holds a singular position in +reference to religious beliefs. To most literary artists religion is a +vital part of life, which enters as a profound element into their teachings +or into their interpretations of character and incident. Religion deeply +affects the writings of Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin; its problems, its +hopes, its elements of mystery and infinity touch all their pages. In an +equal degree, though with a further departure from accredited beliefs, and +with a greater effect from philosophical or humanitarian influences, has it +wrought itself into the genius of Goethe, Carlyle and Hugo. Even the pages +of Voltaire, Shelley and Heine have been touched by its magic influence; +their words glow with its great interests, and bloom into beauty through +its inspiration. None of these is more affected by religion than George +Eliot has been; nor does it form a greater element in their writings than +in hers. + +What is singular about George Eliot's position is, that she both affirms +and denies; she is deeply religious and yet rejects all religious +doctrines. No writer of the century has given religion a more important +relation to human interests or made it a larger element in his creative +work; and yet no other literary artist has so completely rejected all +positive belief in God and immortality. In her books she depicts every +phase of religious belief and life, and with sympathy and appreciation. A +very large proportion of her characters are clergymen or other religious +persons, who are described with accuracy and sympathy. Her own faith, the +theory of religion she accepts, is not given to any of her characters. What +she believes, appears only in her comments, and in the general effect which +life produces on the persons she describes. She believed Christianity is +subjectively true, that it is a fit expression of the inner nature and of +the spiritual wants of the soul. She did not propagate the pantheism of +Spinoza or the theism of Francis Newman, because she did not regard them as +so near the truth as the Christianity of Paul. As intellectual theories +they may have been preferable to her, but from the outlook of feeling which +she ever occupied, Paul was the truer teacher, and especially because his +teachings are linked with the spiritual desires and outpourings of many +generations. The spontaneous movements of the human mind, which have taken +possession of vast numbers of people through long periods of time, have a +depth of meaning which the speculations of no individual theorizer can ever +possess. Especially did she regard Christianity as a pure and noble +expression of the soul's inner wants and aspirations. It is an objective +realization of feeling and sentiment, it gives purpose and meaning to man's +cravings for a diviner life, it links generation to generation in a +continued series of beautiful traditions and noble inspirations. Her +intellectual view of the subject was expressed to a friend in these words: + + Deism seems to me the most incoherent of all systems, but to + Christianity I feel no objection but its want of evidence. + +She also expressed more sympathy with the simple faith of the multitude +than with the intellectual speculations of philosophers and theologians; +and again, she said that she felt more sympathy with than divergence from +the narrowest and least cultivated believer in Christianity. As a vehicle +of the accumulated hopes and traditions of the world's feeling and sorrow +she appreciated Christianity, saw its beauty, felt deeply in sympathy with +its spirit of renunciation, accepted its ideal of a divine life. She +learned from Feuerbach that religion, that Christianity, gives fit +expression to the emotional life and spiritual aspirations of man, and that +what it finds within in no degree corresponds with that which surrounds man +without. + +Barren and lifeless as this view must seem to most persons, it was a source +of great confidence and inspiration to George Eliot. It enabled her to +appreciate the religious experiences of men, to portray most accurately and +sympathetically a great variety of religious believers, and to give this +side of life its place and proportion. At the same time, it was a personal +satisfaction to her to be able to keep in unbroken sympathy with the +religious experiences of her childhood and youth while intellectually +unable to accept the beliefs on which these experiences rested. More than +this, she believed that religion and spirituality of life are necessary +elements of human existence, that man can never cast them off, and that man +will lead a happy and harmonious life only when they have a true and +fitting expression in his culture and civilization. She maintained, with +Sara Hennell, that we may retain the religious sentiments in all their glow +and in all their depth of influence, at the same time that the doctrines of +theology and all those conceptions of nature and man on which they rest are +rejected; that we may have a disposition of the heart akin to that of the +prophets and saints of religion, while we intellectually cast aside all +which gave meaning to their faith and devotion. According to George Eliot, +religion rests upon feeling and the relations of man to humanity, as well +as upon his irreversible relations to the universe. In _The Mill on the +Floss_ she has given a definition of it, in speaking of Maggie's want of + + that knowledge of the irreversible laws within and without her, which, + governing the habits, becomes morality, and developing the feelings of + submission and dependence, becomes religion. [Footnote: Book IV., + chapter III.] + +It is the human side of religion which interests George Eliot, its +influence morally, its sympathetic impulse, its power to comfort and +console. Its supernatural elements seem to have little influence over her +mind, at least only so far as they serve the moral aims of life. It is +humanity which attracts her mind, inspires her ideal hopes, kindles her +enthusiasms. Religion, apart from human encouragement and elevation, the +suppression of human sin and sorrow, and the increase of human sympathy and +joy, has little attraction for her. She takes no ground of opposition to +the beliefs of others, expresses no contempt for any form of belief in God; +but she measures all beliefs by their moral influence and their power to +enkindle the enthusiasm of humanity. + +The pantheistic theism defended by Lewes in his book on Comte, in 1853, +seems to have been also accepted by George Eliot. We are told that her mind +long wavered between the two, though pantheism was less acceptable than +theism, on account of its moral indifference. It was undoubtedly the moral +bearings of the subject which all the time had the greatest weight with +her, and probably Kant's position had not a little effect on her opinions. +She came, at least, to find final satisfaction in agnosticism, to believe +that all intellectual speculations on the subject are in vain. At the same +time, her moral convictions grew stronger, and she believed in the power of +moral activity to work out a solution of life when no other can be found. +At this point she stood with Kant rather than with Comte, in accepting the +moral nature as a true guide. She very zealously believed with Fichte in a +moral order of the world, approving of the truth which underlies the words +of Fichte's English disciple, Matthew Arnold, when he discourses of "the +Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Her positive +convictions and beliefs on the subject lie in this direction, and she +firmly accepted the idea of a moral order and purpose. So much she thought +we can know and rely on; beyond this she believed we can know nothing. Her +later convictions on this subject have been expressed in a graphic manner +by one of her friends. "I remember how," says this person, "at Cambridge, +I walked with her once in the Fellows' Garden, of Trinity, on an evening +of rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her +text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring +trumpet-calls of man,--the words _God, Immortality, Duty_,--pronounced, +with terrible emphasis, how inconceivable was the _first_, how unbelievable +the _second_, and yet how peremptory and absolute the _third_. Never, +perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and +unrecompensed law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic +countenance turned towards me like a sibyl's in the gloom; it was as though +she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and +left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates." [Footnote: +F.W.H. Myers in The Century Magazine for November, 1881.] All her later +writings, at least, confirm this testimony to her assertion of the +inconceivableness of God, and her open denial of faith in theism. She +cannot have gone so far as to assert the non-existence of God, affirming +only that she could not conceive of such a being as actually existing. She +could not believe in a personal God, but Lewes's conception of a dynamic +life was doubtless acceptable. + +With as much emphasis she pronounced immortality unbelievable. She early +accepted the theory of Charles Bray and Sara Hennell, that we live +hereafter only in the life of the race. The moral bearings of the subject +here also were most effective over her mind, for she felt that what we +ought most of all to consider is our relations to our fellow-men, and that +another world can have little real effect upon our present living. In her +_Westminster Review_ article on "Evangelical Teaching" as presented in +Young's _Night Thoughts_, she criticises the following declaration:-- + + "Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, + What'er his boast, has told me he's a knave. + His duty 'tis to love himself alone, + Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles." + +Her comments on these lines of Young's are full of interest, in view of her +subsequent teachings, and they open an insight into her tendencies of mind +very helpful to those who would understand her fully. Her interest in all +that is human, her craving for a more perfect development of human sympathy +and co-operation, are very clearly to be seen. + + We may admit that if the better part of virtue consists, as Young + appears to think, in contempt for mortal joys, in "meditation of our + own decease," and in "applause" of God in the style of a congratulatory + address to Her Majesty--all which has small relation to the well-being + of mankind on this earth--the motive to it must be gathered from + something that lies quite outside the sphere of human sympathy. But, + for certain other elements of virtue, which are of more obvious + importance to untheological minds,--a delicate sense of our neighbor's + rights, an active participation in the joys and sorrows of our + fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for + ourselves when it is the condition of good to others,--in a word, the + extension and intensification of our sympathetic nature,--we think it + of some importance to contend that they have no more direct relation + to the belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in the + lungs has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable + that in some minds the deep pathos lying in the thought of human + mortality--that we are here for a little while and then vanish away, + that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved ones and to + our many suffering fellow-men--lies nearer the fountains of moral + emotion than the conception of extended existence. And surely it ought + to be a welcome fact, if the thought of _mortality_, as well as of + immortality, be favorable to virtue. Do writers of sermons and + religious novels prefer that we should be vicious in order that there + may be a more evident political and social necessity for printed + sermons and clerical fictions? Because learned gentlemen are + theological, are we to have no more simple honesty and good-will? We + can imagine that the proprietors of a patent water-supply have a dread + of common springs; but, for our own part, we think there cannot be too + great security against a lack of fresh water or of pure morality. To us + it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of + healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its + evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as + the evolution of science or art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin + ray, melting into them with undefinable limits. + +The considerations here presented are very effective ones, and quite as +truthful as effective. There are human supports for morality of the most +important and far-reaching character, and such as are outside of any +theological considerations. We ought, as George Eliot so well says, to +rejoice that the reasons for being moral are manifold, that sympathy with +others, as well as the central fires of personality, or the craving to be +in harmony with the Eternal, is able to conduce to a righteous conduct. Her +objections to Young's narrow and selfish defence of immortality are well +presented and powerful, but they do not touch such high considerations as +those offered by Kant. The craving for personal freedom and perfection is +as strong and as helpful to the race as sympathy for others and yearning to +lift up the weak and fallen. When the sense of personality is gone, man +loses much of his character; and personality rests on a deep spiritual +foundation which does not mean egotism merely, but which does mean for the +majority a conviction of a continued existence. The tendency of the present +time is to dwell less upon the theological and more upon the human motives +to conduct; but it is to be doubted if the highest phases of morality can +be retained without belief in God and a future life. The common virtues, +the sympathetic motives to conduct, the spirit of helpfulness, may be +retained intact, and even increased in power and efficiency, by those +motives George Eliot presents; but the loftier virtues of personal heroism +and devotion to truth in the face of martyrdom of one form or another, the +saintly craving for purity and holiness, and the sturdy spirit of liberty +which will suffer no bonds to exist, can be had in their full development +only with belief that God calls us to seek for perfect harmony with +himself. Kant's view that a divine law within, the living word of God, +calls ever to us as personal beings to attain the perfection of our natures +in the perfection of the race, and in conformity to the eternal law of +righteousness, is far nobler and truer than that which George Eliot +accepted. + +She was not a mere unbeliever, however, for she did not thrust aside the +hope of immortality with a contemptuous hand. This problem she left where +she left that concerning God, in the background of thought, among the +questions which cannot be solved. She believed that the power to contribute +to the future good of the race is hope and promise enough. At the same +time, she was very tender of the positive beliefs of others, and especially +of that yearning so many feel after personal recognition and development. +Writing to one who passionately clung to such a hope, she said,-- + + I have no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the + depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help + in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the + absence of what has been called consolatory belief. But all the while I + gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits + or negations in my own moral powers and life experience which may + screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering + human nature. The most melancholy thought surely would be that we in + our own persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual + good. But we know the poor help the poor. + +These words seem to be uttered in quite another tone than that in which she +asserted the unbelievableness of immortality, though they do not indicate +anything more than a tender yearning for human good and a belief that she +could not herself measure all the possibilities of such good. The +consolation of which she writes, comes only of human sympathy and +helpfulness. In writing to a friend suffering under the anguish of a recent +bereavement, she said,-- + + For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort;--whatever goodness may + surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly + the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living + affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn + initiation preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship + with the fullest human lot which, I must think, no one who has tasted + it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to + know what the last parting is, seems needful to give the utmost + sanctity of tenderness to our relations with each other. It is that + above all which gives us new sensibilities to "the web of human things, + birth and the grave, that are not as they were." And by that faith we + come to find for ourselves the truth of the old declaration, that there + is a difference between the ease of pleasure and blessedness, as the + fullest good possible to us wondrously mixed mortals. + +In these words she suggests that sorrow for the dead is a solemn initiation +into that full measure of human sympathy and tenderness which best fits us +to be men. Looking upon all human experience through feeling, she regarded +death as one of the most powerful of all the shaping agents of man's +destiny in this world. She speaks of death, in _Adam Bede, as "the great +reconciler" which unites us to those who have passed away from us. In the +closing scenes of _The Mill on the Floss it is presented as such a +reconciler, and as the only means of restoring Maggie to the affections of +those she had wronged. It is in _The Legend of Jubal, however, that George +Eliot has expressed her thought of what death has been in the individual +and social evolution of mankind. The descendants of Cain + + in glad idlesse throve, + Nor hunted prey, nor with each other strove; + +but all was peace and joy with them. There were no great aspirations, no +noble achievements, no tending toward progress and a higher life. On an +evil day, Lamech, when engaged in athletic sport, accidentally struck and +killed his fairest boy. All was then changed, the old love and peace passed +away; but good rather than evil came, for man began to lead a larger life. + + And a new spirit from that hour came o'er + The race of Cain: soft idlesse was no more, + But even the sunshine had a heart of care, + Smiling with hidden dread--a mother fair + Who folding to her breast a dying child + Beams with feigned joy that but makes sadness mild. + Death was now lord of Life, and at his word + Time, vague as air before, new terrors stirred, + With measured wing now audibly arose + Throbbing through all things to some unknown close. + Now glad Content by clutching Haste was torn, + And Work grew eager, and Devise was born. + It seemed the light was never loved before, + Now each man said, "'Twill go and come no more." + No budding branch, no pebble from the brook, + No form, no shadow, but new dearness took + From the one thought that life must have an end; + And the last parting now began to send + Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss, + Thrilling them into finer tenderness. + Then Memory disclosed her face divine, + That like the calm nocturnal lights doth shine + Within the soul, and shows the sacred graves, + And shows the presence that no sunlight craves, + No space, no warmth, but moves among them all; + Gone and yet here, and coming at each call, + With ready voice and eyes that understand, + And lips that ask a kiss, and dear responsive hand. + Thus to Cain's race death was tear-watered seed + Of various life and action-shaping need. + But chief the sons of Lamech felt the stings + Of new ambition, and the force that springs + In passion beating on the shores of fate. + They said, "There comes a night when all too late + The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand, + The eager thought behind closed portals stand, + And the last wishes to the mute lips press + Buried ere death in silent helplessness. + Then while the soul its way with sound can cleave, + And while the arm is strong to strike and heave, + Let soul and arm give shape that will abide + And rule above our graves, and power divide + With that great god of day, whose rays must bend + As we shall make the moving shadows tend. + Come, let us fashion acts that are to be, + When we shall lie in darkness silently, + As our young brother doth, whom yet we see + Fallen and slain, but reigning in our will + By that one image of him pale and still." + +Death brings discord and sorrow into a world once happy and unaspiring, but +it also brings a spiritual eagerness and a divine craving. Jabal began to +tame the animals and to cultivate the soil, Tubal-Cain began to use fire +and to work metals, while Jubal discovered song and invented musical +instruments. Out of the longing and inner unrest which death brought, came +the great gift of music. It had power to + + Exult and cry, and search the inmost deep + Where the dark sources of new passion sleep. + +Jubal passes to other lands to teach them the gift of song, but at last +returns an old man to share in the affections of his people. He finds them +celebrating with great pomp the invention of music, but they will not +accept him as the Jubal they did honor to and believed dead. Then the voice +of his own past instructs him that he should not expect any praises or +glory in his own person; it is enough to live in the joy of a world +uplifted by music. Thus instructed, his broken life succumbs. + + Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, + The All-creating Presence for his grave. + +In this poem George Eliot regards death as a means of drawing men into a +deeper and truer sympathy with each other. The same thought is more fully +presented when she exultingly sings,-- + + O may I join the choir invisible + Of those immortal dead who live again + In minds made better by their presence: live + In pulses stirred to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn + For miserable aims that end with self. + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues. + +Death teaches us to forget self, to live for others, to pour out unstinted +sympathy and affection for those whose lives are short and difficult. It is +the same thought as that given in reply to Young; mortal sorrows and pains +should move us as hopes of immortality cannot. There accompanies this idea +the larger one, that our future life is to be found in the better life we +make for those who come after us. George Eliot believed with Comte, that we +are to live again in minds made better by what we have done and been, that +an influence goes out from every helpful and good life which makes the +lives of those who come after us fairer and grander. + +She rests this belief on no sentimental or ideal grounds. Its justification +is to be found in science, in the law of hereditary transmission. Darwin +and Spencer base the great world-process of evolution on the two laws of +transmission and variation. The fittest survives, and the world advances. +The survival of every fit and positive form of life in the better forms +which succeed it is in accordance with a process or a law which holds true +up into all the highest and subtlest expressions of man's inner life. +Heredity is as true morally and spiritually as physically, and our moral +and spiritual offspring will partake of our own qualities; and, standing on +the vantage ground of our lives, will rise higher than we. What George +Eliot regards as the positive teaching of science becomes also an inspiring +religious belief to her. + +George Eliot accepted the belief of an immortality in the race with a deep +and earnest conviction. It gave a great impulse to her life, it satisfied +her craving for closer harmony and sympathy with her fellows, it satisfied +her longing for the power to assuage sorrow and to comfort pain. + + So to live is heaven; + To make undying music in the world, + +and to have an influence for good result from our lives far down the +future. Through the beneficent influences we can awake in the world + + All our rarer, better, truer self. + That sobbed religiously in yearning song, + That watched to ease the burthen of the world, + ... shall live till human time + Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky + Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb + Unread forever. + +It was this belief, so satisfying to her and so ardently entertained, which +inspired the best and noblest of her poems. With an almost exultant joy, +with the enthusiasm of an old-time devotee, she sings of that immortality +which consists in renouncing all which is personal. The diffusive good +which sweetens life for others through all time is the real heaven she +sought. + + This is life to come, + Which martyred men have made more glorious + For us who strive to follow. May I reach + That purest heaven, be to other souls + The cup of strength in some great agony, + Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, + Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-- + Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, + And in diffusion ever more intense. + So shall I join the choir invisible + Whose music is the gladness of the world. + +Believing that humanity represents an organic life and development, it was +easy for George Eliot to accept the idea of immortality in the race. She +reverenced the voice of truth + + Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead. + +It was to her a divine voice, full of tenderness, sympathy and strength. +She was fascinated by this thought of the solemn, ever-present and +all-powerful influence of the dead over the living; there was mystery and +inspiration in this belief for her. All phases of religious history, all +religious experiences, were by her interpreted in the light of this +conception. The power of Jesus's life is, that his trancendent beauty of +soul lives in the "everlasting memories" of men, and that the cross of his +shame has become + + The sign + Of death that turned to more diffusive life + +His influence, his memory, has lifted up the world with a great effect, and +made his life, spirit and ideas an inherent part of humanity. He has been +engrafted into the organic life of the race, and lives there a mighty and +an increasing influence. What has happened in his case happens in the case +of all the gifted and great. According to what they were living they enter +into the life of the world for weal or woe. To become an influence for good +in the future, to leave behind an undying impulse of thought and sympathy, +was the ambition of George Eliot; and this was all the immortality she +desired. + +The religious tendencies of George Eliot's mind are rather to be noted in +her conception of renunciation than in her beliefs about God and +immortality. These latter beliefs were of a negative character as she +entertained them, but her doctrine of renunciation was of a very positive +nature. The central motive of that belief was not faith in God, but faith +in man. It gained all its charm and power for her out of her conception of +the organic life of the race. Her thought was, that we should live not for +self, but for humanity. What so many ardent souls have been willing to do +for the glory of God she was willing to do for the uplifting of man. The +spirit of renunciation with her took the old theologic form of expression +to a considerable extent, associated itself in her thought with the lofty +spiritual consecration and self-abnegation of other ages. So ardently did +she entertain this doctrine, so fully did she clothe it with the old forms +of expression, that many have been deceived into believing her a devoted +Christian. A little book was published in 1879 for the express purpose of +showing that "the doctrine of the cross" is the main thought presented +throughout all George Eliot's books. [Footnote: The Ethics of George +Eliot's Works. By the late John Crombie Brown. Edinburgh: William Blackwood +and Sons. 1879.] This book was read by George Eliot with much delight, and +was regarded by her as the only criticism of her works which did full +justice to her purpose in writing them. She is presented in that book as +the writer of fiction who "stands out as the deepest, broadest and most +catholic illustrator of the true ethics of Christianity; the most earnest +and persistent expositor of the true doctrine of the cross, that we are +born and should live to something higher than love of happiness." +"Self-sacrifice as the divine law of life, and its only true fulfilment; +self-sacrifice, not in some ideal sphere sought out for ourselves in the +vain spirit of self-pleasing, but wherever God has placed us, amid homely, +petty anxieties, loves and sorrows; the aiming at the highest attainable +good in our own place, irrespective of all results of joy or sorrow, of +apparent success or failure--such is the lesson" that is conveyed in all +her books. George Eliot is presented as a true teacher of the doctrine +which admonishes us to love not pleasure but God, to forsake all things +else for the sake of obedience and devotion, to shun the world and to +devote ourselves perpetually to God's service. The Christian doctrine of +renunciation has always bidden men put their eyes on God, forget everything +beside, and seek only for that divine life which is spiritual union with +the Eternal. + +That doctrine was not George Eliot's. Christianity bids men renounce the +world for the sake of a perfect union with God; George Eliot desires men to +renounce selfishness for the sake of humanity. The Christian idea includes +the renunciation of all self-seeking, it bids us give ourselves for others, +it even teaches us that others are to be preferred to ourselves. Yet all +this is to be done, not merely for the sake of the present, but in view of +an eternal destiny, and because we can thus only fulfil God's will and +attain to holy oneness with him. George Eliot did, however, throughout her +writings, identify the altruist impulse to live for others with the +Christian doctrine of the cross. To her, the life of devotion to humanity, +which she has so beautifully presented in the poem, "O may I join the Choir +Invisible," was the true interpretation of the Christian doctrine of +self-sacrifice. She accepted this world-old religious belief, consecrated +with all the tears and sacrifices and martyrdoms of the world, as a true +expression of a want of the soul, as the poetic expression of emotions and +aspirations which ever live in man. It is a beautiful symbolism of that +need of his fellows man ever has, of the conviction which is growing +stronger, that man must live for the race and not for himself. The +individual is nothing except as he identifies himself with the corporate +body of humanity; the true fulfilment of life comes only to those who in +some way recognize this fact, and give themselves for the good of the +world. George Eliot even goes so far in her willingness to renounce self +that she says in _Theophrastus Such_, "I am really at the point of finding +that this world would be worth living in without any lot of one's own. Is +it not possible for me to enjoy the scenery of earth without saying to +myself, I have a cabbage-garden in it?" + +The relations of the individual to the past and the present of the race +make duties and burdens and woes for him which he has not created, but +which are given him to bear. The sins of others bring pain and sorrow to +us; we are a part of all the good and evil of the world. The present is +determined by the past; we must accept the lot created for us by those who +have gone before us. "He felt the hard pressure of our common lot, the yoke +of that mighty, resistless destiny laid upon us by the past of other men." +says George Eliot of one of her characters. The past brings us burdens and +sorrows difficult to bear; it also brings us duties. We owe to it many +things; our debt to the race is an immense one. That debt can only be +discharged by a life of devotion and loyalty, by doing what we can to make +humanity better. The Christian idea of a debt owed to God, which we can +only repay by perfect loyalty and self-abnegation, becomes to George Eliot +a debt owed to humanity, which we can only repay in the purest altruistic +spirit. + +The doctrine of renunciation has been presented again and again by George +Eliot; her books are full of it. It is undoubtedly the central theme of all +her teaching. In the conversation between Romola and Savonarola when she is +escaping from her home and is met by him, it is vividly expressed. +Savonarola speaks as a Christian, as a Catholic, as a monk; but the words +he uses quite as well serve to express George Eliot's convictions. The +Christian symbolism laid aside, and all was true to her; yet her feelings, +her sense of corporate unity with the past, would not even suffer her to +lay aside the symbolism in presenting her thoughts on this subject. Romola +pleads that she would not have left Florence as long as she could fulfil a +duty to her father: but Savonarola reminds her that there are other duties, +other ties, other burdens. + + "If your own people are wearing a yoke, will you slip from under it, + instead of struggling with them to lighten it? There is hunger and + misery in our streets, yet you say, 'I care not; I have my own sorrows; + I will go away, if peradventure I can ease them.' The servants of God + are struggling after a law of justice, peace and charity, that the + hundred thousand citizens among whom you were born may be governed + righteously; but you think no more of that than if you were a bird, + that may spread its wings and fly whither it will in search of food to + its liking. And yet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my + daughter. As if you, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind + choice, were not below the humblest Florentine woman who stretches + forth her hands with her own people, and craves a blessing for them; + and feels a close sisterhood with the neighbor who kneels beside her, + and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the mighty purpose that God + has for Florence; and waits and endures because the promised work is + great, and she feels herself little." + +She then asserts her purpose not to go away to a life of ease and +self-indulgence, but rather to one of hardship; but that plea is not +suffered to pass. + + "You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some good + other than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you find good? + It is not a thing of choice: it is a river that flows from the foot of + the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again, + man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties, + and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. But you will go forth; + and what will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty--bitter herbs, + and no bread with them." + +Savonarola bids her draw the crucifix from her bosom, which she secretly +carries, and appeals to her by that symbol of devotion and self-sacrifice +to remain true to her duties, to accept willingly the burdens given her to +bear, not to think of self, but only of others. He condemns the pagan +teaching she had received, of individual self-seeking, and the spirit of +culture, refinement and ease which accompanied that teaching. She looks on +the image of a suffering life, a life offered willingly as a sacrifice for +others' good, and he says,-- + + "Conform your life to that image, my daughter; make your sorrow an + offering; and when the fire of divine charity burns within you, and you + behold the need of your fellow-men by the light of that flame, you will + not call your offering great. You have carried yourself proudly, as one + who held herself not of common blood or of common thoughts; but you + have been as one unborn to the true life of man. What! you say your + love for your father no longer tells you to stay in Florence? Then, + since that tie is snapped, you are without a law, without religion; you + are no better than a beast of the field when she is robbed of her + young. If the yearning of a fleshly love is gone, you are without love, + without obligation. See, then, my daughter, how you are below the life + of the believer who worships that image of the Supreme Offering, and + feels the glow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that + offering was made, and beholds the history of the world as the history + of a great redemption, in which he is himself a fellow-worker, in his + own place and among his own people! If you held that faith, my beloved + daughter, you would not be a wanderer flying from suffering, and + blindly seeking the good of a freedom which is lawlessness. You would + feel that Florence was the home of your soul as well as your + birthplace, because you would see the work that was given you to do + there. If you forsake your place, who will fill it? You ought to be in + your place now, helping in the great work by which God will purify + Florence and raise it to be the guide of the nations. What! the earth + is full of iniquity--full of groans--the light is still struggling with + a mighty darkness, and you say, 'I cannot bear my bonds; I will burst + them asunder; I will go where no man claims me?' My daughter, every + bond of your life is a debt: the right lies in the payment of that + debt; it can lie nowhere else. In vain will you wander over the earth; + you will be wandering forever away from the right." + +Romola hesitates, she pleads that her brother Dino forsook his home to +become a monk, and that possibly Savonarola may be wrong. He then appeals +to her conscience, and assures her that she has assumed relations and +duties which cannot be broken from on any plea. The human ties are forever +sacred; there can exist no causes capable of annulling them. + + "You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-will and anger, + not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them. The higher + life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own will to bow + before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of + wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before + you. That wisdom is the religion of the cross. And you stand aloof from + it; you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, 'I am as the wise men + who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth was crucified.' And + that is your wisdom! To be as the dead whose eyes are closed, and whose + ear is deaf to the work of God that has been since their time. What has + your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter? It has left you without a + heart for the neighbors among whom you dwell, without care for the + great work by which Florence is to be regenerated and the world made + holy; it has left you without a share in the Divine life which quenches + the sense of suffering self in the ardors of an ever-growing love. And + now, when the sword has pierced your soul, you say, 'I will go away; I + cannot bear my sorrow.' And you think nothing of the sorrow and the + wrong that are within the walls of the city where you dwell; you would + leave your place empty, when it ought to be filled with your pity and + your labor. If there is wickedness in the streets, your steps should + shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my + daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry, should be there to + still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come to teach you a new + worship; the sign of it hangs before you." + +This teaching of renunciation is no less distinctly presented in _The Mill +on the Floss_, the chief ethical aim of which is its inculcation. It is +also there associated with the Catholic form of its expression, through +Maggie's reading of _The Imitation of Christ_, a book which was George +Eliot's constant companion, and was found by her bedside after her death. +It was the spirit of that book which attracted George Eliot, not its +doctrines. Its lofty spirit of submission and renunciation she admired; and +she believed that altruism can be made real only through tradition, only as +associated with past heroisms and strivings and ideals. As an embodiment of +man's craving for perfect union with humanity, for full and joyous +submission to his lot, the old forms of faith are sacred. They carry the +hopes of ages; they are a pictured poem of man's inward strivings. To break +away from these memories is to forsake one's home, is to repudiate one's +mother. We cannot intellectually accept them, we cannot assent to the +dogmas associated with them; but the forms are the spontaneous expressions +of the heart, while the dogmas are an after-thought of the inquiring +intellect. The real meaning of the cross of Christ is self-sacrifice for +humanity's sake; that was its inspiration, that has ever been its true +import. It was this view of the subject which made George Eliot so +continuously associate her new teachings with the old expressions of faith. + +In altruism she believes is to be found the hope of the world, the cure of +every private pain and grief. Altruism means living for and in the race, as +a willing member of the social organic life of humanity, as desiring not +one's own good but the welfare of others. That doctrine she applies to +Maggie's case. This young girl was dissatisfied with her life, out of +harmony with her surroundings, and could not accept the theories of life +given her. + + She wanted some explanation of this hard, real life; the + unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull breakfast-table; the + childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid tasks that filled the + hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless leisure; the + need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel sense that Tom + didn't mind what she thought or felt, and that they were no longer + playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things that had + come to _her_ more than to others--she wanted some key that would + enable her to understand, and in understanding endure, the heavy weight + that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught "real + learning and wisdom, such as great men knew," she thought she should + have held the secrets of life; if she had only books, that she might + learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had never + interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. She know little of saints + and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her teaching, + that they were a temporary provision against the spread of Catholicism, + and had all died at Smithfield. + +Into the darkness of Maggie's life a light suddenly comes in the shape of +the immortal book of Thomas à Kempis. Why that book; why along such a way +should the light come? The answer is, that George Eliot meant to teach +certain ideas. It is this fact which justifies her reader in taking these +scenes of her novels, these words spoken in the interludes, as genuine +reflections and transcripts of her own mind. Maggie turns over a parcel of +books brought her by Bob Jakin, to find little in them-- + + but _Thomas à Kempis_. The name had come across her in her reading, and + she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas + to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the + little old clumsy book with some curiosity; it had the corners turned + down in many places, and some hand, now forever quiet, had made at + certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. + Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed. + "Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the + world.... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to + enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free + from care; for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every + place there will be some that will cross thee.... Both above and below, + which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the + cross; and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou + wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou + desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and + lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that + hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and + earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, + almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which + evil being once overcome and subdued, there will presently ensue great + peace and tranquillity.... It is but little thou sufferest in + comparison of them that have suffered so much, were so strongly + tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. + Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of + others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little adversities. And if + they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause + thereof.... Blessed are those ears that receive the whispers of the + divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed + are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth + outwardly, but unto the Truth which teacheth inwardly." + + A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she + had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of + beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on + from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, + hardly conscious that she was reading--seeming rather to listen while a + low voice said,-- + + "Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy + rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to + be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away, + and thou together with them. Beware thou cleave not unto them lest thou + be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his substance, yet + it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but + little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. + And if he should be of great virtue and very fervent devotion, yet is + there much wanting; to wit, one thing which is most necessary for him. + What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out + of himself, and retain nothing of self-love.... I have often said unto + thee, and now again I say the same. Forsake thyself, resign thyself, + and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace.... Then shall all vain + imaginations, evil perturbations and superfluous cares fly away; then + shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." + + Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see + a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that + would enable her to renounce all other secrets--here was a sublime + height to be reached without the help of outward things--here was + insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within + her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It + flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a + problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing + her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity of + the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of + shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her + own desires, of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own + life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She read on + and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the + invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength; + returning to it after she had been called away, and reading until the + sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination + that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight + forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness, and, in the + ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into + that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had + not perceived--how could she until she had lived longer?--the inmost + truth of the old monk's outpourings, that renunciation remains sorrow, + though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for + happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it. + She knew nothing of doctrines and systems--of mysticism or quietism; + but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct + communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to + Maggie as an unquestioned message. I suppose that is the reason why the + small, old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a + book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into + sweetness, while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave + all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that + waited for the heart's promptings; it is the chronicle of a solitary + hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph,--not written on velvet + cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding + feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of + human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages + ago, felt, and suffered, and renounced,--in the cloister, perhaps, with + serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and + with a fashion of speech different from ours,--but under the same + silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same + strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. [Footnote: The Mill + on the Floss, Book IV., chapter III.] + +Life now has a meaning for Maggie, its secret has been in some measure +opened. Only by bitter experiences does she at last learn the full meaning +of that word; but all her after-life is told for us in order that the depth +and breadth and height of that meaning may be unfolded. Very soon Maggie is +heard saying, + + "Our life is determined for us--and it makes the mind very free when we + give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and + doing what is given us to do." + +It is George Eliot who really speaks these words; hers is the thought which +inspires them. + +Yet Maggie has not learned to give up wishing; and the sorrow, the tragedy +of her life comes in consequence. She is pledged in love to Philip, the son +of the bitter enemy of her family, and is attracted to Stephen, the lover +of her cousin Lucy. A long contest is fought out in her life between +attraction and duty; between individual preferences and moral obligations. +The struggle is hard, as when Stephen avows his love, and she replies,-- + + "Oh, it is difficult--life is very difficult. It seems right to me + sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but, then, such + feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has + made for us--the ties that have made others dependent on us--and would + cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have + been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward + whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, + love would be a sign two people ought to belong to each other. But I + see--I feel that it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in + life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark + to me, but I see one thing quite clearly--that I must not, cannot seek + my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely + pity, and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live + in me still and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted + by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned." + +Against her will she elopes with Stephen, or her departure with him is so +understood; but us soon as she realizes what she has done, her better +nature asserts itself, and she refuses to go on. Stephen pleads that the +natural law which has drawn them together is greater than every other +obligation; but Maggie replies,-- + + "If we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery + and cruelty. We should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can + ever be formed on earth." + +He then asks what is outward faithfulness and constancy without love. +Maggie pleads the better spirit. + + "That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is + not right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing + what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing + whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us--whatever would + cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent + on us. If we--if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have + been so strongly present with me--I should have felt them pressing on + my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my + conscience is awake, that the opposite feeling would never have grown + in me as it has done: it would have been quenched at once. I should + have prayed for help so earnestly--I should have rushed away as we rush + from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself--none. I should never + have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been + weak, selfish and hard--able to think of their pain without a pain to + myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh. what is Lucy + feeling now? She believed in me--she loved me--she was so good to me! + Think of her!" + +She can see no good for herself which is apart from the good of others, no +joy which is the means of pain to those she holds dear. The past has made +ties and; memories which no present love or future joy can take away; she +must be true to past obligations as well as present inclinations. + + "There are memories and affections, and longing after perfect goodness, + that have such a strong hold on me, they would never quit me for long; + they would come back and be pain to me--repentance. I couldn't live in + peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I + have caused sorrow already--I know--I feel it; but I have never + deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They shall suffer + that I may have joy.'" + +And again, she says,-- + + "We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we + can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will + indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce + that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us--for the sake + of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this + belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have + felt that if I let it go forever I should have no light through the + darkness of this life." + +In these remarkable passages from _Romola_ and _The Mill on the Floss_, +George Eliot presented her own theory of life. One of her friends, in +giving an account of her moral influence, speaks of "the impression she +produced, that one of the greatest duties of life was that of resignation. +Nothing was more impressive as exhibiting the power of feelings to survive +the convictions which gave them birth, than the earnestness with which she +dwelt, on this as the great and real remedy for all the ills of life. On +one occasion she appeared to apply it to herself in speaking of the short +space of life that lay before her, and the large amount of achievement +that must be laid aside as impossible to compress into it--and the sad, +gentle tones in which the word _resignation_ was uttered, still vibrate on +the ear." [Footnote: Contemporary Review, February, 1881.] Not only +renunciation but resignation was by her held to be a prime requisite of a +truly moral life. Man must renounce many things for the sake of humanity, +but he must also resign himself to endure many things because the universe +is under the dominion of invariable laws. Much of pain and sorrow must come +to us which can in no way be avoided. A true resignation and renunciation +will enable us to turn pain and sorrow into the means of a higher life. In +_Adam Bede_ she says that "deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called +a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state." She teaches +that man can attain true unity with the race only through renunciation, +and renunciation always means suffering. Self-sacrifice means hardship, +struggle and sorrow; but the true end of life can only be attained when +self is renounced for that higher good which comes through devotion to +humanity. Her noblest characters, Maggie Tulliver, Romola, Jubal, Fedalma, +Armgart, attain peace only when they have found their lives taken up in the +good of others. To her the highest happiness consists in being loyal to +duty, and it "often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it +from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because +our souls see it is good." + +George Eliot's religion is without God, without immortality, without a +transcendent spiritual aim and duty. It consists in a humble submission to +the invariable laws of the universe, a profound love of humanity, a +glorification of feeling and affection, and a renunciation of personal and +selfish desires for an altruistic devotion to the good of the race. Piety +without God, renunciation without immortality, mysticism without the +supernatural, everywhere finds eloquent presentation in her pages. Offering +that which she believes satisfies the spiritual wants of man, she yet +rejects all the legitimate objects of spiritual desire. Even when her +characters hold to the most fervent faith, and use with the greatest +enthusiasm the old expressions of piety, it is the human elements in that +faith which are made to appear most prominently. We are told that no +radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for Romola in her +moment of direst distress and need. Then we are told that many such see no +angels; and we are made to realize that angelic voices are to George Eliot +the voices of her fellows. + + In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or + heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought + confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs + of unfailing wing and piercing vision--men who believed falsities as + well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping + hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and + often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other + choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance + and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness + and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. + +The same thought is expressed in _Silas Marner_, that man is to expect no +help and consolation except from his fellow-man. + + In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led + them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels + now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is + put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and + bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may he a + little child's. + +Even more explicit in its rejection of all sources of help, except the +human, is the motto to "The Lifted Veil." + + Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns + To energy of human fellowship; + No powers beyond the growing heritage + That makes completer manhood. + +The purpose of this story is to show that supernatural knowledge is a curse +to man. The narrator of the story is gifted with the power of divining even +the most secret thoughts of those about him, and of beholding coming +events. This knowledge brings him only evil and sorrow. His spiritual +insight did not save him from folly, and he is led to say,-- + + "There is no short cut, no patent tram-road to wisdom. After all the + centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny + wilderness, which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding + feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time." + +He also discourses of the gain which it is to man that the future is hidden +from his knowledge, + + "So absolute is our soul's need of something hidden and uncertain for + the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which are the breath + of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us beyond + to-day, the interest of all mankind would be bent on the hours that + lie between; we should pant after the uncertainties of our one morning + and our one afternoon; we should rush fiercely to the exchange for + our last possibility of speculation, of success, of disappointment; + we should have a glut of political prophets foretelling a crisis or + a no-crisis within the only twenty-four hours left open to prophecy. + Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever + were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at + the close of a summer's day, but in the mean time might be the subject + of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature + and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition that had + the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their + enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual + activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future + reality than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our + muscles." + +All is hidden from man that does not grow out of human experience, and +it is better so. Such is George Eliot's method of dealing with our craving +for a higher wisdom and a direct revelation. Such wisdom and such +revelation are not to be had, and they would not help man if he had them. +The mystery of existence rouses his curiosity, stimulates his powers, +develops art, religion, sympathy, and all that is best in human life. In +her presentations of the men and women most affected by religious motives +she adheres to this theory, and represents them as impelled, not by the +sense of God's presence, but by purely human considerations. She makes +Dorothea Brooke say,-- + + "I have always been thinking of the different ways in which + Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a + wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean + that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most + people as sharers in it." + +Of the same character is the belief which comforts Dorothea, and takes the +place to her of prayer. + + "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know + what it is and cannot do what we would, we are a part of the divine + power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the + struggle with darkness narrower." + +Mr. Tryan, in _Janet's Repentance_, is a most ardent disciple of +Evangelicalism, and accepts all its doctrines; but George Eliot contrives +to show throughout the book, that all the value of his work and religion +consisted in the humanitarian spirit of renunciation he awakened. + +George Eliot does not entirely avoid the supernatural, but she treats it as +unexplainable. Instances of her use of it are to be found in Adam Bede's +experience while at work on his father's coffin, in the visions of +Savonarola, and in Mordecai's strange faith in a coming successor to his +own faith and work. For Adam Bede's experience there is no explanation +given, nor for that curious power manifest in the "Lifted Veil." On the +other hand, the spiritual power of Savonarola and Mordecai have their +explanation, in George Eliot's philosophy, in that intuition which is +inherited insight. In her treatment of such themes she manifests her +appreciation of the great mystery which surrounds man's existence, but she +shows no faith in a spiritual world which impinges on the material, and +ever manifests itself in gleams and fore-tokenings. + +It is to be noted, however, that many traces of mysticism appear in her +works. This might have been expected from her early love of the +transcendentalists, as well as from her frequent perusal of Thomas à +Kempis. More especially was this to be expected from her conception of +feeling as the source of all that is best in man's life. The mystics always +make feeling the source of truth, prefer emotion to reason. All thinkers +who lay stress on the value of feeling are liable to become mystics, even +if materialists in their philosophy. Here and there in her pages this +tendency towards mysticism, which manifests itself in some of the more +poetic of the scientists of the present time, is to be seen in George +Eliot. Some of her words about love, music and nature partake of this +character. Her sayings about altruism and renunciation touch the border of +the mystical occasionally. Had she been less thoroughly a rationalist she +would doubtless have become a mystic in fact. Her tendency in this +direction hints at the close affinity between the evolutionists of to-day +and the idealists of a century ago. They unite in making matter and mind +identical, and in regarding feeling as a source of truth. These are the two +essential thoughts on which all mysticism rests. As modern science becomes +the basis of speculation about religion, and gives expression to these +doctrines, it will develop mysticism. Indeed, it is difficult to know +wherein much that George Eliot wrote differs from mysticism. Her subjective +immortality derived much of its acceptableness and beauty from those poetic +phases given to it by idealistic pantheism. Her altruism caught the glow of +the older humanitarianism, Her conception of feeling and emotional sympathy +is touched everywhere with that ideal glamour given it by the mystical +teachings of an earlier generation. Had she lived half a century earlier +she might have been one of Fichte's most ardent disciples, and found in his +subjective idealism the incentive to a higher inspiration than that +attained to under the leadership of Comte. Her religion would then have +differed but little from what it did in fact, but there would have been a +new sublimity and a loftier spirit at the heart of it. + +George Eliot retains the traditional life, piety and symbolism of +Christianity, but she undertakes to show they have quite another meaning +than that usually given them. Her peculiarity is that she should wish to +retain the form after the substance is gone. Comte undertook to give a new +outward expression to those needs of the soul which lead to worship and +piety; but George Eliot accepted the traditional symbolisms as far better +than anything which can be invented. If we would do no violence to feeling +and the inner needs of life, we must not break with the past, we must not +destroy the temple of the soul. The traditional worship, piety and +consecration, the poetic expression of feeling and sentiment, must be kept +until new traditions, a new symbolism, have developed themselves out of the +experiences of the race. God is a symbol for the great mystery of the +universe and of being, the eternity and universality of law. Immortality is +a symbol for the transmitted impulse which the person communicates to the +race. The life and death of Christ is a symbol of that altruistic spirit of +renunciation and sorrow willingly borne, by which humanity is being lifted +up and brought towards its true destiny. Feeling demands these symbols, the +heart craves for them. The bare enunciation of principles is not enough; +they must be clothed upon by sentiment and affection. The Christian symbols +answer to this need, they most fitly express this craving of the soul for a +higher and purer life. The spontaneous, creative life of humanity has +developed them as a fit mode of voicing its great spiritual cravings, and +only the same creative genius can replace them. The inquiring intellect +cannot furnish substitutes for them; rationalism utterly fails in all its +attempts to satisfy the spiritual nature. + +Such is George Eliot's religion. It is the "Religion of Humanity" as +interpreted by a woman, a poet and a genius. It differs from Comte's as the +work of a poet differs from that of a philosopher, as that of a woman +differs from that of a man. His _positive religion_ gives the impression of +being invented; it is artificial, unreal. Hers is, at least, living and +beautiful and impressive; it is warm, tender and full of compassion, He +invents a new symbolism, a new hierarchy, and a new worship; that is, he +remodels Catholicism to fit the Religion of Humanity. She is too sensible, +too wise, or rather too poetic and sympathetic, to undertake such a +transformation, or to be satisfied with it when accomplished by another. +She gives a new poetic and spiritual meaning to the old faith and worship; +and in doing this makes no break with tradition, rejects nothing of the old +symbolism. + +It was her conviction that nothing of the real meaning and power of +religion escaped by the transformation she made in its spiritual contents. +She believed that she had dropped only its speculative teachings, while all +that had ever made it of value was retained. That she was entirely mistaken +in this opinion scarcely needs to be said; or that her speculative +interpretation, if generally accepted, would destroy for most persons even +those elements of religion which she accepted. A large rich mind, gifted +with genius and possessed of wide culture, as was hers, could doubtless +find satisfaction in that attenuated substitute for piety and worship which +she accepted. There certainly could be no Mr. Tryan, no Dinah Morris, no +Savonarola, no Mordecai, if her theories were the common ones; and it would +be even less possible for a Dorothea, a Felix Holt, a Daniel Deronda, or a +Romola to develop in such an atmosphere. What her intellectual speculations +would accomplish when accepted as the motives of life, is seen all too well +in the case of those many radical thinkers whom this century has produced. +Only the most highly cultivated, and those of an artistic or poetic +temperament, could accept her substitute for the old religion. The motives +she presents could affect but a few persons; only here and there are to be +found those to whom altruism would be a motive large enough to become a +religion. To march in the great human army towards a higher destiny for +humanity may have a strong fascination for some, and is coming to affect +and inspire a larger number with every century; but it is not enough to +know that the race is growing better. What is the end of human progress? +we have a right to ask. Does that progress go on in accordance with some +universal purpose, which includes the whole universe? We must look not +only for a perfect destiny for man, but for a perfect destiny for all +worlds and beings throughout the infinitude of God's creative influence. A +progressive, intellectual religion such as will answer to the larger needs +of modern life, must give belief in a universal providence, and it must +teach man to trust in the spiritual capacities of his own soul. Unless the +universe means something which is intelligible, and unless it has a purpose +and destiny progressive and eternal, it is impossible that religion will +continue to inspire men. That is, only a philosophy which gives such an +interpretation to the universe can be the basis of an enduring and +progressive religion. + +If religion is to continue, it is also necessary that man should be able to +believe in the soul as something more than the product of environment and +heredity. It is not merely the belief in immortality which has inspired the +greatest minds, but the inward impulse of creative activity, resting on the +conviction that they were working with God for enduring results. Absorption +into the life of humanity can be but a feeble motive compared with that +which grows out of faith in the soul's spiritual eternity in co-operation +with God. + +George Eliot's religion is highly interesting, and in many ways it is +suggestive and profitable. Her insistence on feeling and sympathy as its +main impulses is profoundly significant; but that teaching is as good +for Theism or Christianity as for the Religion of Humanity, and needs +everywhere to be accepted. In like manner, her altruistic spirit may +be accepted and realized by those who can find no sympathy for her +intellectual speculations. Love of man, self-sacrifice for human good, +cannot be urged by too many teachers. The greater the number of motives +leading to that result, the better for man. + + + + +XII. + + +ETHICAL SPIRIT. + +Whatever may be said of George Eliot's philosophy and theology, her moral +purpose was sound and her ethical intent noble. She had a strong passion +for the ethical life, her convictions regarding it were very deep and +earnest, and she dwelt lovingly on all its higher accomplishments. Her +books are saturated with moral teaching, and her own life was ordered after +a lofty ethical standard. She seems to have yearned most eagerly after a +life of moral helpfulness and goodness, and she has made her novels the +teachers of a vigorous morality. + +Her friends bear enthusiastic testimony to the nobleness of her moral life +and to her zeal for ethical culture. We are told by one of them that "she +had upbuilt with strenuous pains a resolute virtue," conquering many +faults, and gaining a lofty nobleness of spirit. Another has said, that +"precious as the writings of George Eliot are and must always be, her life +and character were yet more beautiful than they." Her zeal for morality was +very great; she was an ethical prophet; the moral order of life roused her +mind to a lofty inspiration. If she could not conceive of God, if she could +not believe in immortality, yet she accepted duty as peremptory and +absolute. Her faith in duty and charity seemed all the more vigorous and +confident because her religion was so attenuated and imperfect. Love of man +with her grew into something like that mighty and absorbing love of God +which is to be seen in some of the greatest souls. Morality became to her a +religion, not so intense as with saints and prophets, but more sympathetic +and ardent than with most ethical teachers. She was no stoic, no teacher +of moral precepts, no didactic debater about moral duties, no mere +_dilettante_ advocate of human rights. She was a warm, tender, yearning, +sympathetic, womanly friend of individuals, who hoped great things for +humanity, and who believed that man can find happiness and true culture +only in a moral life. + +She was distinctively a moral teacher in her books. The novel was never to +her a work of art alone. The moral purpose was always present, always +apparent, always clear and emphatic. There was something to teach for her +whenever she took the pen in hand; some deep lesson of human experience, +some profound truth of human conduct, some tender word of sympathy for +human sorrow and suffering. She seems to have had no sympathy with that +theory which says that the poet and the novelist are to picture life as it +is, without regard to moral obligations and consequences. In this respect +she was one of the most partisan of all partisans, an absolute dogmatist; +for she never forgot for a moment the moral consequences of life. She was +one of the most ardent of modern preachers, her books are crowded with +teaching of the most positive character. In her way she was a great +believer, and when she believed she never restrained her pen, but taught +the full measure of her convictions. She did not look upon life as a scene +to be sketched, but as an experience to be lived, and a moral order to be +improved by sympathy and devotedness. Consequently the artist appears in +the teacher's garb, the novelist has become an ethical preacher. She does +not describe life as something outside of herself, nor does she regard +human sorrows and sufferings and labors merely as materials for the +artist's use; but she lives in and with all that men do and suffer and +aspire to. Hers is not the manner of Homer and Scott, who hide their +personality behind the wonderful distinctness of their personalities, +making the reader forget the author in the strength and power of the +characters described. It is not that of Shakspere, of whom we seem to get +no glimpse in his marvellous readings of human nature, who paints other men +as no one else has done, but who does not paint himself. Hers is rather the +manner of Wordsworth and Goethe, who have a theory of life to give us, and +whose personality appears on every page they wrote. She has a philosophy, a +morality and a religion to inculcate. She had a vast subjective intensity +of conviction, and a strong individualism of purpose, which would not hide +itself behind the scenes. Her philosophy impregnates with a strong +personality all her classic utterances; her ethics present a marked purpose +in the development of her plots and in her presentation of the outcome of +human experience; and her religion glows in the personal ardor and sympathy +of her noblest characters, and in their passion for renunciation and +altruism. + +Her ethical passion adds to the strength and purpose of George Eliot's +genius. No supreme literary creator has been devoid of this characteristic, +however objective and impersonal he may have been. Homer, Virgil, Dante, +Cervantes, Shakspere, Scott, were all earnest ethical teachers. The moral +problems of life impressed them profoundly, and they showed a strong +personal preference for righteousness. The literary masters of all times +and countries have loved virtue, praised purity, and admired ethical +uprightness. Any other attitude than this argues something less than +genius, though genius may be far from didactic and not given to preaching. +The moral intent of life is so inwoven with all its experiences, that the +failure of any mind to be impressed with it, and profoundly affected, +proves it wanting in insight, poetic vision and genius. George Eliot is +entirely in harmony, in this respect, with all the masters of the literary +art. Her ethical passion is a clear sign of her genius, and proves the +vigor of her intellectual vision. No one who rightly weighs the value of +her books, and fairly estimates the nature of her teaching, can regret that +she had so keen a love of ethical instruction. The vigor, enthusiasm and +originality of her teaching compensate for many faults. + +Her teachings have a special interest because they afford a literary +embodiment of the ethical theories of the evolution philosophy. They +indicate the form which is likely to be given to ethics if theism and +individualism are discarded, and the peculiar effects upon moral life which +will be induced by agnosticism. She applied agnosticism to morals, by +regarding good and evil as relative, and as the results, of man's +environment. For her, ethics had no infinite sanctions, no intuitive +promulgation of an eternal law; but she regarded morality as originating in +and deriving its authority from the social relations of men to each other. +Our intuitive doing of right, or sorrow for wrong, is the result of +inherited conditions. In _Romola_ she speaks of Tito as affected by-- + + the inward shame, the reflex of that outward law which the great heart + of mankind makes for every individual man, a reflex which will exist + even in the absence of the sympathetic impulses that need no law, but + rush to the deed of fidelity and pity as inevitably as the brute mother + shields her young from the attack of the hereditary enemy. [Footnote: + Chapter IX.] + +This teaching is often found in her pages, and in connection with the +assertion of the relativity of morals. There is no absolute moral law for +her, no eternal ideal standard; but what is right is determined by the +environment. Instead of Kant's categorical imperative of the moral law, +proclaimed as a divine command in every soul, George Eliot found in the +conscience and in the moral intuitions simply inherited experiences. In +_Daniel Deronda_ she says, "Our consciences are not all of the same +pattern, an inner deliverance of fixed laws; they are the voice of +sensibilities as various as our memories." + +George Eliot's rejection of any absolute standard of moral conduct or of +happiness continually asserts itself in her pages. We must look at the +individual, his inherited moral power, his environment, his special +motives, if we would judge him aright. In the last chapters of _The Mill on +the Floss_, when writing of Maggie's repentance, this idea appears. Maggie +is not to be tried by the moral ideal of Christianity, nor by any such +standard of perfection as Kant proposed, but by all the circumstances of +her place in life and her experience. We are accordingly told that-- + + Moral judgments must remain false and hollow unless they are checked + and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances + that mark the individual lot. + +George Eliot says in one of the mottoes in _Felix Holt_ that moral +happiness is "mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions." +Even more explicit is her assertion, in one of the mottoes of _Daniel +Deronda_, of the relativity of moral power. + + Looking at life in the growth of a single lot, who having a practised + vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and + false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled--like that + falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing + that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp-- + precipitate the mistaken soul on destruction? + +She does not teach, however, that man is a mere victim of circumstances, +that he is a creature ruled by fate. His environment includes his own moral +heredity, which may overcome the physical circumstances which surround him. +In _Middlemarch_ she says, "It always remains true that if we had been +greater, circumstances would have been less strong against us." The same +thought appears in Zarca's appeal to Fedalma to be his true daughter, in +one of the most effective scenes of _The Spanish Gypsy_. Moral devotedness +is the strongest of all forces, he argues, even when it fails of its +immediate aim; and even in failure the inherited life of the race is +enlarged. + + No great deed is done + By falterers who ask for certainty. + No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, + The undivided will to seek the good: + 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings + A human music from the indifferent air. + The greatest gift the hero leaves his race + Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!-- + We feed the high tradition of the world, + And leave our spirit in our children's breasts. + +George Eliot never goes so far as to say that man may, by virtue of his +inward life, rise superior to all circumstances, and maintain the +inviolable sanctity of his own moral nature. She does not forget that +defeat is often the surest victory, that moral faithfulness may lead to +disgrace and death; but even in these cases it is for the sake of the race +we are to be faithful. The inward victory, the triumph of the soul in +unsullied purity and serenity, she does not dwell upon; and it may be +doubted if she fully recognized such a moral result. Her mind is so +occupied with the social results of conduct as to overlook the individual +victories which life ever brings to those who are faithful unto death. +George Eliot has put her theory of morality into the mouth of Guildenstern, +one of the characters in "A College Breakfast Party." + + Where get, you say, a binding law, a rule + Enforced by sanction, an Ideal throned + With thunder in its hand? I answer, there + Whence every faith and rule has drawn its force + Since human consciousness awaking owned + An Outward, whose unconquerable sway + Resisted first and then subdued desire + By pressure of the dire impossible + Urging to possible ends the active soul + And shaping so its terror and its love. + Why, you have said it--threats and promises + Depend on each man's sentence for their force: + All sacred rules, imagined or revealed, + Can have no form or potency apart + From the percipient and emotive mind. + God, duty, love, submission, fellowship, + Must first be framed in man, as music is, + Before they live outside him as a law. + And still they grow and shape themselves anew, + With fuller concentration in their life + Of inward and of outward energies + Blending to make the last result called Man, + Which means, not this or that philosopher + Looking through beauty into blankness, not + The swindler who has sent his fruitful lie + By the last telegram: it means the tide + Of needs reciprocal, toil, trust and love-- + The surging multitude of human claims + Which make "a presence not to be put by" + Above the horizon of the general soul. + Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, + And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?-- + The outward reason has the world in store, + Regenerates passion with the stress of want, + Regenerates knowledge with discovery, + Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, + Widens dependence, knits the social whole + In sensible relation more defined. + +As these words would indicate, George Eliot's faith in the moral meaning +and outcome of the world is very strong. All experience is moral, she would +have us believe, and capable of teaching man the higher life. That is, all +experience tends slowly to bring man into harmony with his environment, and +to teach him that certain actions are helpful, while others are harmful. +This teaching is very definite and emphatic in her pages, often rising into +a lofty eloquence and a rich poetic diction, as her mind is wrought upon by +the greatness and the impressiveness of the moral lessons of life. + +However effective the outward order of nature may be in creating morality, +it is to be borne in mind that ethical rules can have no effect "apart from +the percipient and emotive mind." It is, in reality, the social nature +which gives morality its form and meaning. It is a creation of the social +organism. Its basis is found, indeed, in the invariable order of nature, +but the superstructure is erected out of and by society. "Man's individual +functions," says Lewes, "arise in relations to the cosmos; his general +functions arise in relations to the social medium; thence moral life +emerges. All the animal impulses become blended with human emotions. In the +process of evolution, starting from the merely animal appetite of +sexuality, we arrive at the purest and most far-reaching tenderness. The +social instincts tend more and more to make sociality dominate animality, +and thus subordinate personality to humanity.... The animal has sympathy, +and is moved by sympathetic impulses, but these are never altruistic; the +ends are never remote. Moral life is based on sympathy; it is feeling for +others, working for others, aiding others, quite irrespective of any +personal good beyond the satisfaction of the social impulse. Enlightened by +the intuition of our community of weakness, we share ideally the universal +sorrows. Suffering harmonizes. Feeling the need of mutual help, we are +prompted by it to labor for others." [Footnote: Foundations of a Creed, +vol. I., pp. 147, 153.] Morality is social, not personal; the result of +those instincts which draw men together in community of interests, +sympathies and sufferings. Its sanctions are all social; its motives are +purely human; its law is created by the needs of humanity. There is no +outward coercive law of the divine will or of invariable order which is to +be supremely regarded; the moral law is human need as it changes from age +to age. The increase of human sympathies in the process of social evolution +gives the true moral ideal to be aspired after. What will increase the +social efficiency of the race, what will promote altruism, is moral. + +Alike because of the invariable order of nature, and the social dependence +of men on each other, are the effects of conduct wrought out in the +individual. George Eliot believes in "the orderly sequence by which the +seed brings forth a crop after its kind." All evil is injurious to man, +destructive of the integrity of his life. She teaches the doctrine of +Nemesis with as much conviction, thoroughness and eloquence as the old +Greek dramatists, making sin to be punished, and wrong-doing to be +destructive. Sometimes she presents this doctrine with all the stern, +unpitying vigor of an Aeschylus, as a dire effect of wrong that comes upon +men with an unrelenting mercilessness. In _Janet's Repentance_ she says,-- + + Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and + sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her + huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but + the victim totters under the dire clutch. + +Her doctrine of Nemesis resembles that of the old Greeks more than that of +the modern optimists and theists. Hers is not the idealistic conception of +compensation, which measures out an exact proportion of punishment for +every sin, and of happiness for every virtuous action. Wrong-doing injures +others as well as those who commit the evil deed, and moral effects reach +far beyond those who set them in operation. Very explicitly is this fact +presented in _The Mill on the Floss_. + + So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer + for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that + even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that + does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain. + +In _Adam Bede_, Parson Irwine says to Arthur,-- + + Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences + quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that + are hardly ever confined to ourselves. + +Yet wrong-doing does not go unpunished, for the law of moral cause and +effect ever holds good. This is the teaching of the first chapter of _Felix +Holt_. + + There is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it some + downfall of blindly climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering, some + quickly satiated desire that survives, with the life in death of old + paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny--some tragic + mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life that + went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has raised + the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern between + will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the world, for + there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make + human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying + existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of + murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and + joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer--committed to no sound except that + of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the + face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. + Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into + no human ear. + +In the same novel we are told, that-- + + To the end of men's struggles a penalty will remain for those who sink + from the ranks of the heroes into the crowd for whom the heroes fight + and die. + +The same teaching is to be found in the motto of _Daniel Deronda_, where we +are bidden to fear the evil tendencies of our own souls. + + Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: + There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires + That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, + Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible + As exhalations laden with slow death, + And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys + Breathes pallid pestilence. + +The manner in which George Eliot believes Nemesis works out her results has +already been indicated. Her effects do not appear in any outward and +palpable results, necessarily; her method is often unknown to men, hidden +even from the keenest eyes. Evil causes produce evil results, that is all; +and these are shown in the most subtle and secret results of what life is. +One of her methods is indicated in _Adam Bede_. + + Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences-- + out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused; there + is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral + sense learns the manners of good society, and smiles when others smile; + but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt + to take part against us. + +_The Mill on the Floss_ reflects this thought. + + Retribution may come from any voice; the hardest, crudest most imbruted + urchin at the street-corner can inflict it. + +More effective still is that punishment which comes of our own inward sense +of wrong-doing. George Eliot makes Parson Irwine say that "the inward +suffering is the worst form of Nemesis." This is well illustrated in the +experience of Gwendolen, who, after the death of her husband at Geneva, is +anxious to leave that place. + + For what place, though it were the flowery vale of Enna, may not the + inward sense turn into a circle of punishment where the flowers are no + better than a crop of flame-tongues burning the soles of our feet? + +Even before this, Gwendolen had come to realize the dire effects of selfish +conduct in that dread and bitterness of spirit which subdued her and mocked +all her hopes and joys. + + Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending + to a predominance which determines all currents toward itself, and + makes the whole life its tributary. And the intensest form of hatred is + that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and drives vehemence into + a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the + deserted object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with + which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed + their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the + secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect--rather with + the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her + husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the + pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse. The vision of her past + wrong-doing, and what it had brought on her, came with a pale ghastly + illumination over every imagined deed that was a rash effort at + freedom, such as she had made in her marriage. [Footnote: Chapter LIV.] + +The way in which wrong-doing affects us to our hurt is suggested also in +_Romola_, where its results upon the inward life are explicitly revealed. + + Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, + whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The + contaminating effect of deeds lies less in the commission than in + the consequent adjustment of our desires--the enlistment of our + self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the + purifying effect of public confession springs from the fact that by it + the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble + attitude of simplicity. + +In the same novel the effect of wrong-doing is regarded as an inward and +subduing fear of the consequences of our conduct. This dread so commonly +felt, and made a most effective motive by all religions, George Eliot +regards as the soul's testimony to the great law of retribution. Experience +that moral causes produce moral effects, as that law is every day taught +us, takes hold of feeling, and becomes a nameless dread of the avenging +powers. + + Having once begun to explain away Baldassarre's claim, Tito's thought + showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way + through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that + dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher + than a man's animal care for his own skin; that awe of the divine + Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more + positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind + simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such + terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it + will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a + moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of + imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have + any sanctity in the absence of feeling. "It is good," sing the old + Eumenides, in Aeschylus, "that fear should sit as the guardian of the + soul, forcing it into wisdom--good that men should carry a threatening + shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else how shall they + learn to revere the light?" That guardianship may become needless; but + only when all outward law has become needless--only when duty and love + have united in one stream and made a common force. [Footnote: Chapter + XI.] + +Another form in which Nemesis punishes us is described in the essay on "A +Half-Breed" in _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Mixtus was a man +with noble aims, but he was fascinated by Scintilla, and realized none of +his ideals. He was captivated by her prettiness, liveliness and music, and +then he was captured on his worldly side. She did not believe in "notions" +and reforms, and he succumbed to her wishes. As a result, his life was +crippled, he was always unsatisfied with himself. Of this form of +retribution George Eliot says,-- + + An early deep-seated love to which we become faithless has its + unfailing Nemesis, if only in that division of soul which narrows all + newer joys by the intrusion of regret and the established presentiment + of change. I refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love + of ideas, practical beliefs and social habits. And faithlessness here + means not a gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a + yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original + choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a + growing desire. In this sort of love it is the forsaker who has the + melancholy lot; for an abandoned belief may be more effectively + vengeful than Dido. The child of a wandering tribe, caught young and + trained to polite life, if he feels a hereditary yearning, can run away + to the old wilds and get his nature into tune. But there is no such + recovery possible to the man who remembers what he once believed + without being convinced that he was in error, who feels within him + unsatisfied stirrings toward old beloved habits and intimacies from + which he has far receded without conscious justification or unwavering + sense of superior attractiveness in the new. This involuntary renegade + has his character hopelessly jangled and out of tune. He is like an + organ with its stops in the lawless condition of obtruding themselves + without method, so that hearers are amazed by the most unexpected + transitions--the trumpet breaking in on the flute, and the oboe + confounding both. + +With a strong and eloquent energy, George Eliot teaches the natural +consequences of conduct. Every feeling, thought and deed has its effect, +comes to fruition. Desire modifies life, shapes our destiny, moulds us into +the image of its own nature. Actions become habits, become controlling +elements in our lives, and tend to work out their own legitimate results. +The whole of George Eliot's doctrine of retribution is, that human causes, +as much as any other, lead to their appropriate effects. Her frequent use +of the word _Nemesis_ indicates the idea she had of the inevitableness of +moral consequences, that a force once set in motion can never be recalled +in its effects, which make a permanent modification of human life in its +present and in its past. It was not the old doctrine of fate which she +presented, not any arbitrary inflictment from supernatural powers. The +inevitableness of moral consequences influenced her as a solemn and fearful +reality which man must strictly regard if he would find true manhood. + +The doctrine of retribution is very clearly taught by George Eliot in her +comments. With a still greater distinctness it is taught in the development +of her characters. As we follow the careers of Hetty, Maggie, Tito, +Fedalma, Lydgate and Gwendolen we see how wonderful was George Eliot's +insight into the moral issues of life. Not only with these, but with all +her characters, we see a righteous moral unfoldment of character into its +effects. There is no compromise with evil in her pages; all selfishness, +wrong and crime comes to its proper results. The vanity and selfishness of +Hetty leads to what terrible crime and shame for her, and what misery for +others! Tito's selfishness and want of resolute purpose carries him +inevitably downward to a hideous end. What is so plain in the case of these +characters is as true, though not so palpable, in that of many others in +her books. Dorothea's conduct is clearly shown to develop into consequences +(as did Lydgate's) which were the natural results of what she thought, did +and was. Maggie's misery was the product of her conduct, the legitimate +outcome of it. + +George Eliot goes beyond the conduct of any one person and its results, and +attempts to show how it is affected by the person's environment. It was +Maggie's family, education, social standing and personal qualities of mind +and heart which helped to determine for her the consequences of her +conduct. It was Dorothea's education and social environment which largely +helped to shape her career and to leave her bereaved of the largest +possibilities of which her life was capable. Gwendolen's life was largely +determined by her early training and by her social surroundings. Yet with +all these, life has its necessary issues, and Nemesis plays its part. +Retribution is for all; it is ever stern, just and inevitable. Just, +however, only in the sense that wrong-doing cannot escape its own effects, +but not just in the sense that the guiltless must often share the fate +of the guilty. Wrong-doing drags down to destruction many an innocent +person. It is to be said of George Eliot, however, that she never presents +any of her characters as doomed utterly by the past. However strong the +memories of the ages lay upon them, they are capable of self-direction. +Not one of her characters is wholly the victim of his environment. There +is no hint in _Middlemarch_ that Dorothea was not capable of heroism and +self-consecration. Her environment gave a wrong direction to her moral +purpose; but that purpose remained, and the moral nobleness of her mind was +not destroyed. Still, it is largely true, that in her books the individual +is sacrificed to his social environment. He is to renounce his own +personality for the sake of the race. Consequently his fate is linked with +that of others, and he must suffer from other men's deeds. + +With all its limitations and defects, George Eliot's teaching concerning +the moral effects of conduct is wholesome and healthy. It rests on a solid +foundation of experience and scientific evidence. Her books are full of +moral stimulus and strengthening, because of the profound conviction with +which she has presented her conception of moral cause and effect. With her, +we must believe that moral sequences are as inevitable as the physical. + +It would be very unjust to George Eliot to suppose that she left man in the +hands of a relentless moral order which manifests no tenderness and which +is incapable of pity and mercy. She did not believe in an Infinite Father, +full of love and forgiveness; that faith was not for her. Yet she did +believe in a providence which can assuage man's sorrows and deal tenderly +with his wrong-doing. While nature is stern and the moral sequences of life +unbending, man may be sympathetic and helpful. Man is to be the providence +of man; humanity is to be his tender forgiving Friend. A substitute so +poor for the old faith would seem to have little power of moral renovation +or sympathetic impulse in it; but it quickened George Eliot's mind with +enthusiasm and ardor. The "enthusiasm of humanity" filled her whole soul, +was a luminous hope in her heart and an inspiring purpose to her mind. +With Goethe and Carlyle she found in work for humanity the substitute +for all faith and the cure for all doubt. Faust finds for his life a +purpose, and for the universe a solution, when he comes to labor for the +practical improvement of humanity. This was George Eliot's own conclusion, +that it is enough for us to see the world about us made a little better +and more orderly by our efforts. All her noblest characters find in +altruism a substitute for religion, and they find there a moral anchorage. +She says very plainly in _Middlemarch_, that every doctrine is capable of +"eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct +fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men." To the same effect is her +saying in _Romola_, that "with the sinking of the high human trust the +dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, +since that also is a part of the common nature which is degraded in +our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled." In +_Janet's Repentance_ she has finely presented this faith in sympathetic +humanitarianism, showing how Janet found peace in the sick-room where all +had been doubt and trial before. + + Day after day, with only short intervals of rest, Janet kept her place + in that sad chamber. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so + often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt--a place of + repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all + creeds and all philosophies are at one:--here, at least, the conscience + will not be dogged by doubt--the benign impulse will not be checked by + adverse theory: here you may begin to act without settling one + preliminary question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through + the long night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the + helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond + the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye--these + are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent + to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls + where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is + subdued,--where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender + mercies of his fellow,--the moral relation of man to man is reduced to + its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory + cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute + nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed all the forces of our + nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience and of love, and + sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, + our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires. This blessing + of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple, + direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is + often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there + are of a hard and terrible kind. [Footnote: Chapter XXIV.] + +The basis of such sympathetic helpfulness she finds in the common sorrows +and trials of the world. All find life hard, pain comes to all, none are to +be found unacquainted with sorrow. These common experiences draw men +together in sympathy, unite them in a common purpose of assuagement and +help. The sorrow of Adam Bede made him more gentle and patient with his +brother. + + It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at + work within him. For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, + working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable + nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a + temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God + forbid! It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling + if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could + return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same + light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over + blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown toward + which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us + rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible + force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into + sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our + best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had + completely taken place in Adam yet; there was still a great remnant of + pain, which he felt would subsist as long as _her_ pain was not a + memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with + the light of every morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as + bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it; it + becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of + perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission; + and we are contented with our day when we are able to bear our grief in + silence, and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods + that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations + beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the + centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert. + +Armgart finds that "true vision comes only with sorrow." Sorrow and +suffering create a sympathy which sends us to the relief of others. "Pain +must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into +compassion," we are told in _Middlemarch_. In the trying hours of Maggie +Tulliver's life she came to know-- + + that new sense which is the gift of sorrow--that susceptibility to the + bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving + fellowship. + +Again, she learns that "more helpful than all wisdom is one draught of +simple human pity that will not forsake us." Man is in this way brought to +live for man, to suffer in his sufferings, to be mercifully tender and +pitiful with him in his temptations and trials. Sympathy builds up the +moral life, gives an ethical meaning to man's existence. Thus humanity +becomes a providence to man, and it is made easier for him to bear his +sufferings and to be comforted in his sorrows. Nemesis is stern, but man is +pitiful; retribution is inexorable, but humanity is sympathetic. Nature +never relents, and there is no God who can so forgive us our sins as to +remove their legitimate effects; but man can comfort us with his love, and +humanity can teach us to overcome retribution by righteous conduct. + +All idealistic rights are to be laid aside, according to her theory, all +personal claims and motives are to be renounced. In the duties we owe to +others, life is to find its rightful expression. In _Janet's Repentance_ +she says,-- + + The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond + the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition + of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to + mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order + of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has + been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of + impressions, desires and impulses. + +To live for self, George Eliot seems to regard as immoral; self is to be +ignored except in so far as it can be made to serve humanity. As rights are +individual they are repudiated, and the demand for them is regarded as +revolutionary and destructive. + +That man is a moral being because he is a social being she carries to its +farthest extreme in some of her teachings, as when she makes public opinion +the great motive power to social improvement. Felix Holt pronounces public +opinion--the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is +wrong, what is honorable and what is shameful--to be the greatest power +under heaven. In the "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt," published in +_Blackwood's Magazine_, Felix is made to say to his fellows,-- + + Any nation that had within it a majority of men--and we are the + majority--possessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the + bad practices, the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous + adulteration of goods, the retail cheating and the political bribery + which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A majority has the + power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and his-s before we + had the franchise: if we had groaned and hissed in the right place, if + we had discerned better between good and evil, if the multitude of us + artisans and factory hands and miners and laborers of all sorts had + been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober--and I don't + see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere without these + qualities--we should have made an audience that would have shamed the + other classes out of their share in the national vices. We should have + had better members of Parliament, better religious teachers, honester + tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence in infamous and + brutal men; and we should not have had among us the abomination of men + calling themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-gotten + gains. I say it is not possible for any society in which there is a + very large body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our + society is--to have as low a standard of right and wrong, to have so + much belief in falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a notion + of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above his fellows. + Therefore let us have done with this nonsense about our being much + better than the rest of our countrymen, or the pretence that that was a + reason why we ought to have such an extension of the franchise as has + been given to us. + +The essay on "Moral Swindlers," in _Theophrastus Such_, clearly indicates +George Eliot's point of view in ethics. She makes those moral traits which +are social of greater importance than those which are personal. She +complains that a man who is chaste and of a clean personal conduct is +regarded as a moral man when his business habits are not good. To her, his +relations to his fellows in all the social and business affairs of life are +of higher importance than his personal habits or his family relations. She +rebels against that deep moral instinct of the race which identifies +morality with personal character, and is indignant that the altruism she so +much believed in is not everywhere made identical with ethics. To her, the +person is nothing; the individual is thought of only as a member of a +community. She forgot that any large and noble moral life for a people must +rest upon personal character, upon a pure and healthy state of the moral +nature in individuals. Nations cannot be moral, but persons can. Public +corruption has its foundation in personal corruption. The nation cannot +have a noble moral life unless the individuals of which it is composed are +pure in character and noble in conduct. She complains that sexual purity is +made identical with morality, while business integrity is not. Every social +and moral bond we have, she says, "is a debt; the right lies in the payment +of that debt; _it can lie nowhere else_." It is a debt owed, not to God, +but to humanity; it is therefore to be paid, not by personal holiness, but +by human sympathy and devotion. + +The higher social morality, that which inspires nations with great and +heroic purposes, George Eliot believes is mainly due, as she says in the +essay on "The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" "to the divine gift of a memory which +inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, and gives the +sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more +respectable and innocent brute." The memories of the past lie mainly in the +direction of national movements, and hence the higher moral life of the +present must be associated with national memories. The glorious +commonplaces of historic teaching, as well as of moral inspiration, are to +be found in the fact "that the preservation of national memories is an +element and a means of national greatness, that their revival is a sign of +reviving nationality, and that every heroic defender, every patriotic +restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has made them his +watchword." To reject such memories, such social influences, she regards as +"a blinding superstition," and says that the moral visions of a nation are +an effective bond which must be accepted by all its members. Two of her +most characteristic books are written to inculcate this teaching. In _The +Spanish Gypsy_ we learn that there is no moral strength and purpose for a +man like Don Silva, who repudiates his country, its memories and its +religion. The main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is to show how binding and +inspiring is the vision of moral truth and life which comes from +association even with the national memories of an outcast and alien people. + +She wished to see individuals helped and good done in the present. She +makes Theophrastus Such, in the essay on "Looking Backward," speak her own +mind. + + "All reverence and gratitude for the worthy dead on whose labors we + have entered, all care for the future generations whose lot we are + preparing; but some affection and fairness for those who are doing the + actual work of the world, some attempt to regard them with the same + freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we + may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the + looking before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in + danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more + illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the + ascetic's contemplation of heaven." + +Again, she says that "the action by which we can do the best for future +ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for +contemporaries." And this was not merely the teaching of her books, it was +the practice of her life. Miss Edith Simcox has made it clear that she was +zealously anxious to help men and women by personal effort. She tells us +that "George Eliot's sympathies went out more readily towards enthusiasm +for the discharge of duties than for the assertion of rights. It belonged +to the positive basis of her character to identify herself more with what +people wished to do themselves than with what they thought somebody else +ought to do for them. Her indignation was vehement enough against dishonest +or malicious oppression, but the instinct to make allowance for the other +side made her a bad hater in politics, and there may easily have been some +personal sympathy in her description of Deronda's difficulty about the +choice of a career. She was not an inviting auditor for those somewhat +pachydermatous philanthropists who dwell complacently upon 'cases' and +statistics which represent appalling depths of individual suffering. Her +imagination realized these facts with a vividness that was physically +unbearable, and unless she could give substantial help, she avoided the +fruitless agitation. At the same time, her interest in all rational good +works was of the warmest, and she was inclined to exaggerate rather than +undervalue the merits of their promoters, with one qualification only. +'Help the millions, by all means,' she has written; 'I only want people not +to scorn the narrower effect.' Charity that did not begin at home repelled +her as much as she was attracted by the unpretentious kindness which +overlooked no near opportunity; and perhaps we should not be far wrong in +guessing that she thought for most people the scrupulous discharge of all +present and unavoidable duties was nearly occupation enough. Not every one +was called to the high but difficult vocation of setting the world to +rights. But on the other hand, it must be remembered that her standard of +exactingness was 'high, and some of the things that in her eyes it was +merely culpable to leave undone might be counted by others among virtues of +supererogation. Indeed, it is within the limits of possibility that a +philanthropist wrapped in over-much conscious virtue might imagine her cold +to the objects proposed, when she only failed to see uncommon merit in +their pursuit. No one, however, could recognize with more generous fervor, +more delighted admiration, any genuine unobtrusive devotion in either +friends or strangers, whether it were spent in making life easier to +individuals, or in mending the conditions among which the masses live and +labor.' This writer gives us further insight into George Eliot's character +when we are told that 'she came as a very angel of consolation to those +persons of sufficiently impartial mind to find comfort in the hint that the +world might be less to blame than they were as to those points on which +they found themselves in chronic disagreement with it. But she had nothing +welcome for those whose idea of consolation is the promise of a _deus ex +machina_ by whose help they may gather grapes of thorns and figs of +thistles. She thought there was much needed doing in the world, and +criticism of our neighbors and the natural order might wait at all events +until the critic's own character and conduct were free from blame.' She had +faith in ordinary lives, and these she earnestly desired to help and +encourage. Those who themselves struggle with difficulties are best +capable, she thought, of helping others out of theirs. In _Daniel Deronda_ +she said, 'Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless; as if those were not +often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their +mistakes.'" + +George Eliot's interest in the present amelioration of human conditions was +strengthened by her faith in the future of the race. She expected no rapid +improvement, no revolutionizing development; but she believed the past of +mankind justifies faith in a gradual attainment of perfect conditions. This +conviction was expressed when she said,-- + + What I look to is a time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be + as immediate and irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something + firm if I am falling. + +She saw too much evil and suffering to be an optimist; she could not see +that all things are good or tending towards what is good. Yet her faith in +the final outcome was earnest, and she looked to a slow and painful +progress as the result of human struggles. When called an optimist, she +responded, "I will not answer to the name of optimist, but if you like to +invent Meliorist, I will not say you call me out of my name." She trusted +in that gradual development which science points out as the probable result +of the survival of the fittest in human life. In "A Minor Prophet" she has +presented her conception of human advancement, and tenderly expressed her +sympathy with all humble, imperfect lives. + + Bitterly + I feel that every change upon this earth + Is bought with sacrifice. My yearnings fail + To reach that high apocalyptic mount + Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world, + Or enter warmly into other joys + Than those of faulty, struggling human kind, + That strain upon my soul's too perfect wing + Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall + Into short-sighted pity for the men + Who, living in those perfect future times, + Will not know half the dear imperfect things + That move my smiles and tears--will never know + The fine old incongruities that raise + My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits + That like a needless eyeglass or black patch + Give those who wear them harmless happiness; + The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, + That touch me to more conscious fellowship + (I am not myself the finest Parian) + With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout, + To whom raw onions give prospective zest, + Consoling hours of dampest wintry work, + Could hardly fancy any regal joys + Quite unimpregnate with the onion's scent: + Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear + Of waftings from that energetic bulb: + 'Tis well that onion is not heresy. + Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout. + A clinging flavor penetrates ray life-- + My onion is imperfectness: I cleave + To nature's blunders, evanescent types + Which sages banish from Utopia. + "Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend! + I worship in the temple with the rest; + But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook + For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves + Who stitched and hammered for the weary man + In days of old. And in that piety + I clothe ungainly forms inherited + From toiling generations, daily bent + At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, + In pioneering labors for the world. + Nay, I am apt, when floundering confused + From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox, + And pity future men who will not know + A keen experience with pity blent, + The pathos exquisite of lovely minds + Hid in harsh forms--not penetrating them + Like fire divine within a common bush + Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest, + So that men put their shoes off; but encaged + Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell, + Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars; + But having shown a little dimpled hand, + Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts + Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls. + A foolish, nay, a wicked paradox! + For purest pity is the eye of love, + Melting at sight of sorrow; and to grieve + Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love + Warped from its truer nature, turned to love + Of merest habit, like the miser's greed. + But I am Colin still: my prejudice + Is for the flavor of my daily food. + Not that I doubt the world is growing still, + As once it grew from chaos and from night; + Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope + Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn, + With earliest watchings of the rising light + Chasing the darkness; and through many an age + Has raised the vision of a future time + That stands an angel, with a face all mild, + Spearing the demon. I, too, rest in faith + That man's perfection is the crowning flower + Towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree + Is pressing--seen in puny blossoms now, + But in the world's great morrows to expand + With broadest petal and with deepest glow. + +With no disgust toward the crude and wretched life man everywhere lives +to-day, but with pity and tenderness for all sorrow, suffering and +struggle, she yet believed that the world is being shaped to a glorious +and a mighty destiny. This faith finds full and clear expression in the +concluding lines of the poem just quoted. + + The faith that life on earth is being shaped + To glorious ends, that order, justice, love, + Mean man's completeness, mean effect as sure + As roundness in the dewdrop--that great faith + Is but the rushing and expanding stream + Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past. + Our finest hope is finest memory, + As they who love in age think youth is blest + Because it has a life to fill with love. + Full souls are double mirrors, making still + An endless vista of fair things before + Repeating things behind: so faith is strong + Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink. + It comes when music stirs us, and the chords + Moving on some grand climax shake our souls + With influx new that makes new energies. + It comes in swellings of the heart and tears + That rise at noble and at gentle deeds-- + At labors of the master-artist's hand + Which, trembling, touches to a finer end, + Trembling before an image seen within. + It comes in moments of heroic love, + Unjealous joy in love not made for us-- + In conscious triumph of the good within, + Making us worship goodness that rebukes. + Even our failures are a prophecy, + Even our yearnings and our bitter tears + After that fair and true we cannot grasp; + As patriots who seem to die in vain + Make liberty more sacred by their pangs, + Presentiment of better things on earth + Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls + To admiration, self-renouncing love, + Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one: + Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night + We hear the roll and dash of waves that break + Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide, + Which rises to the level of the cliff + Because the wide Atlantic roils behind, + Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs. + +George Eliot did all that could be done to make the morality she taught +commendable and inspiring. In her own direct teachings, and in the +development of her characters and her plots, she has done much to make it +acceptable. Her strong insistence on the social basis of morality is to be +admired, and the truth presented is one of great importance. Even more +important is her teaching of the stern nature of retribution, that every +thought, word and deed has its effect. There is need of such teaching, and +it can be appropriated into the thought and life of the time with great +promise of good. Yet the outcome of George Eliot's morality was rather +depressing than otherwise. While she was no pessimist, yet she made her +readers feel that life was pessimistic in its main tendencies. She makes on +the minds of very many of her readers the impression that life has not very +much light in it. This comes from the whole cast of her mind, and still +more because the light of true ideal hopes was absent from her thought. A +stern, ascetic view of life appears throughout her pages, one of the +results of the new morality and the humanitarian gospel of altruism. +Unbending, unpitiful, does the universe seem to be when the idea of law and +Nemesis is so strongly presented, and with no relief from it in the theory +of man's free will. Not less depressing to the moral nature is an +unrelieved view of the universe under the omnipotent law of cause and +effect, which is not lighted by any vision of God and a spiritual order +interpenetrating the material. Her teaching too often takes the tone of +repression; it is hard and exacting. She devotes many pages to showing the +effects of the law of retribution; she gives comparatively few to the +correlative law that good always has its reward. Renunciation is presented +as a moral force, and as duty of supreme importance; life is to be +repressed for the sake of humanity. The spontaneous tendencies of the mind +and heart, the importance of giving a free and healthy development to human +nature, is not regarded. Her morality is justly to be criticised for its +ascetic and pessimistic tendencies. + + + + +XIII. + + +EARLIER NOVELS. + +The first four novels written by George Eliot form a group by themselves; +and while all similar to each other in their main characteristics, are in +important respects different from her later works. This group includes +_Clerical Scenes, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss_ and _Silas Marner_. +With these may also be classed "Brother Jacob." They are all alike novels +of memory, and they deal mainly with common life. Her own life and the +surroundings of her childhood, the memories and associations and +suggestions of her early life, are drawn upon. The simple surroundings and +ideas of the midland village are seldom strayed away from, and most of the +characters are farmers and their laborers, artisans or clergymen. _The Mill +on the Floss_ offers a partial exception to this statement, for in that +book we touch upon the border of a different form of society, but we +scarcely enter into it, and the leading characters are from the same class +as those in the other books of this group. "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" alone +enters wholly within the circle of aristocratic society. There is more of +the realism of actual life in these novels than in her later ones, greater +spontaneity and insight, a deeper sympathy and a more tender pathos. They +came more out of her heart and sympathies, are more impassioned and +pathetic. + +Throughout the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ are descriptions of actual scenes +and incidents known to George Eliot in her girlhood. Mrs. Hackit is a +portrait of her own mother. In the first chapter of "Amos Barton," +Shepperton Church is that at Chilvers Colon, which she attended throughout +her childhood. It is from memory, and with an accurate pen, she describes-- + + Shepperton Church as it was in the old days with its outer court of + rough stucco, its red-tiled roof, its heterogeneous windows patched + with desultory bits of painted glass, and its little flight of steps + with their wooden rail running up the outer wall, and leading to the + school-children's gallery. Then inside, what dear old quaintnesses! + which I began to look at with delight, even when I was so crude a + member of the congregation that my nurse found it necessary to + provide for the reinforcement of my devotional patience by smuggling + bread-and-butter into the sacred edifice. There was the chancel, + guarded by two little cherubims looking uncomfortably squeezed between + arch and wall, and adorned with the escutcheons of the Oldinport + family, which showed me inexhaustible possibilities of meaning in their + blood-red hands, their death's-heads and cross-bones, their leopards' + paws and Maltese crosses. There were inscriptions on the panels of the + singing-gallery, telling of benefactions to the poor of Shepperton, + with an involuted elegance of capitals and final flourishes which my + alphabetic erudition traced with ever-new delight. No benches in those + days; but huge roomy pews, round which devout churchgoers sat during + "lessons," trying to look everywhere else than into each others' eyes. + No low partitions allowing you, with a dreary absence of contrast and + mystery, to see everything at all moments; but tall dark panels, under + whose shadow I sank with a sense of retirement through the Litany, only + to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public + life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the + singing. + +Not only is this description of Shepperton Church accurate in every +particular, but a subject of neighborhood gossip is made the basis of the +story of "Amos Barton." When George Eliot was about a dozen years old a +strange lady appeared at the Cotou parsonage, and became a subject of much +discussion on the part of the parishioners. Much pity was felt for the wife +of the curate, an intimate friend of Marian Evans's mother, whose poverty, +seven children and poor health made her burdens far from easy. She died not +long after, and her grave may be seen at Chilvers Coton. The Knebley Church +of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is located only a short distance from Chilvers +Coton, and is the chancel of the collegiate church founded by Sir Thomas de +Astley in the time of Edward III. Its spire was very high, and served as a +landmark to travellers through the forest of Arden, and was called "The +lanthorn of Arden." The spire fell in the year 1600, but was rebuilt later. +The present church was repaired by the patron of George Eliot's father, Sir +Roger Newdigate. She describes it in the first chapter of "Mr. Gilfil's +Love Story" as-- + + a wonderful little church, with a checkered pavement which had once + rung to the iron tread of military monks, with coats of arms in + clusters on the lofty roof, marble warriors and their wives without + noses occupying a large proportion of the area, and the twelve apostles + with their heads very much on one side, holding didactic ribbons, + painted in fresco on the walls. + +A delightful lane, overshadowed with noble trees, that ran by Griff House, +the birthplace of George Eliot, led to the lodge of Arbury Hall, the home +of Sir Roger Newdigate. Arbury Hall was situated in the midst of a fine old +forest, and it was originally a large quadrangular brick house. Sir Roger +rebuilt it, acting as his own architect, and made it into a modern dwelling +of the commodious gothic Order. This house and its owner appear in "Mr. +Gilfil's Love Story" as Cheverel Manor and Sir Christopher Cheverel. In the +fourth chapter the reader is told that,-- + + For the next ten years Sir Christopher was occupied with the + architectural metamorphosis of his old family mansion, thus + anticipating through the prompting of his individual taste that general + re-action from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style towards a + restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth + century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness + of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his + fox-hunting neighbors.... "An obstinate, crotchety man," said his + neighbors. But I, who have seen Cheverel Manor as he bequeathed it to + his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of + his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic + personal exertion, to something of the fervor of genius. + +In this story an incident in the life of Sir Roger Newdigate may have been +made use of by George Eliot. He was childless, and adopted a cottager's +child he and his wife heard singing at its father's door one day. They +educated the child, who proved to have a fine voice and a passionate love +of music. + +_Janet's Repentance_ also has its scenes from actual life. Dr. Dempster was +thought to be recognized by his neighbors as a well-known person in +Nuneaton. Milby and its High street are no other than Nuneaton and its +market-place. The character of the town and the manner of life there are +all sketched from the Nuneaton of George Eliot's childhood. The school she +attended was very near the vicarage. While she was attending this school, +when about nine years old, a young curate from a neighboring hamlet was +permitted by the Bishop to give Sunday-evening lectures in the Nuneaton +church, with the results described in _Janet's Repentance_. + +In _Adam Bede_ there is also a considerable element of actual history. The +heroine, Dinah Morris, is, in some slight particulars at least, sketched +from Elizabeth Evans, an aunt of George Eliot's. Elizabeth Evans was born +at Newbold, Lincolnshire, in 1776. [Footnote: This subject has been fully +worked out in a book published by Blackwood, "George Eliot in Derbyshire: a +volume of gossip about passages in the novels of George Eliot," by Guy +Roslyn. Reprinted from London Society, with alterations and additions, and +an introduction by George Barnett Smith. Its statements are mainly based on +a small book published in London in 1859, by Talbot & Co., entitled "Seth +Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors." Guy Roslyn is a pseudonym for +Joshua Hatton.] She was a beautiful woman when young, with soft gray eyes +and a fine face, and had a very simple and gentle manner. She was a +Methodist preacher, lived at Wirksworth, Derbyshire, and preached wherever +an opportunity occurred. When it was forbidden that women should preach, +she continued to exhort in the cottages, and to visit the poor and the sick +in their homes. She married Samuel Evans, who was born in Boston, and was a +carpenter. He had a brother William, who was a joiner and builder. Their +father was a village carpenter and undertaker, honest and respectable, but +who took to drink in his later years. He was at an ale-house very late one +night, and the next morning was found dead in a brook near his house. +Samuel became a Methodist and a preacher, but was teased about it by his +brother, who criticised his blunders in prayer and preaching. He was gentle +and very considerate at home, and was greatly attached to his brother, +though they could not agree in matters of religion. While they were +partners in business they prospered, but Samuel did not succeed when by +himself. Samuel and Elizabeth were married at St. Mary's Church, +Nottingham. In company with a Miss Richards, Elizabeth attended, in 1801 or +1802, a Mary Voce who had poisoned her child. They visited her in jail, and +were with her when she was hung in Nottingham. Elizabeth wrote an account +of her own life, especially of her conversion and her early work in the +ministry. Concerning the execution of Mary Voce, she gives this account: +"At seven o'clock [on the morning of the execution] we all knelt down in +prayer, and at ten minutes before eight o'clock the Lord in mercy spoke +peace to her soul. She cried out, 'Oh, how happy I am! the Lord has +pardoned all my sins, and I am going to heaven.' She never lost the +evidence for one moment, and always rejoiced in the hope of glory. Is it +not by grace we are saved through faith? And is not the Saviour exalted at +the Father's right hand to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of +sins? If salvation were by works who would be saved? The vilest and worst +may come unto Him. None need despair. None ought to presume. Miss Richards +and I attended her to the place of execution. Our feelings on this occasion +were very acute. We rode with her in the cart to the awful place. Our +people sang with her all the way, which I think was a mile and a half. We +were enabled to lift up our hearts unto the Lord in her behalf, and she was +enabled to bear a public testimony that God in mercy had pardoned all her +sins. When the cap was drawn over her face, and she was about to be turned +off, she cried, 'Glory! glory! glory! the angels are waiting around me.' +And she died almost without a struggle. At this awful spot I lost a great +deal of the fear of man, which to me had been a great hindrance for a long +time. I felt if God would send me to the uttermost parts of the earth I +would go, and at intervals felt I could embrace a martyr's flame. Oh, this +burning love of God, what will it not endure? I could not think I had an +enemy in the world. I am certain I enjoyed that salvation that if they had +smote me on one cheek, I could have turned to them the other also. I lived + + "'The life of heaven above, + All the life of glorious love.' + +"I seemed myself to live between heaven and earth. I was not in heaven +because of my body, nor upon earth because of my soul. Earth was a scale to +heaven, and all I tasted was God. I could pray without ceasing, and in +everything give thanks. I felt that the secret of the Lord is with them +that fear Him. If I wanted to know anything I had only to ask, and it was +given, generally in a moment. Whether I was in the public street, or at my +work, or in my private room, I had continued intercourse with my God; and +many, I think I may say hundreds of times, He shone upon His Word, and +showed me the meaning thereof, that is, texts of scripture, so as to +furnish me with sufficient matter to speak to poor sinners for a sufficient +length of time." + +The life of Elizabeth Evans was only a hint to the mind of the author of +_Adam Bede_. Dinah was not intended as a portrait, and the resemblances +between the two were probably not the result of a conscious purpose on the +part of George Eliot. Soon after the publication of _Adam Bede_, when +gossip had begun to report that Dinah Morris was an accurate sketch of +Elizabeth Evans, and even that her sermon and prayers had been copied from +the writings of the aunt, George Eliot wrote a letter to her intimate +friend, Miss Sara Hennell, in which she explained to what extent she was +indebted to Elizabeth Evans for the portrait of Dinah Morris. + + +HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1850. + +Dear Sara,--I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to +tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt, +Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life +with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six +or seven years before he married my mother.... [Footnote: What is here +omitted of this letter will be found on page 12.] + +As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any +interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one +sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy +girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution, +and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among +the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass_. In her +account of the prison scenes. I remember no word she uttered--I only +remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. +Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she +was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my +mind for years on years as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my +mind a nisus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ +of _Adam Bede_. + +I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and a night with my +father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our +interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less +simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to +see me--when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some +pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude +state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This +is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear +aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not +possible you should see as I do how her entire individuality differed from +Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's +sermon, prayers and speeches were _copied_--when they were written with hot +tears as they surged up in my own mind! + +As to my indebtedness to facts of _locale_, and personal history of a small +kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what +kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those +counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I +more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as +facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect +allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk +about old times. + +As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that +Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is simply the vague, easily +satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It +is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to +enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a +portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with +_mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as +representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach +to the truth. + +Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am +prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years _Adam Bede_ and all +that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not +be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you. + +Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving + +MARIAN. + +When, in 1876, a book was published to show the identity of Dinah Morris +and Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot wrote to the author to protest against +such a conclusion. She said to him that the one was not intended to +represent the other, and that any identification of the two would be +protested against as not only false in fact and tending to perpetuate +false notions about art, but also as a gross breach of social decorum. Yet +these declarations concerning Elizabeth Evans have been repeated, and to +them has been added the assertion that she actually copied in _Adam Bede_ +the history and sermons of Dinah Morris. [Footnote: "Dinah Morris and +Elizabeth Evans," an article by L. Buckley in The Century for August, +1882.] During visits to her aunt in 1842 we are told they spent several +hours together each day. "They used to go to the house of one of Mrs. +Evans's married daughters, where they had the parlor to themselves and had +long conversations. These secret conversations excited some curiosity in +the family, and one day Mrs. Evans's daughter said, 'Mother, I can't think +what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans +replied, 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to +tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all +down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.' While at +Wirksworth, Miss Evans made a note of everything people said in her +hearing; no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which +seemed never out of her hand. These notes she transcribed every night +before going to rest. After her departure Mrs. Evans said to her daughter, +'Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and +that is the notes of the first sermon I preached on Ellaston Green.' The +sermon preached by Dinah on Hayslope Green has been recognized as one of +Mrs. Evans's." The purpose here seems to be to convey the impression that +George Eliot actually carried away one of Mrs. Evans's sermons, and that +she afterwards copied it into _Adam Bede_. George Eliot's own positive +statement on this subject ought to be sufficient to convince any candid +mind the sermon was not copied. The evidence brought forward so far in +regard to the relations of Dinah Morris to Elizabeth Evans is not +sufficient to prove the one was taken from the other. George Eliot's +declarations, written soon after _Adam Bede_ was published, when all was +perfectly fresh in her mind, and after her relatives had made their +statements about Mrs. Evans, ought to settle the matter forever. Unless +new and far more positive evidence is brought forward, Dinah Morris ought +to be regarded as substantially an original creation. + +That some features of Elizabeth Evans's character were sketched into that +of Dinah Morris seems certain. It is also said that the names of Mrs. +Poyser and Bartle Massey were the names of actual persons, the latter being +the schoolmaster of her father. As showing her power of local coloring, +Miss Mathilde Blind relates this incident: "On its first appearance, _Adam +Bede_ was read aloud to an old man, an intimate associate of Robert Evans +in his Staffordshire days. This man knew nothing concerning either author +or subject beforehand, and his astonishment was boundless on recognizing so +many friends and incidents of his own youth portrayed with unerring +fidelity, he sat up half the night listening to the story in breathless +excitement, now and then slapping his knees as he exclaimed, 'That's +Robert, that's Robert, to the life.'" + +In _Adam Bede_, as well as in the _Clerical Scenes_ and _The Mill on the +Floss_, she describes types of character instead of actual personages; and +yet so much of the realistic is embodied that more than one of her +characters has been identified as being in a considerable degree a sketch +from life. This is true of _The Mill on the Floss_ even more fully than of +her previous books. In Maggie she has portrayed one side of her own +character, and made use of much of her early experience. Lucy is said to be +her sister, and two of her aunts are sketched in the aunts of Maggie--Mrs. +Glegg and Mrs. Pullett. Her brother recognized the minute faithfulness of +this story, as he did that of _Adam Bede_. The town of St. Ogg's is a good +description of the tide-water town of Gainesborough in Lincolnshire. The +Hayslope of _Adam Bede_ has been identified as the village of Ellaston, +four miles from Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. It is near Wirksworth, the home +of Elizabeth Evans. + +The local exactness of George Eliot's descriptions is another evidence of +her realism. "It is not unlikely," suggests Mr. Kegan Paul, "that the time +will come when with one or other of her books in their hand, people will +wander among the scenes of George Eliot's early youth, and trace each +allusion, as they are wont to do at Abbotsford or Newstead, and they will +recognize the photographic minuteness and accuracy with which these scenes, +so long unvisited, had stamped themselves on the mind of the observant +girl." The historical setting of her novels is also faithful in even minute +details. The time of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is at the beginning of the +last quarter of the eighteenth century, and it well describes the country +customs of the earlier years of the present century. _Adam Bede_ describes +the first decade of the present century, while _Silas Marner_ is a little +later. With "Amos Barton," and _The Mill on the Floss_ we are in the second +decade of the century, before hand-looms had gone out or railroads had come +in. She has a fondness for these days of rustic simplicity, quiet habits +and homely disingenuousness, and she more than once expresses a doubt if +much has been gained by the introduction of machinery, suffrage and +culture. She regrets that-- + + Human advancement has no moments when conservative reforming intellect + takes a nap, while imagination does a little toryism by the sly, + revelling in regret that dear old brown, crumbling, picturesque + inefficiency is everywhere giving place to sick-and-span, new-painted, + new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, + elevations and sections; but, alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is + not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional tenderness for old + abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal + clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades + of vulgar errors. [Footnote: Amos Barton, chapter I.] + +In _Adam Bede_, when describing a leisurely walk home from church in the +good old days, she bursts out again into enthusiastic praise of the time +before there was so much advancement and culture. + + Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through + the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those + old leisurely times when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, + was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them + old brown leather covers, and opened with a remarkable precision always + in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, + and the pack-horses and the slow wagons and the pedlers who brought + bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell + you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create + leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for + eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for + amusement; prone to excursion trains, art museums, periodical + literature and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and + cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different + personage; he only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was + free from that "periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He + was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion--of + quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis, happy in his inability to + know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived + chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was + fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots + when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself + under the orchard boughs at noon when the summer pears were falling. He + knew nothing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the + Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the + blessing--liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were + the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly + conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal + of beer or port wine--not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and + lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he + fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the + sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going + to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe + upon him and judge him by our modern standard; he never went to Exeter + Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or + _Sartor Resartus_." [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter LII.] + +Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of +dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues +which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his +rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be +seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a +_chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people. +She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they +call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize, +as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and +rusticity of the life presented. + +George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for +she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which +would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not +to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance +be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is +spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, +dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, +plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the _Transactions of +the English_ _Dialect Society_, she has explained her methods of using +dialect. + + It must be borne in mind that my inclination to be as close as I could + to the rendering of dialect, both in words and spelling, was constantly + checked by the artistic duty of being generally intelligible. But for + that check I should have given a stronger color to the dialogue in + _Adam Sede_, which is modelled on the talk of North Staffordshire and + the neighboring part of Derbyshire. The spelling, being determined by + my own ear alone, was necessarily a matter of anxiety, for it would be + as possible to quarrel about it as about the spelling of Oriental + names. The district imagined as the scene of _Silas Marner_ is in North + Warwickshire; but here, and in all my other presentations of English + life except _Adam Bede_, it has been my intention to give the general + physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as + I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand + that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a + puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to + respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not + care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the + drawing-room and the newspaper. + +It may be said of George Eliot's realism that she did not borrow nearly so +much from actual observation as was done by Charlotte Brontë, in whose +novels, scenes, persons and events are described with great accuracy and +fulness. In large measure Charlotte Brontë borrowed her materials from the +life about her. Large as was her invention, original as her mind was, and +unique in its thought, yet she seems to have been unable to create the +plots of her novels without aid from real events and persons. Persons and +scenes and events were so vividly portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ as to be at once +recognized, subjecting the author to much annoyance and mortification. In +_Shirley_ there is even a larger use of local traditions and manners, the +locality of the story being described with great accuracy. George Eliot did +not use such materials to nearly so great an extent, being far less +dependent on them. Nor had she anything of Scott's need of local +traditions. Accurate as she is, she creates her own story, not depending, +as he did, on the suggestive help of the stories of the past. Few of his +novels are the entire creations of his own mind; but he used every hint and +suggestion he could find as the basis of his work. In this, George Eliot is +no more a realist than either of her great predecessors. Even Goldsmith and +Fielding were no more creative and original than she, for they depended as +much as she on the occurrences of real life for their plots. All genuine +novelists have drawn their materials from the life about them, and they +could not attain success otherwise. All depends, however, on how the +material thus used is made to bear its results. If Charlotte Brontë +borrowed more from actual life of event and scenery, yet she was not more a +realist; rather her power lies in something higher than realism, in that +subtle insight and creative power which gives originality to her work. She +was an idealist keeping close to the actual; and in this fact is to be +found her superiority to George Eliot in certain directions. George Eliot +studied life accurately and intimately, but she did not tie herself to any +individual occurrences or persons. She had so absorbed the spirit of the +life amidst which she lived, as to give a true expression to it under an +almost purely fictitious garb. + +There is less of distinct teaching in the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ than in +George Eliot's later novels. Yet even in these earlier stories there is to +be found many a clear indication of her thought. In "Amos Barton" she has +especially set forth her sympathy with humble life. This fundamental canon +of her art is presented more distinctly in this story, and dwelt upon more +fully, than in any of her subsequent novels. It would be difficult to +discover any special teaching in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story;" and this is +perhaps the only production of George Eliot's pen which has not some +distinct object beyond the telling of the story itself. The religious motif +is strong in _Janet's Repentance_, and not to be mistaken by any attentive +reader who now for the first time takes up the story. The value of religion +as a reforming force is plainly inculcated, as well as that the main and +only value of that force is altruistic. It presents a fine picture of the +Evangelical movement and its work, though mainly on its humanitarian side. +Its deeper spirit of devotion, its loftier religious ideal, its craving +after a more intimate realization of the divine presence, is not portrayed. +The real purport of the story is contained in its closing words, where the +reader is told that the true memorial left behind him by Edgar Tryan is to +be found in a life saved to all noble thing's by his efforts. + + It is Janet Dempster, rescued from self-despair, strengthened with + divine hopes, and now looking back on years of purity and helpful + labor. The man who has left such a memorial behind him must have been + one whose heart beat with true compassion, and whose lips were moved by + fervent faith. + +These _Scenes of Clerical Life_ surpass all George Eliot's later novels in +one respect--their pathos. _Adam Bede_ comes nearer them in this particular +than any of the later works, but even that novel does not equal them in +their power to lay hold of feeling and sympathy and in moving the reader to +tears. They differ greatly in this respect from another short story, +written only a few years later, entitled "Brother Jacob." This story has +more of light banter in it than any other novel of George Eliot's, and less +of tenderness and pathos. It is but another lesson on her great theme of +_retribution_. The author says in the last sentence of the story that "we +see in it an admirable instance of the unexpected forms in which the great +Nemesis hides herself." The central thought of the story is, that even in +the lives of the most ordinary persons, and in the case of even the +smallest departures from the right, there is a power of retribution at work +bringing us an unfailing punishment for the evil we do. + +The literary excellences of the _Scenes from Clerical Life_ are many. They +are simple, charming stories, full of life, and delightful in tone. Their +humor is rare and effective, never coarse, but racy and touching. Their +tenderness of tone lays warm hold upon the reader's sympathies and brings +him closer to the throbbing hearts of his fellow-men. There is a pure +idyllic loveliness and homelikeness about these stories that is exquisite. +They all evidently grew out of the tender memories and associations of +George Eliot's girlhood. + +In _Adam Bede_ the author's purpose is concentrated on character and the +moral unfoldment of the lives she describes, while the thorough dramatic +unity is lacking which such a work demands. It is a delightful picture of +country life, and for idyllic loveliness is scarcely equalled, never +surpassed, in English literature. The charm of the narrative is only +rivalled by the deep human interest the characters have for us. This +exquisite picture of rural life is not merely a piece of fine painting; but +the deepest problems, the largest human interests, ever appear as a +perpetual background of spiritual reality, giving a sublimity to the whole +that truly dignifies it. The thoughtful reader soon finds this inweaving of +a larger purpose adding greatly to the idyllic loveliness of these scenes. +The moral tone is clear and earnest, and the religious element gives a +charm and nobility to this delightful picture of rustic simplicity. + +_Adam Bede_ has probably delighted a larger number of her readers than any +other of George Eliot's books, and even a majority of her critics prefer it +to any other. It at once arrests and fixes the attention of the reader. The +first chapter has an immediate interest in its wonderful picture of Adam, +and its most vivid description of the workshop. The second chapter, with +its account of Dinah Morris and her preaching, leaves no possibility of +doubt about the genius and power of the book. The reader is brought at once +face to face with scenes and persons that act as enchantment on him; and +this complete absorption of interest never flags to the end. The elements +of this fascination, which is in itself so simple, natural and human, have +been pointed out by various critics. They are to be found in the +homeliness, pathos and naturalness of the whole story from beginning to +end. Little as the critics have noted it, however, much of this fascination +comes of the high and pure moral tone of the story, its grasp on the higher +motives and interests of life, and its undertone of yearning after a +religious motive and ideal adequate to all the problems of human destiny. +This religious motive is indeed more than a yearning, for it is a fixed and +self-contained confidence in altruism, expressed in sympathy and feeling +and pathos most tender and passionate. This novel is full of an eager +desire to realize to men their need of each other, and of longing to show +them how much better and happier the world would be if we were more +sympathetic and had more of fellow-feeling. Life is full of suffering, and +this can be lessened only as we help and love each other, only as we can +make our feelings so truly tender as to feel the sorrows of others as our +own, causing us to live for the good of those who suffer. It is said of +Adam Bede that-- + + He had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite + of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to + get enough patience and charity toward our stumbling, falling + companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way + in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his + heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share + not only the outward consequence of their error but their inward + suffering. + +This compassion for human suffering is conspicuous throughout, and it is +regarded as the most effective means of binding men together in common +sympathy and helpfulness. Sorrow is regarded as the true means of man's +elevation, as that purifying agent which is indispensable to his true +development. This teaching is fully depicted in the chapter headed "The +Hidden Dread," and in which Hetty's flight is described. We are told in +that chapter that this looks like a very bright world on the surface, but +that as we look closer within man's nature we find sorrow and pain untold. + + What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the + valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign + countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our + English Loamshire: the rich land tilled with just as much care, the + woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come + on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in + Loamshire--an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has + stood, perhaps, by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad + sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear + brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this + world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image + of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this + joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, + or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, + there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps + a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from + swift-advancing shame; understanding no more of this life of ours than + a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on + the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such + things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the + blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came + close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear + with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow + in it; no wonder he needs a Suffering God. + +The remedy for this sorrow, even in the pages of _Adam Bede_, is not the +atoning love of Christ or the blessedness of a divine forgiveness, but the +altruistic compassion of man for man. There is, however, a, deeper +recognition in this novel of Christian belief than in any other by George +Eliot. The prayer and sermon of Dinah Morris have a truly Christian tone +and thought. This is not the case with the teachings of Savonarola, who is +always much more an altruist than a Christian, and into whose mouth +Christian phrases are put, while it is very evident the Christian spirit in +its wholeness was not put into his heart. Sorrow and suffering are regarded +in _Adam Bede_ as the means of baptism into a larger life of sympathy, as +the means of purification from selfishness and individual aims. Along with +this teaching goes the cognate one, that feeling is the true test of the +religious life. A feeling that draws us close to others in helpfulness is +worth more than knowledge, culture and refinement of taste. + +The doctrine of retribution is presented as distinctly and positively in +_Adam Bede_ as in any subsequent book George Eliot wrote. It is given the +form of distinct statement, and it is developed fully in the working out of +the plot. Parson Irwine speaks the thought of the author in these words: + + "There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment + alone; you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in + you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each + other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease. + I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's + has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others + besides those who commit it." + +The tendency of selfishness and wrong to develop misery is fully unfolded. +The terrible law of moral cause and effect is made apparent throughout the +whole work. The folly of Arthur and the vanity of Hetty work them terrible +consequences of evil and bitterness. Many others are made to suffer with +them. The fatal Nemesis is unmasked in these revelations of human nature. + +If the critics are right in pronouncing _Adam Bede_ artistically defective, +it is not difficult to see that there is still less of unity in _The Mill +on the Floss_. Unconnected and unnecessary scenes and persons abound, while +the Tulliver and Dodson families, and their stupidities, are described at a +tedious length. Yet the picture of child-life given here compensates for +all we might complain of in other directions. Maggie is an immortal child, +wonderfully drawn, out of the very heart of nature herself. Her joy in +life, her doubts and fears, her conflicts with self, are delineated with a +master's hand, and justify--such is their faithfulness to child-life--the +supposition that this is George Eliot's own childhood, so delicate and +penetrating is the insight of this description, Swinburne has justly said +that "no man or woman, outside the order of poets, has ever written of +children with such adorable fidelity of affection as the spiritual mother +of Totty, Eppie and of Lillo." Nor have the poets surpassed her in +truthfulness to child-life and intuitive insight into child-nature. The +child Maggie is unsurpassed, not as an ideal being, but as a living child +that plays in the dirt, tears her frocks, and clips her hair in an hour of +childish anger. + +In this novel we first come distinctly upon another element in the writings +of George Eliot, and this is a yearning after a fuller, larger life. It +does not appear as distinctly developed in _Adam Bede_, where there is more +of poise and repose. Maggie represents the restless spirit of the +nineteenth century, intense dissatisfaction with self, and a profoundly +human passion for something higher and diviner. A passionate restlessness +and a profound spiritual hunger are united in this novel to an eager desire +for a deeper and fuller life, and for a satisfactory answer to the soul's +spiritual thirst. The spiritual repose of Dinah, who has found all the +religious cravings of her nature satisfied in Methodism, is abandoned for +the inward yearning of Maggie, whose passionate search for spiritual truth +ends in disaster. + +No other of George Eliot's books has been so severely criticised as this +one, except _Daniel Deronda_, and mainly because of Maggie. The apparent +fall of the heroine, and the crude tragedy of the ending, have been +regarded as serious defects. The moral tone and purpose have been severely +condemned. In his essays on foul and fair fiction, Ruskin puts _The Mill on +the Floss_ into that class of novels which describe life's blotches, burrs +and pimples, and calls it "the most striking instance extant of this study +of cutaneous disease." He says the personages are picked up from behind +the counter and out of the gutter, and he finds "there is not a single +person in the book of the smallest importance to anybody in the world but +themselves, or whose qualities deserved so much as a line of printer's +type in their description." To the same effect is Swinburne's criticism +of Maggie's relations to Stephen Guest. He calls it "the hideous +transformation by which Maggie is debased." He says that most of George +Eliot's admirers would regard this as "the highest and the purest and the +fullest example of her magnificent and matchless powers. The first two +thirds of the book suffice to compose perhaps the very noblest of tragic as +well as of humorous prose idyls in the language; comprising one of the +sweetest as well as saddest and tenderest, as well as subtlest examples of +dramatic analysis--a study in that kind as soft and true as Rousseau's, as +keen and true as Browning's, as full as either's of the fine and bitter +sweetness of a pungent and fiery fidelity. But who can forget the horror of +inward collapse, the sickness of spiritual re-action, the reluctant, +incredulous rage of disenchantment and disgust, with which he came upon the +thrice-unhappy third part? The two first volumes have all the intensity and +all the perfection of George Sand's best work, tempered by all the simple +purity and interfused with all the stainless pathos of Mrs. Gaskell's; they +carry such affluent weight of thought, and shine with such warm radiance of +humor, as invigorates and illuminates the work of no other famous woman; +they have the fiery clarity of crystal or of lightning; they go near to +prove a higher claim and attest a clearer right on the part of their author +than that of George Sand herself to the crowning crown of praise conferred +on her by the hand of a woman ever greater and more glorious than either in +her sovereign gift of lyric genius, to the salutation given as by an angel +indeed from heaven, of 'large-brained woman and large-hearted man.'" In the +momentary lapse of Maggie, Swinburne finds a fatal defect, which no +subsequent repentance atones for. He says that "here is the patent flaw, +here too plainly is the flagrant blemish, which defaces and degrades the +very crown and flower of George Eliot's wonderful and most noble work; no +rent or splash on the raiment, but a cancer in the very bosom, a gangrene +in the very flesh. It is a radical and mortal plague-spot, corrosive and +incurable." + +Such criticism has little if any value, because there is no point of +sympathy between the critic and his author. That real life contains such +errors as Maggie's cannot be doubted, and George Eliot wished to paint no +ideal scenes or heroines. To portray a passionate, eager, yearning nature, +full of poetry, longing for a diviner spiritual life, surrounded by dull +and unpoetic conditions and persons, was her purpose. That the hunger of +such a person for the expression of her inward cravings for joy, music and +beauty should lead her astray and make a sudden lapse possible, is not to +be doubted. The fault of the critics is in supposing that this lapse from +moral conduct was that of a physical depravity. Maggie's passion grew +wholly out of that inward yearning for a fuller life which made all her +difficulties. It was not physical passion but spiritual craving; and in the +purpose of the novelist she was as pure after as before. + +The cause of what must be regarded as the great defect in _The Mill on the +Floss_ is not that George Eliot chose to paint life in a diseased state, +but that she had not the power to make her characters act what they +themselves were. While the delightful inward portraiture of Maggie is in +process all are charmed with her, her soul is as pure and sweet as a rose +new-blown; but when the time arrives for her to act as well as to meditate +and to dream, she is not made equal to herself. Through all her books this +is true, that George Eliot can describe a soul, but she cannot make her men +and women act quite up to the facts of daily life. In this way Dinah and +Adam are not equal to themselves, and settle down to a prosaic life such as +is not in keeping with that larger action of which they were capable. +George Eliot's characters are greater than their deeds; their inward life +is truer and more rounded than their outward life is pure and noble. + +_The Mill on the Floss_ fully develops George Eliot's conception of the +value of self-renunciation in the life of the individual, and gives a new +emphasis to her ideas about the importance of the spiritual life as an +element in true culture. It has been said that she intended to indicate +the nature of physiological attraction between men and women, and how +large an influence it has; but whether that was an aim of hers or not, +she undoubtedly did attempt to indicate how altogether important is +renunciation to a life of true development, how difficult it is to attain, +and that it is the vital result of all human endeavor. She surrounded a +tender, sensitive, musical and poetic soul, one quick to catch the tone of +a higher spiritual faith, with the common conditions of ordinary social +life, to show how such an "environment" cripples and retards a soul full of +aspiration and capable of the best things. Maggie saw the way to the light, +but the way was hard, beset with difficulties individual and social, and +she could neither overcome herself nor the world. She was taken suddenly +away, and the novel comes to a hasty conclusion, because the author desired +to indicate the causes of spiritual danger to ardent souls, and not to +inculcate a formula for their relief. Maggie had learned how difficult it +is for the individual to make for himself a new way in life, how benumbing +are the conditions of ordinary human existence; and through her death we +are to learn that in such difficulties as hers there is no remedy for the +individual. Only through the mediation of death could Maggie be reconciled +to those she had offended; death alone could heal the social wounds she had +made, and restore her as an accepted and ennobled member of the corporate +existence of humanity. This seems to be the idea underlying the hurried +conclusion of this novel, that the path of renunciation once truly entered +on, brings necessarily such difficulties as only death can overcome; and +death does overcome them when those we have loved and those we have helped, +forget what seem to them our wrong deeds in the loving memories which +follow the dead. Over the grave men forget all that separated them from +others, and the living are reconciled to those who can offend them no more. +All that was good and pure and loving is then made to appear, and memory +glorifies the one who in life was neglected or hated. Through death Maggie +was restored to her brother, and over her grave came perfect reconciliation +with those others from whom she had been alienated. That renunciation may +lead to cruel martyrdoms is what George Eliot means; but she would say it +has its lofty recompense in that restoration which death brings, when the +individual becomes a part of the spiritual influence which surrounds and +guides us all. For those who can accept such a conclusion as this the unity +of the novel may seem complete. + +The poetry of Maggie's nature found itself constantly dragged down to +conditions of vulgar prose by the life about her. That life was prosy and +hard because those ideal aims which come from a recognition of the past and +its traditions were absent from it. Maggie tried to overcome them by +renunciation, but by renunciation which did not rest on any genuine sorrow +and pain. At last these came, and the real meaning of renunciation was made +clear to her. Her bitter sorrow taught her the great lesson which George +Eliot ever strives to inculcate, that what is hard, sorrowful and painful +in the world should move us to more and more of compassion and help for our +fellows who also find life sad and burdensome. At the last Maggie learned +this greatest of all lessons which life can give us. + + She sat quite still far on into the night, with no impulse to, change + her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of + prayer--only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It + came with the memories that no passion could long quench: the long past + came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and + affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by + the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by + heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a + low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against + the window, and the loud moan and roar of the wind: "I have received + the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear + it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me." + + But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob: + "Forgive me, Stephen. It will pass away. You will come back to her." + + She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly + on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of + parting. + + "I will bear it, and bear it till death... But how long it will be + before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have + patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall, and repent again? + Has life other trials as hard for me still?" With that cry of + self-despair Maggie fell on her knees against the table, and buried + her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that + would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught + her by this experience of great need, and she must be learning a secret + of human tenderness and long-suffering that the less erring could + hardly know. "O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and + comfort--" + +Then the flood came, and death. Maggie could repent, she could acquire the +true spirit of renunciation, she could even give herself to a life of +altruism; but death only could restore her to the world. Death, says George +Eliot, is the great reconciler. + +_Silas Marner_ is the only one of these earlier novels in which there is a +continuous unity of purpose and action. Its several parts are thoroughly +wrought into each other, the aim of the narrative is adhered to throughout, +and there are no superfluous incidents. The plot is simple, cause and +effect flow on steadily to the end in the unfoldment of character and +action, and the design of the author is easily grasped. One of her critics, +himself a novelist of a high order, has said that in its unity of purpose +and dramatic expression _Silas Marner_ is more nearly a masterpiece than +any other of George Eliot's novels; "it has more of that simple, rounded, +consummate aspect, that absence of loose ends and gaping issues, which +marks a classical work." [Footnote: Henry James, Jr.] In this novel, too, +her humor flows out with a richer fulness, a racier delight and a more +sparkling variety of expression than in any other book of hers, not +excepting _Adam Bede_. She has here reached the very height of her +qualities as a humorist, for in _Silas Marner_ her humor is constantly +genial and delightful. + +Certain ethical ideas appear very distinctly in this novel. It illustrates +man's need of social ties and connections. Silas forsook his old life, the +life of his childhood and youth, and the world was a blank for him in +consequence. With the sundering of the ties which bound him to the +traditional environment amidst which he was reared, all the purpose and +meaning of his life was gone. The old ties, obligations and associations +gone, his life was without anchorage, its ideal aims perished, and he lived +a selfish and worthless creature. When new social ties were formed by the +young child he found then his life opened up to a larger meaning again, and +he recovered the better things in his nature. He was then led back again +into his relations to society, he became once more a man, a fresh life was +opened to him. This brought a new confidence in religion, a new trust in +the moral motives of life. In this way George Eliot presents the social +basis of the higher life in man, and her theory that it cannot be broken +off from its traditional surroundings without grave injury to the finer +elements of our nature. The law of retribution manifests itself clearly in +these pages. Godfrey deserts wife and child. In after years he would fain +restore the child to its rightful place, but he finds it has grown up under +conditions which alienate it from any sympathy with him. He pronounces his +own condemnation: + + "There's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the + years that have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting + off, the trees have been growing--it's too late now. Marner was in the + right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his + door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless once, + Nancy--I shall pass for childless now against my wish." + +A pure moral tone, a keen ethical instinct, mark all these earlier novels +by George Eliot. Quite as noticeable is their spiritual atmosphere and +their high place assigned to the religious life. Their teaching in these +directions has a conservative tendency, and it is based on the most +vigorous convictions. + + + + +XIV. + + +ROMOLA. + +Whatever differences there may exist between George Eliot's earlier and +later books are due rather to the materials used than to any change in +purpose, methods or beliefs. In writing of the distinction drawn between +her earlier and later books, she said,-- + + Though I trust there is some growth in my appreciation of others and in + my self-distrust, there has been no change in the point of view from + which I regard our life since I wrote my first fiction, the _Scenes of + Clerical Life_. Any apparent change of spirit must be due to something + of which I am unconscious. The principles which are at the root of my + effort to paint Dinah Morris are equally at the root of my effort to + paint Mordecai. + +Her later books grow more out of conscious effort and deliberate study than +the earlier, are more carefully wrought out, and contain less of +spontaneity. The spiritual and ethical purpose, however, is not more +distinct and conscious in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _The Mill on the Floss_, +in _Romola_ than in _Adam Bede_. The ethical purpose may be more apparent +in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _Adam Bede_, more on the surface, and clearer +to the view of the general reader, but this is because it takes an unusual +form, rather than because it is really any more distinctly present. In _The +Mill on the Floss_ her teaching first became known to her readers, and in +_Romola_ this purpose to use the novel as the vehicle for propagating ideas +became fully apparent. Her aim having once come clearly to view, it was not +difficult to see how large an element it was in her earlier books, where it +had not been seen before. If she had written nothing but _Adam Bede_ her +teachings might not have come to light, though some of those she has most +often insisted on are to be found clearly stated in that book. Her +doctrinal aim, however, became more clear and pronounced as she went on in +her career as a novelist, and became more thoroughly conscious of her own +powers and of the purposes which she wished to work out in her novels. She +gained courage to express her ideas, and their importance was more deeply +impressed upon her mind and heart. + +In _Romola_ it was first made clear that George Eliot is to be judged as a +moralist as well as a literary artist. That she is a great literary artist, +surpassed only by a select few, is to be borne constantly in mind; but as a +moralist she surpasses most others in the amount of her teaching, and +teaching which is thoroughly incorporated into the literary fibre of her +work. She much resembles Wordsworth in this, that while she is an original +creator of artistic forms and ideas, her books will be sought for their +views of life as well for their qualities as novels. Wordsworth is a poet +of vast original powers, but the poetic fire in him often burns low and his +verses become mere prose. Yet his ideas about nature, life and morals +command for him a place higher than that occupied by any other poet of his +time, and a school of thinkers and critics has been developed through his +influence. In much the same way, George Eliot is likely to attract +attention because of her teachings; and it is probable her books will be +resorted to and interpreted largely with reference to her moral and +philosophical ideas. Should such a movement as this ever spring up, +_Romola_ will necessarily become one of the most important of all her +books. Some of her principal ideas appear therein more distinctly, in +clearer outline, and with a greater fulness of expression, than they obtain +in any other of her books. The foreign setting of her story enabled her to +give a larger utterance to her thoughts, while there was less of personal +and pathetic interest to impede their expression. This is also true of _The +Spanish Gypsy_, that it has more of teaching and less of merely literary +attraction than any other of her longer poems. The purpose to do justice to +the homely life of rustic England was no longer present, and she was free +to give her intellectual powers a deliberate expression in the form of a +thoughtful interpretation of a great historic period. Mr. Henry James, Jr., +has recognized the importance of this effort, and says of _Romola_, that +he regards it, "on the whole, as decidedly the most important of her +works,--not the most entertaining nor the most readable, but the one in +which the largest things are attempted and grasped. The figure of +Savonarola, subordinate though it is, is a figure on a larger scale than +any which George Eliot has elsewhere undertaken; and in the career of Tito +Melema there is a fuller representation of the development of a character. +Considerable as are our author's qualities as an artist, and largely as +they are displayed in _Romola_, the book is less a work of art than a work +of morals. Like all of George Eliot's works, its dramatic construction is +feeble; the story drags and halts,--the setting is too large for the +picture." + +The book lacks in spontaneity, is too deliberate, contemplative and +ethical. While its artistic elements are great, and even powerful, it is +too consciously moral in its purpose to satisfy the literary requirements +of a work of art. It wants the sensuous elements of life and the _abandon_ +of poetic genius. There is little which is sensational about the book; too +little, perhaps, of that vivid imaginative interest which impels the reader +headlong through the pages of a novel to the end. It is, however, a high +merit in George Eliot, that she does not resort to factitious elements of +interest in her books, but works honestly, conscientiously, and with a pure +purpose. If the reader is not drawn on by the sensational, he is amply +repaid by the more deliberate and natural interest which gives a meaning to +every chapter. + +George Eliot selected for her book one of the most striking and picturesque +periods of modern history, in the great centre of culture and art in the +fifteenth century. Florence was the intellectual capital of the world in +the renaissance period, and the truest representative of its spirit. It was +the time also of that remarkable monk-prophet, Savonarola, whose voice was +raised so powerfully against the corruptions of that most corrupt age. This +unique character, doubtless, had much to do in causing George Eliot to take +this city and time for her story. No one of the reformers of the fifteenth +and sixteenth centuries was more in earnest, had a loftier purpose, worked +in a nobler spirit, than this Dominican monk of Florence. His opposition to +the Medici, his conflict with Rome, his visions and prophecies, his +leadership of the politics of Florence, his powerful preaching, his +untimely death, all give a romantic and a tragic interest to his life, and +conspire to make him one of the most interesting figures in modern history. +His moral purpose was conspicuous even when tainted by personal ambition. +His political influence was supreme while it lasted, and was wielded in the +interests of Florence, for its liberties and its moral regeneration. As a +religious teacher he was profoundly in earnest; a prophet in his own belief +as well as in the depth of his religious insight, he accepted with the most +thorough intensity of conviction the spiritual truths he inculcated. In his +own belief he was constantly in communion with the spiritual world, and was +guided and taught by it. He swayed the people of Florence as the wind sways +the branches of a tree, and they bowed utterly to his will for the moment, +when he put forth all his moral and intellectual powers in the pulpit. A +puritan in morals, he had a most vivid realization of the terrible evils of +his time; and he could make his congregation look at the world with his own +faith and moral purpose. His influence on literature and art was also +great, and it was felt for many years after his death. + +Savonarola spoke in the pulpit with the authority of the profoundest +personal conviction, and his hearers were impressed by his preaching with +the feeling that they listened to one who knew whereof he spoke. Whenever +he preached there was a crowd to hear; people came three or four hours +before the time, and they came in throngs from the surrounding country. He +held separate services for men, for women, for children, in order that all +might hear. And this eagerness to listen to him was not for a few weeks, +but it continued for years. The greatest enthusiasm was awakened by his +influence, the people were melted into tears, every person listened with +bated breath to his words. Thousands were converted, and among them many of +the most learned of the poets, artists and statesmen of the time. The most +remarkable changes in the modes of life took place, money was restored, +and contributed freely to buy bread when famine threatened, and the +confessional was daily crowded with penitents. One of his biographers says +that "the most remarkable change that was apparent in the manners of the +people, in their recreations and amusements, was the abandonment of +demoralizing practices, of debauchery of all kinds, of profane songs of a +licentious character which the lower grades of the people especially were +greatly addicted to; and the growth of a new taste and passion for +spiritual hymns and sacred poetry that had succeeded that depraved taste." + +On one side of his nature, Savonarola seems to have been of a remarkably +pure and noble character, with high aims, noble ambitions and a clear moral +insight. Looked at on its better side, his religious reformation was +wholesome and salutary, and dictated by a genuine desire to elevate worship +and to purify faith. There was a very different side to his life and work, +however, and in some features of his character he seems to have been a +fanatic and enthusiast of the most dangerous sort. He was credulous, +superstitious and visionary. He had no clear, strong and well-reasoned +purpose to which he could hold consistently to the end. An earnest +Catholic, he only sought to reform the Church, not to supersede it; but his +moral aims were not high enough to carry him to the logical results of his +position. Involved by his visionary faith in claims of miraculous power and +supernatural communication, he had not the intellectual honesty to carry +those claims to their legitimate conclusion. Weakness, hesitation and +inconsistency marked his character in his later years, and have made him a +puzzle to modern students. These inconsistencies of character have led to +widely divergent conclusions about the man, his sincerity of purpose and +the outcome of his work. + +Another influence of the time, more powerful because more permanent, was +the renaissance movement, which was at this period working its greatest +changes and inspiring the most fervid enthusiasm. A new world had been +disclosed to the people of the fifteenth century in the revival of +knowledge concerning classic literature and art, and there came to be an +absorbing, passionate interest in whatever pertained to the ancients. +Manuscripts were eagerly sought after, translations were diligently made, +literature was modelled after the classic writers, to quote and to imitate +the ancients became the habit of the day. A change the most striking was +produced in the modes of thought and of life. The love of nature was +revived, and with it a graceful abandonment to the dominion of the senses. +Paganism seemed likely to return upon the world again and to reconquer from +Christianity all that it had once lost. The pagan spirit revived, its +tastes and modes of life came back again. Plato was restored to his old +place, and in the minds of the cultured seemed worthier of homage than +Christ. With such as Lorenzo Medici and his literary friends, Platonism was +regarded as a religion. + +The recovery of classic literature came to the men of this period as a +revelation. It opened a new world to them, it operated upon them like a +galvanic shock, it kindled the most fervid enthusiasms. It also had the +effect to restore the natural side of life, to liberate men from a false +spiritualism and an excessive idealism. From despising the human faculties, +men came back to an acceptance of their dictation, and even to an animal +delight in the senses and passions. The natural man was deified; but not in +the manner of the Greeks, in simplicity and with a pure love of beauty. +An artificial love of nature and the natural in man was the result of +the renaissance; a hothouse culture and a corrupting moral development +followed. Passion was given loose rein, the senses took every form of +indulgence. Yet the Church was even worse, while many of the classic +scholars were stoic in their moral purity and earnestness. This movement +developed individualism in thought, a selfish moral aim, and intellectual +arrogance. The men who came under its influence cared more for culture +than for humanity, they were driven away from the common interests of +their fellows by their new intellectual sympathies. It was the desire of +Savonarola to restore the old Christian spirit of brotherhood and +helpfulness. In this his movement was wide apart from that of the +renaissance, which gave such tyrants as the Medici a justification for +their deliberate attacks on the liberties of the people. He loved man, +they loved personal development. + +George Eliot shows these two influences in antagonism with each other; on +the one hand a reforming Christianity, on the other the renaissance +movement. She admirably contrasts them in their spirit and influence, +though she by no means indicates all of the tendencies of either. Her +purpose is not that of the historical novelist, who wishes simply to give a +correct and living picture of the time wherein he lays his plot. She vises +this portion of history because it furnishes an excellent opportunity to +unfold her ideas about life, rather than because it gives an abundance of +picturesque material to the novelist. Her primary object is not the +interpretation of Florentine life in the time of Savonarola; and this +subordination of the historical material must be kept fully in mind by the +reader or he will be misled in his judgment on the book. It has well been +said that the historical characters in _Romola_ are not so well sketched as +the original creations. Savonarola is not so lifelike as Tito. She seems to +have been cramped by the details of history; and she has not thoroughly +conquered and marshalled subordinate to her thought the mass of local +incidents she introduces. Her account of Savonarola is inadequate, because +it does not enter fully enough into his history, and because it omits much +which is necessary to a full understanding of the man and his influence. + +So far as the book has an historical purpose it is that of describing the +general life of the time rather than that of portraying Savonarola. Because +of this purpose much is introduced into the story which is irrelevant to +the plot itself. Not only did the author desire to contrast a man like +Savonarola, led by the spirit of self-denial and renunciation, with one +like Tito Melema led by the spirit of self-love and personal gratification; +but she wished to contrast worldliness and spirituality, or individualism +and altruism, as social forces. Lorenzo and the renaissance give one form +of life, Savonarola and Christianity give another; and these two appear +as affecting every class in society and every phase of the social order. +To bring out this contrast requires a broad stage and many scenes. Much +which seems quite irrelevant to the plot has its place in this larger +purpose, and serves to bring out the final unity of impression which the +author sought to produce. Nor is the purpose of the book merely that of +contrasting two great phases of thought and of social influence, but rather +to show them as permanent elements in human, nature and the nature of the +effect which each produces. + +_Romola_ demands for its thorough appreciation that the reader shall have a +considerable acquaintance with Italian history in the fifteenth century and +with the social and literary changes of that period. Whether it is read +with a keen interest and relish will much depend on this previous +information. To the mere novel-reader it may seem dull and too much +encumbered by uninteresting learning. To one who is somewhat familiar with +the renaissance period, and who can appreciate the ethical intention of the +book, it will be found to be a work of genius and profound insight. It will +help such a reader to a clearer comprehension of this period than he could +well obtain in any other manner, and the ethical purpose will add a new and +living interest to the story of Florentine life. He will be greatly helped +to comprehend the moral and intellectual life of the time, with its-- + + strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic + dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude + passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination toward a + self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human + conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was filling the air + with strange prophecies and presentiments. [Footnote: _Proem to + Romola_.] + +The artistic features of this period were many and striking, but George +Eliot has not made so large a use of them as could have been wished; at +least they appear in her book too much under the influence of historic +information. She could not be content merely to absorb and reflect an +historic period; but her active intellect, full of ideas concerning the +causes of human changes, must give an explanation of what was before her. +This philosophic tendency mars the artistic effect and blurs the picture +which would otherwise have been given. Yet the critic must not be too sure +of this, and he must be content simply to note that George Eliot was too +energetic a thinker to be willing to portray the picturesque features of +Florentine life in the fifteenth century and to do no more. She had at +least three objects,--to give a picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth +century, to show the influence of the renaissance in conflict with +Christianity, and to inculcate certain ethical ideas about renunciation, +tradition and moral retribution. While the book thus gains in breadth and +in a certain massive impression which it produces, yet it loses in that +concentration of effect which a more limited purpose would have secured. It +gives the impression of having been written by a vigorous thinker rather +than by a genius of the first order. The critic has no right to complain of +this, however, or even to assume that genius might do other work than it +has done. Had George Eliot been less thoughtful than she was, she would not +have been George Eliot. _Romola_ grew out of a genius so large and original +that it can well endure the criticisms caused by any defects it may have. + +The ideas of the time appear subtly expressed in the influence they produce +on the persons who entertain them. Savonarola's mysticism and high moral +purpose made him at once a prophet and a reformer, but he was not able to +separate the spiritual realities of life from devotion to his party. His +courage, purity and holiness cannot but be admired, while his fanaticism is +to be deplored. George Eliot has well conceived and expressed the effect +produced in all but the very greatest minds by the assumption of +supernatural powers. Savonarola was strong and great as a preacher and a +reformer, weak only on the side of his visions and his faith that his party +represented the kingdom of God. Not that his visions were weak, nor are +they assumed to be untrue; but his mysticism clouded his intellect, and his +fanaticism led him to overlook the practical truths to be inculcated by a +genuine reformer. He is a true type of the mystical churchman of the time, +who saw the corruption about him and desired a better order of things, +but who hoped to secure it by reviving the past in all its imagined +supernatural features. He would have ruled the world by visions to be +received by monks, and he would have made Jesus Christ the head of the +republic. Yet his visions entangled his clear intellect and perverted his +moral purpose. + +On the other hand, Tito Melema was intended to represent the renaissance +movement on its Greek, or its aesthetic and social side. He was not a bad +man at heart, but he had no moral purpose, no ethical convictions. He had +the Greek love of ease, enjoyment and unconcern for the morrow; a spirit +which the renaissance revived in many of its literary devotees. He lived +for the day, for self, in the delight of music, art, social intercourse and +sensual enjoyment. He had the renaissance quickness of assuming all parts, +its love of wide and pretentious learning, its superficial scholarship, +its social and political deftness and flexibility. The dry, minute, +unprofitable spirit of criticism is well indicated by Bardo Bardi, which +had no originality and no fresh vitality, but which loved to comment on the +classic writers at tedious length, and to collate passages for purposes the +most foreign from any practical aim life could possibly afford. In the +conception of Tito, George Eliot has quite surpassed herself, and in all +literature there is no delineation of a character surpassing this. One of +her critics says there is no character in her novels "more subtly devised +or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning +graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, +his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his +cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as +of a faithless summer sea, make up a being that at once fascinates and +repels, that invites love, but turns our love into loathing almost before +we have given it." [Footnote: Westminster Review, July, 1881.] Mr. R.H. +Hutton has expressed his conviction that this is one of the most skilfully +painted of all the characters in fictitious literature. He says, "A +character essentially treacherous only because it is full of soft placid +selfishness is one of the most difficult to paint;" but in sketching Tito's +career, "the same wonderful power is maintained throughout, of stamping on +our imagination with the full force of a master hand a character which +seems naturally too fluent for the artist's purpose. There is not a more +masterly piece of painting in English romance than this figure of Tito." + +Romola represents the divided interests of one who was affected by both the +renaissance and Christianity. Brought up to know only what the renaissance +had to teach, to delight in culture and to ignore religion, her contact +with Savonarola opened a new world to her mind. Her experience in life led +her to seek some deeper moral anchorage than was afforded by the culture of +her father and husband, yet she could not follow Savonarola into the region +of mystical visions and other-worldliness. Her life having broken loose +from the ties of love through the faithlessness of Tito, and from the ties +of tradition through the failure of culture to satisfy her heart, she +drifts out into the world, to find, under the leadership of the great +preacher, that life's highest duty is renunciation. His influence over the +noblest souls of his time is indicated in Romola's trust in him, and in her +acceptance of him as a master and a guide. When this guide failed, as all +human guides must fail, she found peace in the service of others. In living +for humanity, her sorrows were turned into strength, and her renunciation +became a religion. It is Romola who represents George Eliot in this book, +gives voice to her ideas, and who preaches the new gospel she would have +the world learn. If Romola has her limitations as a conception of womanly +character, is too "passionless and didactic," yet she does admirably +represent the influence on a thoughtful woman of a contention between +culture and religion, and how such a person may gradually attain to a +self-poised life in loving service toward others. She is not an ideal +woman. She was given a character which prevents her being quite attractive, +because she was made to represent ideas and social tendencies. + +The altruistic doctrine of renunciation, and of living for others, is more +fully developed in _Romola_ than in any other of George Eliot's books +except _The Mill on the Floss_. That the truest satisfaction life can +afford is to be found in work done for human good is conspicuously shown in +the experiences of Romola. She finds no peace as a follower of Savonarola, +she finds no abiding content in philosophy; but toil for others among the +sick, suffering and dying, brings heavenly joy and a great calm. She had no +special love for this work, her early education had even made it repulsive; +but Savonarola had shown her that in this direction lay life's true aim. He +communicated to her his own enthusiasm for humanity, and she retained this +faith even after her loss of confidence in him had loosened her hold on his +religious teachings. She went beyond her teacher and inspirer, learned his +lessons better than he did himself, and came to see that a true religion is +not of a sect or party, but humanitarian. When she warned him against his +fanatical devotion to his party, he attempted to justify his narrow policy +by identifying true Christianity with his own work, Romola replied,-- + + "Do you then know so well what will further the coming of God's + kingdom, father, that you will dare to despise the plea of mercy--of + justice--of faithfulness to your own teaching? Take care, father, lest + your enemies have some reason when they say that, in your visions of + what will further God's kingdom, you see only what will strengthen your + own party." + + "And that is true!" said Savonarola, with flashing eyes. Romola's voice + had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies. "The cause + of my party _is_ the cause of God's kingdom." + + "I do not believe it!" said Romola, her whole frame shaken with + passionate repugnance. "God's kingdom is something wider--else let + me stand outside it with the beings that I love." + + The two faces were lit up, each with an opposite emotion, each with an + opposite certitude. Further words were impossible. Romola hastily + covered her head and went out in silence. [Footnote: Chapter LIX.] + +Savonarola forgot the better spirit of his own teachings, he sought to +become a political leader. It was his ruin, for his purpose was vitiated, +and his influence waned. George Eliot well says that "no man ever struggled +to retain power over a mixed multitude without suffering vitiation; his +standard must be their lower needs, and not his own best insight." This was +the sad fate of the great Florentine preacher and reformer. He lost his +faith, and he spoke without the moment's conviction. When this result came +about, all hope for Savonarola as a reformer was gone. He was then only the +leader of a party. George Eliot has well painted the effect upon Romola of +this fall, and given deep insight into the results of losing our trust in +those great souls who have been our guides. All the ties of life had +snapped for Romola; her marriage had proved a failure, her friend had +become unworthy of her confidence; and she fled. + +Romola went away, found herself in the midst of a plague-stricken people, +gave her life to an assuagement of suffering and sorrow. Then she could +come back to her home purified, calm and noble. In the "Epilogue," we find +her speaking the word which gives meaning to the whole book. Tessa's child, +whom she had rescued, says to her that he would like to lead a life which +would give him a good deal of pleasure. Romola says to him,-- + + "That is not easy, my Lille. It is only a poor sort of happiness that + could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We + can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a + great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of + the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings + so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being + what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it + is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that + no man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless + he gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards, and gets strength + to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that + belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than + falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow + sacred; _he_ had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in + struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the + highest deeds they are capable of, And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act + nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, + you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will + happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose + something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own + pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just + the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the + one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man + say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.' I + will tell you something, Lillo." + + Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her hands, + and his young eyes were meeting hers. + + "There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great + deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was + young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle + and kind. I believe when I first knew him, he never thought of anything + cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that + was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, + he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds--such as make men + infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed + every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe + and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him." + +Aside from this altruistic teaching which is developed in connection with +the life of Romola, the doctrine of retribution is vigorously unfolded +in the history of Tito Melema. The effects of selfishness and personal +self-seeking have nowhere been so wonderfully studied by George Eliot as in +this character. His career is minutely traced from step to step of his +downfall, and with a remarkable faithfulness and courage. The effects of +vice and sin are nowhere so finely presented and with such profound ethical +insight. A careful study of this character alone will give a clear +comprehension of George Eliot's conception of retribution, how the natural +laws of life drag us down when we are untrue to ourselves and others. It is +a great moral lesson presented in this character, a sermon of the most +powerful kind. Nemesis follows Tito ever onward from the first false step, +lowers the tone of his mind, corrupts his moral nature, drags him into an +ever-widening circle of vice and crime, makes him a traitor, and causes him +to be false to his wife. Step by step, as he gives way to evil, we see the +degradation of his heart and mind, how the unfailing Nemesis is wreaking +its vengeance upon him. He is surely punished, and his death is the fit end +of his career. We are shown how his evil deeds affect others, how the great +law of retribution involves the innocent in his downfall. Here George Eliot +has unfolded for us how true it is that our lives are linked on every side +with the lives of our fellows, and how the deeds of any one must affect for +good or evil the lives of many others. + +Almost every leading thought of George Eliot's philosophy and ethics is +unfolded in greater or less degree in this novel. It is full of brave, +wholesome teaching, and of clear insight into the consequences of conduct. + +_Romola_ is the most thoughtful, the most ambitious, the most philosophical +of George Eliot's works; and it is also the most lacking in spontaneity, +and more than any other shows the evidences of the artist's labors. Yet +by many persons it will be accepted as the greatest of her works, and +not without the best of reasons. It contains some of her most original +characters, gives a remarkable emphasis to great moral laws, and interprets +the spiritual influence of the conflict which is ever waging between +tradition and advancing culture as no other has done. It is a +thought-provoking book, a book of the highest moral aims. + + + + +XV. + + +FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH. + +The scenes of George Eliot's later novels are laid in England, but for the +most part among a town rather than a rural population. Instead of Hayslope +and Raveloe, Mrs. Poyser and Silas Marner, we have Middlemarch and Treby +Magna, Dorothea Brooke and Felix Holt. If Felix Holt is quite as much a +working-man as Adam Bede, occupying a social position higher in no respect +whatever, yet he is a workingman of a far different type. If Adam is the +nobler character, the truer type of man, Felix represents a larger social +purpose and has higher moral aims. In _Adam Bede_, we find rustic +simplicity and contentment, but in _Felix Holt_ we touch social aspirations +and political ambitions. The horizon has widened, the plane of social life +has lifted, there are new motives and larger ideals. + +Very many of her readers and critics regard _Middlemarch_ as George Eliot's +greatest novel. This is said to have been her own opinion. With great +unanimity her readers pronounce _Felix Holt_ her weakest and least +interesting work. So far as the dramatic and artistic execution are +concerned, these judgments are not entirely correct. The machinery of +_Middlemarch_ is clumsy, and the plot desultory in aim and method. On the +other hand, _Felix Holt_ is strongly thought out and skilfully planned. It +has much of passion and enthusiasm in it, and not a little of pure and +noble sentiment, while _Middlemarch_ is never impassioned, but flows on +calmly. The author evidently put herself into _Felix Holt_ with the purpose +of teaching her own views about moral and social life. She lived in the +characters, felt and hoped with them, and wrote out of a deep, spontaneous +purpose. The sensational element has been more fully used, and the unity of +the plot more thoroughly developed, than in any other of her works, while +there is a living, breathing purpose in the story which is absent from her +later works. _Felix Holt_ is one of the two or three novels by George Eliot +which have an affirmative and thoroughly constructive purpose. It is this +purpose which makes the chief interest of the work. It is a story of social +reform, and is to be read as an embodiment of the author's political ideas. +From this point of view it is a story full of interest, and it is the one +of George Eliot's novels which will most strongly impress those who are +fully in sympathy with her ideas of progress and social regeneration. The +purpose of _Middlemarch_ is critical, to show how our modern social life +cramps the individual, limits his energies, and destroys his power of +helpful service to the world. This critical aim runs through the whole work +and colors every feature of it. The impression made by the whole work is +saddening; and the reader, while admiring the artistic power and the +literary finish of the book, is depressed by the moral issue. In strength +of imagination, intellectual insight, keen power of analysis, this novel +surpasses anything else George Eliot has written. + +_Felix Holt_ is a novel with an ethical purpose. It aims to show how social +and political reform can be brought about. Felix is George Eliot's ideal +working-man, a man who remains true to his own class, seeks his own moral +elevation, does not have much faith in the ballot, and who is zealous for +the education of his fellows. He is a radical who believes in heredity, who +is aware of our debt to the past, and who would use the laws of social +inheritance for the elevation of mankind. The account Felix gives of his +conversion contains George Eliot's conception of what is to be done by all +workingmen who rightly understand what social reform is and how it can be +most truly brought about. It is to be secured by each workingman living not +for self and pleasure, but to do what good he can in the world. + + "I'm not speaking lightly," said Felix. "If I had not seen that I was + making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could + have got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have + looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I + laughed out loud at last to think of a poor devil like me, in a Scotch + garret, with my stockings out at heel and a shilling or two to be + dissipated upon, with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and + old women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs--wanting to + turn my life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could + be turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place + for a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't + be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter + the world--that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in + it, And if I don't lie and filch, somebody else will. Well, then, + somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion. + Mr. Lyon, if you want to know it." + +When Felix gives Esther an account of his plans, and describes to her his +purpose to do what he can to elevate his class, we have George Eliot's own +views on the subject of social reform. Felix says,-- + + "I want to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, + who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither + flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage--an order I belong + to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I + want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, + in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions of + his nature, than if he belonged to the grimacing set who have + visiting-cards, and are proud to be thought richer than their + neighbors." + +That the leading aim of _Felix Holt_ is to show the nature of true social +reform may be seen in the address made by Felix at the election, and even +more distinctly in the address put into his mouth in _Blackwood's Magazine_ +for 1868. In the election speech Felix gives it as his belief that if +workingmen "go the right way to work they may get power sooner without +votes" than with them, by the use of public opinion, "the greatest power +under heaven." The novel points out the social complications of life, the +influence of hereditary privileges and abuses, and how every attempt at +reform is complicated by many interests, and is likely to fall into the +hands of demagogues who use the workingmen for their own purposes. The +address of Felix in _Blackwood's_ is really a commentary on the novel, or +rather a fine and suggestive summary of the moral, social and political +idea; it was meant to inculcate. + +In _Felix Holt_, George Eliot would teach the world that true social reform +is not to be secured by act of Parliament, or by the possession of the +ballot on the part of all workingmen. It is but another enforcement of the +theory that it is not rights men are to seek after, but duties; that social +and political reform is not to be secured by insistence on rights, but by +the true and manly acceptance of altruism. Felix Holt is a social reformer +who is not a demagogue, who does not seek office or personal advancement, +but who wishes to show by his own conduct how a larger life is to be won. +He would introduce universal education; he would teach the great principles +of right living, physically and morally; he would inculcate the spirit of +helpfulness and mutual service. As a brave, earnest, self-sacrificing, +pure-minded lover of humanity, he is an inspiring character. George Eliot +evidently wished to indicate in his creation what can be done by workingmen +towards the uplifting of their own class. A better social order, she would +have us believe, cannot be secured from external sources; but it must be +had by an internal impulse moving those whose lives are degraded to seek +for higher things because of their own intrinsic good. The demagogue +seeks the elevation of workingmen because he can use them for his own +advancement; but Felix desires their elevation for the good of the whole +social structure. To this end he would inspire in his fellows a greater +moral ambition and zeal for the common good. He is a Mazzini, Castelar or +John Bright in his own social order; one who loves his own class, wishes to +remain in it, and who desires above all things that it shall do its part in +the work of national elevation. His aim is not to oppose the other classes +in society, but to make his own necessary to the prosperity of his country. +Felix is not an ideal character, for he is rough, uncultured and +headstrong; but he is an inspiring personality, with gifts of intellectual +fascination and moral courage. George Eliot has created no other character +like him, for Deronda and Zarca, whose aims somewhat resemble his, are very +different. He is no hero, he is not altogether an attractive person. He +has, however, the power, which some of the noblest of George Eliot's +characters possess, of attracting and uplifting other persons. He made +Esther realize the wide gulf between self-pleasing and duty, he inspired +her with moral courage and awakened her mind to the higher aims and +satisfactions life has to give us. He was undoubtedly meant for a moral +hero of the working class, a prophet to the laborers. With all his +limitations he is one of the noblest and most helpful characters in George +Eliot's books. + +Other distinctive ideas of George Eliot's appear throughout this book. Her +theories of heredity, altruism and environment affect the whole development +of the story. Perhaps no more striking illustration of the law of +retribution is to be found in her books than in the case of Mrs. Transome. +This woman's sin corrupted her own life, and helped to darken the lives of +others. + +The aim had in view in _Middlemarch_ is to illustrate the impotence of +modern life so far as it relates in moral heroism and spiritual attainment. +High and noble action is hindered and baulked by the social conditions in +the midst of which we live; and those who would live grandly and purely, +and in a supreme unselfishness devote themselves to the world, find that +their efforts are in vain. Dorothea has longings after a life of love +and service; she would live for high purposes and give herself for others' +good. Her hopes end in disaster almost; and she is cramped and baulked +on every side. Lydgate would devote himself to science, to patient +investigations for the sake of alleviating human misery and disease. His +social environment cripples him, and his life comes to nothing compared +with what he had aimed at, and what he was capable of attaining. Dorothea +is presented as capable of becoming a saint, being of an ardent, heroic +nature, a woman who yearned after some lofty conception of the world that +was to be made, not merely poetry, but an actual fact about her; who was +"enamoured of intensity and greatness," and "likely to seek martyrdom." The +difficulties which most beset such a nature are presented in the very first +chapter, where these saintly tendencies are considered as probable +obstacles to her making a good marriage. + + A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a + brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly, as if + she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles--who had strange + whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old + theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with + a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere + with political economy, and the keeping of saddle-horses; a man would + naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship. + +The social life of Tipton really had no room for such a woman, could not +employ her rare gifts, knew not what to make of her yearnings and her +charity. And Tipton is the world and modern life, which spurns the heroic, +has no place for the poetry of existence, can make nothing of yearnings and +longings for high heroism. Because the social order into which she was born +could not use her gifts, because the vision of life in her soul was other +and higher than that which society had marked out for such as she, her life +was wasted in an unhappy marriage. In an earlier age she would have become +a St. Theresa, for society then had a place for such souls. Now she bows in +reverence to a man of learning, dreams great things of tender service to +him; but this proves not to be the place in which she belongs. In the last +paragraphs of the book the author gives her own account of Dorothea's +failure to reach the good she sought. + + Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a + mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in + Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine + girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and + in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry + his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and + not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually + observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would + not have married either the one or the other. + + Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally + beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse + struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on + her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch that + such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which she was + born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly man to a + girl less than half his own age--on modes of education which make a + woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance--on rules of + conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly asserted + beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to + breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life, + where great feelings take the aspect of error, and great faith the + aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so + strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new + Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual + life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in + daring all for the sake of a brother's burial; the medium in which + their ardent deeds took place is forever gone. But we insignificant + people with our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many + Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that + of the Dorothea whose story we know. + + Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were + not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander + broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on + the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was + incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly + dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you + and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived + faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. + +The influence of social environment is also presented in _Felix Holt_ as a +chief determining agent in the lives of individuals. However high the aims +and noble the purposes of the individual, he must succumb to those social +influences which are more powerful than he. In the third chapter we are +told that-- + + This history is chiefly concerned with the private lot of a few men + and women; but there is no private life which has not been determined + by a wider public life, from the time when the primeval milkmaid had + to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the cow she + milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare. Even + in that conservatory existence where the fair Camelia is sighed + for by the noble young Pineapple, neither of them needing to care + about the frost or rain outside, there is a nether apparatus of + hot-water pipes liable to cool down on a strike of the gardeners or + a scarcity of coal. And the lives we are about to look back upon do + not belong to those conservatory species; they are rooted in the + common earth, having to endure all the ordinary chances of past and + present weather. As to the weather of 1832, the Zadkiel of that time + had predicted that the electrical condition of the clouds in the + political hemisphere would produce unusual perturbations in organic + existence, and he would perhaps have seen a fulfilment of his + remarkable prophecy in that mutual influence of dissimilar destinies + which we shall see gradually unfolding itself. For if the mixed + political conditions of Treby Magna had not been acted on by the + passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Harold Transome would not have + presented himself as a candidate for North Loamshire, Treby would + not have been a polling-place, Mr. Matthew Jermyn would not have + been on affable terms with a Dissenting preacher and his flock, and + the venerable town would not have been placarded with handbills, + more or less complimentary and retrospective--conditions in this + case essential to the "where" and the "what," without which, as the + learned know, there can be no event whatever. + +In the case of Lydgate, if the ambition was less noble and pure, the fall +was greater, and the disaster sadder to contemplate. He, too, was hindered +by his "environment," but it was much more of his own creating, the result +of his own nature, than in the case of Dorothea. We are told that "he was +fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an +anatomical conception, and make a link in the chain of discovery." That he +was fully capable of achieving such a result is made to appear by the +author. The account given of the discovery he wished to make, abundantly +confirms this opinion of him; it also shows how large was George Eliot's +learning, and how well she could use it for the novelist's purposes. + +To show how a person capable of such work could be entangled in the +ordinary affairs of life and lose sight of his youthful vision, or at least +the power of realizing it, is the purpose developed in the career of +Lydgate. There were "spots of commonness" in his nature. These-- + + lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in spite of noble + intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary + men of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his + intellectual ardor did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about + furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without + his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons. + +The egotism of his nature, his incapacity for hard, severe economy and the +exclusion of luxury and refined pleasure, proved his destruction. Along +with this egotism went a too susceptible impressiveness in the presence of +beautiful women of soft, delicate ways. He meant to do great things in +science, but he could not endure the discipline, the sacrifice, the long +years of waiting, by which the great result was to be attained. Even if he +could have done this, he lost the power of doing it through the social +environment of marriage. How a man's love for a woman may corrupt the +heroic purposes of his life is hinted at in one of the paragraphs in which +George Eliot describes Lydgate, and the vision which enamoured his young +life until the woman turned all his gold into dross. + + We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to + fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally + parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we + are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom + and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old + Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other + kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious + thought and renunciation of small desires? In the story of this + passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious + marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom + the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the + Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their + vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as + the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant + to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of + their coming to be shapen after the average, and fit to be packed by + the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness for perhaps + their ardor for generous, unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the + ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked + like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. + Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual + change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may + have sent some of our breath toward infecting them when we uttered our + conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions; or perhaps it came + with the vibration from a woman's glance. + +The pathetic and saddening tragedy of a man's failure to realize the +possibilities of his own nature was never more clearly and minutely told +than in the case of Lydgate. We see all the steps of his fall, we know all +the reasons why it came, we comprehend fully what he might have been and +done. The bitterness of his own failure made him call his wife a basil +plant--"a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's +brains." His hair never became white, but having won a large practice in +his profession, he had his life heavily insured, and died at the age of +fifty. He regarded his own life as a failure, though he was outwardly +successful and "his skill was relied on by many paying patients." Against +his will, by ways and causes he could not foresee, through the tenderness +and ease of his own nature, the vision of his youth did not come true. + +Perhaps _Middlemarch_ is the most perfect example among George Eliot's +novels of her purpose to show how we are guided, controlled and modified in +our thought and action by the whole society of which the individual forms a +single atom. Many characters appear in _Middlemarch_, drawn with wonderful +skill and finish, each having some part to perform in the complicated, play +of life, and each some subtle, scarce-understood influence on all. Tragedy +and comedy, selfishness and renunciation, greed and charity, love and +jealousy, mingle here as in life. Many of these characters, such as Caleb +Garth, Farebrother, Mrs. Cadwallader and Mr. Brooke, are remarkable +portraitures, original and well conceived; but they all have their place in +the social structure, and serve a purpose in the moral issue to be worked +out. + +It has been said of _Felix Holt_, and justly, that its characters are too +typical, too much representative of a class, and too little personal in +their natures and individual in their actions. Yet this method of treating +character is consistent with the purpose of the novel, which is quite as +much ethical as literary. Here we have imbruted and ignorant workingmen, +laborers who would elevate their class, pious Dissenters, typical clergymen +of the Church of England, old hereditary families with the smouldering +evils which accumulate about them, ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers, +and all the other phases of character likely to be found in such a town as +Treby Magna. Each person stands for a class; and the aim of the novel is to +indicate how the relative position of the classes represented may be +changed with as little as possible of disorder and disruption. + +It should be borne in mind, however, that the aim of George Eliot is not +exclusively ethical. _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ are not ethical or +socialistic treatises, and the whole purpose does not run in these +directions. She ever keeps in mind, however, the great fact that on the +ethical basis of right and wrong rests all the tragedy and comedy of the +world. Her ideas are made alive with genius, and her ethical purposes take +color in the glow of a brilliant imagination. She never did violence to the +rule which she stated in her essay on the poet Young. + + On its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches science; on its + emotional side, art. Now the products of art are great in proportion as + they result from that immediate prompting of innate power which we call + genius, and not from labored obedience to a theory or rule; and the + presence of genius, or innate prompting, is directly opposed to the + perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is imperious, + and excludes the reflection _why_ it should act. In the same way, in + proportion as morality is emotional, _i.e._, has affinity with art, it + will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling and action, and not + as the recognition of a rule. Love does not say, "I ought to love"--it + loves. Pity does not say, "It is right to be pitiful"--it pities. + Justice does not say, "I am bound to be just"--it feels justly. It is + only where moral emotion is comparatively weak that the contemplation + of a rule or theory habitually mingles with its action; and in + accordance with this; we think experience, both in literature and life, + has shown that the minds which are pre-eminently didactic--which insist + on a "lesson," and despise everything that will not convey a moral, are + deficient in sympathetic emotion. + +The moral and social problems of life seem to fire her creative powers, +kindle her imagination, and give rein to her genius. While the thoughtful +reader may find in _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ more that interests his +speculative faculties than of what will satisfy his sentiments and +imagination, yet he must keep in mind the fact that these are works +depending largely for their effect on the mind to their poetic qualities. +There is in them both a large and thoughtful contemplation of life, but +with a constant reference to its passion, sentiment and ideal aims. If they +are realistic it is not to the exclusion of spiritual elements; and the +poetic, sentimental phases of human existence are never ignored. + + + + +XVI. + + +DANIEL DERONDA. + +The purpose of George Eliot's last novel is distinctly constructive. While +there is much of criticism in its pages, and criticism of the severest +kind, its aim is that of spiritual renewal and upbuilding. It unfolds her +conception of social growth, and of the influence of tradition and the +national idea, much more completely than any other of her works. Moreover, +it is all aglow with moral enthusiasm and spiritual ardor. It indicates a +greater spontaneity than any of her books after _The Mill on the Floss_, +and gives ample evidence that it possessed and absorbed the author's mind +with its purpose and spirit. It is written from a great depth of conviction +and moral earnestness. That it is her greatest book, artistically +considered, there is no reason for believing; that it has its serious +limitations as a literary creation all the critics have said. Yet it +remains also to be said, that for largeness of aim, wealth of sentiment, +and purity of moral teaching, no other book of George Eliot's surpasses +_Daniel Deronda_. Indeed, in its realization of the spiritual basis of +life, and in its portrayal of the religious sentiment, as these are +understood by positivism, this book surpasses every other, by whomsoever +written. + +_Daniel Deronda_ is a romance, and hence differs in kind, conception, +scope, circumstance and form from her other works. It is less a study of +character than most of her other works, has more of adventure and action; +and while it is no less realistic, yet it has higher ideal aims, and seeks +to interpret what ought to be. + +At least three distinct purposes may be seen running through the book, +which blend into and confirm each other: to show the all-powerful influence +of heredity, that blood will assert itself as more effective than any +conditions of social environment or education; to indicate that ideals, +subjective feelings and sentiments form the reality and the substance of +religion, and that tradition affords the true medium of its expression; and +to contrast a form of social life based on individualism with one based on +tradition. The aim of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is many-sided, and cannot +be expressed in a few phrases. It is too vital with life, touches the +emotions and sentiments too often, has an ideal motive too large, to be +dismissed with a quickly spoken word of contempt. Professor Dowden, one of +her best and most sympathetic critics, has said that it is "an homage to +the emotions rather than to the intellect of man. Her feeling finds +expression not only in occasional gnomic utterances in which sentiments are +declared to be the best part of the world's wealth, and love is spoken of +as deeper than reason, and the intellect is pronounced incapable of +ascertaining the validity of claims which rest upon loving instincts of the +heart, or else are baseless. The entire work possesses an impassioned +aspect, an air of spiritual prescience, far more than the exactitude of +science. The main forces which operate in it are sympathies, aspirations, +ardors; and ideas chiefly as associated with these." The object aimed at is +ideal and religious, much more than intellectual and scientific, to show +how necessary is religion, how weak and imperfect is man when the ideal +side of his nature is undeveloped. It makes clear the author's conviction +concerning the importance of religion, that she prized its spiritual hopes, +found satisfaction in its enthusiasms and aspirations. When Gwendolen was +cast down in utter dejection, all of joy and delight the world had afforded +her gone, and she felt the greatest need of something to comfort and +sustain her in her distrust of self and the world, Deronda said to her, +"The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the higher, the +religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our own +appetites and vanities." + +The religion inculcated, to be sure, is not that of faith in a personal God +and a personal immortality, but that which is based on the mystery of life +and nature, impressed on the sensitive soul of man in fears, sorrows, +hopes, aspirations, and built up into great ideals and institutions through +tradition. _Daniel Deronda_ gives us the gospel of altruism, a new +preaching of love to man. _Daniel Deronda_ proves as no other writing has +ever done, what is the charm and the power of these ideas when dissociated +from any spiritual hopes which extend beyond humanity. + +In order to give the most adequate expression to her ideas, and to show +forth the power of the spiritual life as she conceived it, George Eliot +made use of that race and religion which presents so remarkable an +illustration of the influence of tradition and heredity. She saw in Judaism +a striking confirmation of her theories, and a proof of what ideal +interests can do to preserve a nation. To vindicate that race in the eyes +of the world, to show what capacity there is in its national traditions, +was also a part of her purpose. That this was her aim may be seen in what +she said to a young Jew in whom she was much interested. + + I wrote about the Jews because I consider them a fine old race who have + done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as + I do for the Florentines. + +The same idea is to be seen very clearly in the last essay in the +_Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. She regarded the great memories and +traditions of this people as a priceless legacy which may and ought to draw +all the scattered Israelites together and unite them again in a common +national life. + + A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering + thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to + preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small + beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such + as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being + thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's + children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to + great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in + its institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which + makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest + with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their + blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all + calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and + thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual + man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, + if not in actual existence, yet existing in the past, in memory, as a + departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be + restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of + various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for + cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to + suffice for social energy. + +This was one of the favorite ideas of George Eliot, which she has again and +again expressed. She was impressed with the conviction that such a national +life is necessary to the world's growth and welfare, that the era of a +common brotherhood, dissociated from national traditions and hopes, has not +yet come. Hence her belief that Judaism ought to speak the voice of a +united race, occupying the old home of this people, and sending forth its +ideas as a national inheritance and inspiration. This belief inspires the +concluding words of her essay, as well as the last chapters of the novel. + + There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew: not + that he should shut out the utmost illumination which knowledge can + throw on his national history, but that he should cherish the store of + inheritance which that history has left him. Every Jew should be + conscious that he is one of a multitude possessing common objects of + piety in the immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of ancestors + who have transmitted to them a physical and mental type strong enough, + eminent enough in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar promise, to + constitute a new beneficent individuality among the nations, and, by + confuting the traditions of scorn, nobly avenge the wrongs done to + their fathers. + + There is a sense which the worthy child of a nation that has brought + forth industrious prophets, high and unique among the poets of the + world, is bound by their visions. + + Is bound? + + Yes; for the effective bond of human action is feeling, and the worthy + child of a people owning the triple name of Hebrew, Israelite and Jew, + feels his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and + the possible renovation of his national family. + + Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling and call his + doctrine a philosophy? He will teach a blinding superstition--the + superstition that a theory of human well-being can be constructed in + disregard of the influences which have made us human. + +The purpose of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is not merely to vindicate +Judaism. This race and its religion are used as the vehicles for larger +ideas, as an illustration of the supreme importance to mankind of spiritual +aims concentrated into the form of national traditions and aspirations. Her +own studies, and personal intercourse with the Jews, helped to attract her +to this race; but the main cause of her use of them in this novel is their +remarkable history. Their moral and spiritual persistence, their wonderful +devotedness to their own race and its aims, admirably adapted them to +develop for her the ideas she wished to express. What nation could she have +taken that would have so clearly illustrated her theory of national +memories and traditions? In the forty-second chapter of _Daniel Deronda_ +she has put into the month of Mordecai her own theories on this subject. He +vindicates his right to call himself a _rational_ Jew, one who accepts what +is reasonable and true. + + "It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that bind and + consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea, consecrate it with + kinship; the past becomes my parent, and the future stretches toward me + the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of + special kindred that makes the families of man rich in interchanged + wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the + cedar and the palm?" + +He declares that each nation has its own work to do in the world, in the +uplifting and maintenance of some special idea which is necessary to the +welfare and development of humanity. The place he assigns to Judaism is +precisely that which made it dear to George Eliot, because it embodied her +conception of religion and its social functions. + + "Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of + affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the + reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life + into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and + weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us." + +Again, he utters words which are simply an expression of George Eliot's own +sentiments. + + "Where else is there a nation of whom it may be as truly said that + their religion and law and moral life mingled as the stream of blood in + the heart and made one growth--where else a people who kept and + enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they were hunted + with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast + from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman that, swimming to save + his life, he held the roll of his writings between his teeth and saved + them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our race? + They struggled to keep their place among the nations like heroes--yea, + when the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but when the + plow and the harrow had passed over the last visible signs of their + national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with + the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, 'The spirit is alive, + let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because movable--so that + it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn + may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on + an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though + often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded + amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the + Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of + them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he + diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines + of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The native spirit + of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed, + and draw out the compressed virtues of law and prophecy." + +Then Mordecai unfolds his theory of national unity and of a regenerated +national life; and it is impossible to read his words attentively without +accepting them as an expression of George Eliot's own personal convictions. +As an embodiment of her conception of the functions of national life they +are full of interest aside from their place in the novel. + + "In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our + rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity, the soul of Judaism + is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which + has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. + Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the + ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a + voice among the peoples of the East and the West--which will plant the + wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, us of old, a medium of + transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living + warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition + will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the + illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge + alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.... The effect of our + separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation + unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is + the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people, + whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me + that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the + children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as + a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; + they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled + breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the + learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the + political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which + has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew + genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, 'We will + lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like + that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the + long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, + refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the + soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the + statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there + no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle + with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk + gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena? + There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, + simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality of + protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our + ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western + freedom amidst the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an + organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the + outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the + outraged Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Israel + gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East which + carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its + bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a + neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West. Difficulties? I + know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement + move in the great among our people, and the work will begin.... + + "What is needed is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The + heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in + their veins as a power without understanding, like the morning + exultation of herds; it is the inborn half of memory, moving as in a + dream among writings on the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot + divide into speech. Let the torch of visible community be lighted! Let + the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let + there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a + nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, + even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, + but who still have a national hearth, and a tribunal of national + opinion. Will any say, 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinoza had not a + faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect + at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's nakedness + and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' Yet Baruch + Spinoza confessed he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen + nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are dead? + Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and + Home, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe + and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dug + from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver + in millions of human frames.... + + "I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but + the good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our + religious life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of + aught but wrong. The masters have said an offence against man is worse + than an offence against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the + breasts of Jews who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what + wonder, since there is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Our + national life was a growing light. Let the central fire be kindled + again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our + race will learn to think of their sacred land not as a place for + saintly beggary to await death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic + where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the + old, purified, enriched by the experience our greatest sons have + gathered from the life of the ages. How long is it?--only two centuries + since a vessel earned over the ocean the beginning of the great North + American nation. The people grew like meeting waters; they were various + in habit and sect. There came a time, a century ago, when they needed a + polity, and there were heroes of peace among them. What had they to + form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected by the vision of a + better? Let our wise and wealthy show themselves heroes. They have the + memories of the East and West, and they have the full vision of a + better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art + and wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised between East and West--a + covenant of reconciliation. Will any say the prophetic vision of your + race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry; the angel of + progress hag no message for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the + paid workers to lay open--the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken + field? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human + choice. The sons of Judah have to choose, that God may again choose + them. The Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the + planting of the national ensign. The Nile overflowed and rushed onward; + the Egyptian could not choose the overflow, but he chose to work and + make channels for the fructifying waters, and Egypt became the land of + corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and + resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or + purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine principle + of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the + blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future + of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us be as if we + were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage, claim + the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with + the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there: it will be + fulfilled." + +These words put into the mouth of Mordecai, indicate how thoroughly George +Eliot entered into the spirit of Judaism. She read Hebrew with ease, and +had delved extensively in Jewish literature, besides being familiar with +the monumental works in German devoted to Jewish history and opinions. The +religious customs, the home life, the peculiar social habits of the race, +she carefully studied. The accuracy of her information has been pointed out +by her Jewish critics, by whom the book has been praised with the utmost +enthusiasm. One of these, Prof. David Kaufmann, of Buda-Pesth, in an +excellent notice of _Daniel Deronda_, bears testimony to the author's +learning and to the faithfulness of her Jewish portraitures. He says that, +"led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish +national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish characters, +and to recognize and give presentment to the influences which Jewish +education is wont to exercise--to prove by types that Judaism is an +intellectual and spiritual force, still misapprehended and readily +overlooked, but not the less an effective power, for the future of which it +is good assurance that it possesses in the body of its adherents a noble, +susceptible and pliant material which only awaits its final casting to +appear in a glorious form." He also says of the author's learning, that it +is loving and exact, that her descriptions of Jewish life are always +faithful and her characters true to nature. + +"Leader of the present so-called realistic school, our author keeps up in +this work the reputation she has won of possessing the most minute +knowledge of the subjects she handles, by the manner in which she has +described the Jews--the great unknown of humanity. She has penetrated into +their history and literature affectionately and thoroughly; and her +knowledge in a field where ignorance is still venial if not expressly +authorized, has astonished even experts. In her selection of almost always +unfamiliar quotations, she shows a taste and a facility of reference really +amazing. When shall we see a German writer exhibiting the courteous +kindliness of George Eliot, who makes Deronda study Zunz's _Synagogale +Poesie_, and places the monumental words which open his chapter entitled +'Leiden,' at the head of the passage in which she introduces us to Ezra +Cohen's family, and at the club-meeting at which Mordecai gives utterance +to his ideas concerning the future of Israel? She is familiar with the +views of Jehuda-ha-Levi as with the dreams and longings of the cabalists, +and as conversant with the splendid names of our Hispano--Arabian epoch as +with the moral aphorisms of the Talmud and the subtle meaning contained in +Jewish legends.... It is by the piety and tenderness with which she treats +Jewish customs that the author shows how supreme her cultivation and +refinement are; and the small number of mistakes which can be detected in +her descriptions of Jewish life and ritual may put to blush even writers +who belong to that race." Again this critic says of the visionary Mordecai, +who has been pronounced a mere dreamer and untrue to nature, that he is an +altogether probable character and portrayed with a true realistic touch." +Mordecai is carved of the wood from which prophets are made, and so far as +the supersensuous can be rendered intelligible, it may even be said that in +studying him we are introduced into a studio or workshop of the prophetic +mind. He is one of the most difficult as well as one of the most successful +essays in psychological analysis ever attempted by an author; and in his +wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or +reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic +profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united +to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making +Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy +of commoner metal, and by giving the angelic likeness features which are +familiar to us all." + +Another Jew has borne equally hearty testimony to the faithfulness with +which George Eliot has described Jewish life and the spirit of the Jewish +religion. "She has acquired," this writer says, "an extended and profound +knowledge of the rites, aspirations, hopes, fears and desires of the +Israelites of the day. She has read their books, inquired into their modes +of thought, searched their traditions, accompanied them to the synagogue; +nay, she has taken their very words from their lips, and, like Asmodeus, +has unroofed their houses. To say that some slight errors have crept into +_Daniel Deronda_ is to say that no human work is perfect; and these +inaccuracies are singularly few and unimportant." [Footnote: James +Picciotto, author of "sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," in the Gentleman's +Magazine for November, 1876.] Still another Jewish critic says that in her +gallery of portraits she "gives in a marvellously full and accurate way all +the many sides of the Jewish complex national character." He also says that +Mordecai is a true successor of the prophets and moral leaders of the race, +that the national spirit and temper are truly represented in him. +[Footnote: Joseph Jacobs, in Macmillian's Magazine for 1877.] + +That the main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is not that of defending Judaism, +must be apparent to every attentive reader. The Jewish race is made use of +for purposes of illustration, as a notable example in proof of her +theories. There is a deeper purpose conspicuous throughout the hook, which +rests on her conceptions of the spiritual life as a development of +tradition. This larger purpose also jests on her altruistic conception of +the moral and spiritual life. As Professor Kaufmann has pointed out, the +story falls into two widely separated portions, in one of which the Jewish +element appears, in the other the English. Jewish life and its religious +spirit are contrasted with English life and a common type of its religion. +This is not a contrast, however, which is introduced for the purpose of +disparaging Christianity or English social life, but with the object of +comparing those whose life is anchored in the spiritual traditions of a +great people, with those who find the centre of their life in egotism and +an individualistic spirit. Grandcourt is a type of pure egotism; Gwendolen +is a creature who lives for self and with no law outside of her own +happiness. This is the spirit of the society in which they both move. On +the other hand, Mordecai lives in his race, Deronda gives his life +constantly away for others, and Mirah is unselfishness and simplicity +itself. So distinctly is this contrast drawn, so clearly are these two +phases of life brought over against each other, that the book seems to be +divided in the middle, and to be two separate works joined by a slender +thread. This artistic arrangement has been severely criticised, but its +higher purpose is only understood when this comparison and antagonism is +recognized. Then the true artistic arrangement vindicates itself, and the +unity of the book becomes apparent. Deronda moves in both these worlds, and +their influence on him is finely conceived. He finds no spiritual aim and +motive for his life until he is led into the charmed circle of a +traditional environment, and learns to live in and for his race. Living for +self, the life of Gwendolen is blasted, her hopes crushed, and she finds no +peace or promise except in the steadfast spiritual strength yielded her by +Deronda. That such a contrasting of the two great phases of life was a part +of George Eliot's purpose she has herself acknowledged. A comparison of the +spiritual histories of Gwendolen and Deronda will show how earnest was this +purpose of the author. Gwendolen is a type of those souls who have no +spiritual anchorage in the religious life and traditions of their people. +At the opening of chapter third we are told she had no home memories, that +"this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been wanting +in Gwendolen's life." At the end of the sixth chapter we are also told that +she had no insight into spiritual realities, that the bonds of spiritual +power and moral retribution had not been made apparent to her mind. + + Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers, + both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her + ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of + circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of + twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as + in any position which would lack the tribute of respect. She had no + permanent consciousness of other fetters, or of more spiritual + restraints, having always disliked whatever was presented to her under + the name of religion, in the same way that some people dislike + arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her, no + alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it, had + not occurred to her, any more than it had occurred to her to inquire + into the conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she + had had many opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was + dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been ready to + admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state. What she + unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad for others to be + unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual dread, + though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into + connection with the religion taught her, or with any human relations. + She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in + remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for + example, she was walking without companionship and there came some + rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her + with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in + the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself. + The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her + imagination at work in a way that made her tremble; but always when + some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in + which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world, in which + her will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to + this world was no more identified for her with those uneasy impressions + of awe than her uncle's surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With + human ears and eyes about her, she had always hitherto recovered her + confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire. + +Her difficulties all came out of this egoistic spirit, this want of +spiritual anchorage and religious faith. Gradually her bitter experiences +awakened in her a desire for a purer life, and the influence of Deronda +worked powerfully in the same direction. She is to be regarded, however, as +simply a representative of that social, moral and spiritual life bred in +our century by the disintegrating forces everywhere at work. No moral +ideal, no awe of the divine Nemesis, no spiritual sympathy with the larger +life of the race, is to be found in her thought. The radicalism of the +time, which neglects religious training, which scorns the life of the past, +which lives for self and culture, is destroying all that is best in modern +society. Gwendolen is one of the results of these processes, an example of +that impoverished life which is so common, arising from religious rebellion +and egotism. + +Another motive and spirit is represented in the character of Deronda. As a +boy, his mind was full of ideal aspirations, he was chivalrous and eager to +help and comfort others. He would take no mean advantages in his own +behalf, he loved the comradeship of those whom he could help, he was always +ready with his sympathy. + + He was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those + heights. + +He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means +whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for +comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge +that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving +after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness. +Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those +which helped to form Gwendolen's character, yet a very different result was +produced in him because of his _inherited_ tendencies of mind. After he had +seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai,-- + + "It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited + yearning--the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in my ancestors-- + thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather. + Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a + city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and + born blind--the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing + for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their + inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument + never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious + moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives + music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I + began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task in + which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude--some + social captainship which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven + for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for + me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy." + +This inherited sense of a larger life made Deronda what he was, and +developed in him qualities absent in Gwendolen. This inherited power made +him a new Mazzini, a born leader of men, a new saviour of society, a +personal magnet to attract and inspire other souls. A magnetic power of +influence drew Gwendolen to him from the first time they met, he shamed her +narrow life by his silent presence, and he quickened to life in her a +desire for a purer and nobler existence. George Eliot probably meant to +indicate in his character her conception of the true social reformation +which is needed to-day, and how it is to be brought about. The basis on +which it is to be built is the traditional and inherited life of the past, +inspired with new energies and meanings by the gifted souls who have +inherited a large and pure personality, and who are inspired by a quickened +sense of what life ought to be. On the one side a life of altruism, on the +other a life of egotism, teach that the liner social and moral qualities +come out of an inheritance in the national ideals and conquests of a worthy +people, while the coarser qualities come of the neglect of this source of +spiritual power and sustenance. Two letters written to Professor David +Kaufmann indicate that this was the purpose of the hook. At the same time, +they show George Eliot's mind on other sides, and give added insights into +her character. As an indication of her attitude towards Judaism, and her +faith in the work she had done in Daniel Deronda, they are of great value. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, +May 31, '77. + +MY DEAR SIR,--Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper +satisfaction, I may say a more heartfelt joy, than you have given me in +your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_. [Footnote: George Eliot and Judaism: an +Attempt to Appreciate Daniel Deronda. By Prof. David Kaufmann, of the +Jewish Theological Seminary, Buda-Pesth.] + +I must tell you that it is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the +criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary +to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged +praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far +worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work, +is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no +discernment of good and evil. + +My husband reads any notices of me that come before him, and reports to me +(or else refrains from reporting) the general character of the notice, or +something in particular which strikes him as showing either an exceptional +insight or an obtuseness that is gross enough to be amusing. Very rarely, +when he has read a critique of me, he has handed it to me, saying, "_You_ +must read this." And your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_ made one of these +rare instances. + +Certainly, if I had been asked to choose _what_ should be written about my +book and _who_ should write it, I should have sketched--well, not anything +so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a +Jew who showed not merely sympathy with the best aspirations of his race, +but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the +artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent +praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating +sensibility, the perfect response to the artist's intention, which must +make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and +not in compliance with current fashions. Such a response holds for an +author not only what is best in "the life that now is," but the promise of +"that which is to come." I mean that the usual approximative, narrow +perception of what one has been intending and professedly feeling in one's +work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff +without roots to hike any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any +instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative +prompting has foreshadowed, and will continue to satisfy, a need in other +minds. + +Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt +in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the +prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute +something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian +community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a +moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that +the effort has been needed,--yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hanger +for certain signs of sympathetic discernment, which you only have given. I +may mention as one instance your clear perception of the relation between +the presentation of the Jewish element and those of English social life. + +I work under the pressure of small hurries; for we are just moving into the +country for the summer, and all things are in a vagrant condition around +me. But I wished not to defer answering your letter to an uncertain +opportunity.... + +My husband has said more than once that he feels grateful to you. For he is +more sensitive on my behalf than on his own. + +Hence he unites with me in the assurance of the high regard with which I +remain + +Always yours faithfully, +M.E. LEWES. + +This first letter was followed a few months later by a second. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PAKE, +Oct. 12, '77. + +MY DEAR SIR,--I trust it will not be otherwise than gratifying to you to +know that your stirring article on _Daniel Deronda_ is now translated into +English by a son of Prof. Ferrier, who was a philosophical writer of +considerable mark. It will be issued in a handsomer form than that of the +pamphlet, and will appear within this autumnal publishing season, Messrs. +Blackwood having already advertised it. Whenever a copy is ready we shall +have the pleasure of sending it to you. There is often something to be +borne with in reading one's own writing in a translation, but I hope that +in this case you will not be made to wince severely. + +In waiting to send you this news I seem to have deferred too long the +expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew +translations of Leasing and the collection of Hebrew poems, a kindness +which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must +be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, +when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most +gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched the +gift of his work. + +I see by your last letter to my husband that your Theological Seminary was +to open on the 4th of this month, so that this too retrospective letter of +mine will reach you in the midst of your new duties. I trust that this new +institution will be a great good to professor and students, and that your +position is of a kind that you contemplate as permanent. To teach the young +personally has always seemed to me the most satisfactory supplement to +teaching the world through books, and I have often wished that I had such a +means of having fresh, living, spiritual children within sight. + +One can hardly turn one's thought toward Eastern Europe just now without a +mingling of pain and dread; but we mass together distant scenes and events +in an unreal way, and one would like to believe that the present troubles +will not at any time press on you in Hungary with more external misfortune +than on us in England. + +Mr. Lewes is happily occupied in his psychological studies. We both look, +forward to the reception of the work you kindly promised us, and he begs me +to offer you his best regards. + +Believe me, my dear sir, +Yours with much esteem, +M.E. LEWES. + +It was a part of George Eliot's purpose in _Daniel Deronda_ to criticise +the social life of England in the spirit in which she had criticised it in +_Middlemarch_, as being deficient in spiritual power, moral purpose and +noble sentiment. If she made it clear in _Middlemarch_ that the individual +is crippled and betrayed by society, it was her purpose to make it quite as +clear in _Daniel Deronda_ how society may become the true inspirer of the +individual. We may quarrel with her theory of the origin and nature of the +spiritual life in man, but she has somewhat truly conceived its vast +importance and shown the character of that influence it everywhere has over +man's life. As types of spiritual lifts, and as individual conceptions of +human character, the personages of this novel are drawn with marvellous +skill. Mr. E.P. Whipple says that Daniel Deronda is "one of the noblest +and most original characters among the heroes imagined by poets, dramatists +and novelists." With equal or even greater justice can it be said that +Gwendolen Harleth is one of the most powerful and grandly conceived of +imaginary creations in all literature. In the characters, the situations, +and the whole working out of this novel, George Eliot shows herself one of +the great masters of literary creation. + +When the prejudices aroused by the Jewish element in it are allayed, and +_Daniel Deronda_ is read as a work of literary genius, it will be found not +to be the least interesting and important of George Eliot's books. It has +the religious interest and inspiration of _Adam Bede_, the historic value +of _Romola_, and the critical elements of _Middlemarch_; and these are +wrought into a work of lofty insight and imagination, along with a high +spiritual ardor and a supreme ethical purpose. In this novel, for the first +time, as Professor Dowden says, her poetical genius found adequate +expression, and in complete association with the non-poetical elements of +her nature. + + + + +XVII. + + +THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS. + +It was _The Spanish Gypsy_, published in 1868, which brought the name of +George Eliot before the public as a poet. This work is a novel written in +blank verse, with enough of the heroic and tragic in it to make the story +worthy of its poetic form. The story is an excellent one, well conceived +and worked out, and had it been given the prose form would have made a +powerful and original novel. While it would doubtless have gained in +definiteness of detail and clearness of purpose by being presented in the +prose form, yet its condensation into a poem is a gain, and the whole +setting of the story has been made of greater interest by this method of +expression. The poetic form is as original as are the theories of life +which the poem is designed to inculcate. In structure it combines, with a +method quite its own, the descriptive and dramatic forms of poetry. In this +it nearly approaches the method followed in her novels of combining +description and dialogue in a unitary structure of great strength and +perfection. The descriptive passages in her prose works are strong and +impressive, lofty in tone, and yet lovingly faithful in detail. Her +conversations are often highly dramatic and add greatly to the whole +outcome of these novels. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ the surroundings of the +story are first described in verse which, if not always perfectly poetic, +is yet imaginatively thought out and executed in a manner befitting the +subject. Suddenly, however, the narrative and descriptive form ceases and +the dramatic begins. By means also of full "stage directions" to the +dramatic portions of the poem, the story is wrought out quite as much in +detail as it needs to be; and much is gained of advantage over the length +of her novels by this concentration of scene and narrative. While the +narrative portion of the poem is much less in extent than the dramatic, yet +it has in it some of the main elements of the plot, and those without which +the action could not be worked out. The dramatic element gives it a real +and living power. The characters are strongly conceived, and nearly all of +them are individualities of an original type and of an action thoroughly +distinct and human. + +As a work of art, the most serious defect in _The Spanish Gypsy_ is its +doctrinal tone. It is speculative in its purpose quite as much as poetical, +and the speculation is so large an element as to intrude upon the poetry. +Thought overtops imagination, the fervor and enthusiasm of the poet are +more than matched by the ethical aims of the teacher. This ethical purpose +of unfolding in a dramatic form the author's theories of life has filled +the book, as it has her novels, with epigrams which are original, splendid +and instructive. Into a few lines she condenses some piece of wisdom, and +in words full of meaning and purpose. Into the mouth of Sephardo, a +character distinctive and noteworthy, she puts some of her choicest wisdom. +He says,-- + + Thought + Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, + And seizing some fine thread of verity + Knows momentary godhead. + +Again he utters the same idea, but in more expressive words. + + Our growing thought + Makes growing revelation. + +Don Silva is made to use this highly poetic imagery. + + Speech is but broken light upon the depth + Of the unspoken. + +Zarca, that truest and most original character in the poem, says of the +great work he purposes to accomplish, + + To my inward vision + Things are achieved when they are well begun. + +Again, he says,-- + + New thoughts are urgent as the growth of wings. + +Expressive and original as _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, yet it gives the +impression of lacking in some poetic quality which is necessary to the +highest results. Difficult as it may be to define precisely what it is that +is wanting, nearly every reader will feel that something which makes poetry +has been somehow left out. Is it imagination, or is it a flexible poetic +expression, which is absent? While George Eliot has imagination enough to +make a charming prose style, and to adorn her prose with great beauty and +an impressive manner, yet its finer quality of subtle expression is not to +be found in her poetry. Those original and striking shades of meaning which +the poet employs by using words in unique relations, she does not often +attain to. It is the thought, the ethical meaning, in her poetry as in her +prose, which is often of more importance than the manner of expression; and +she is too intent on what is said to give full heed always to how it is +said. She has, however, employed that form of verse which is best suited to +her style, and one which does not demand those lyrical or those imaginative +qualities in which she is deficient. The blank verse is well adapted to her +realism, though it does not always answer well to the more dramatic and +tragical and impassioned portions of the story. + +As a study of an historic period, _The Spanish Gypsy_ is not so great a +success as _Romola_; yet it more perfectly unfolds a unitary moral purpose, +and the various types of character are more originally developed. The +conflict of motives, the contrasted and opposed national interests, are +distinctly brought out, but the aroma of the time and place are wanting. To +describe a poetic and heroic era she is never content to do. Her method is +totally different from that of Scott, who reflects the spirit and life of +the time he depicts with almost absolute faithfulness. No gypsy was ever +such a character as Zarca, no gypsy girl ever had the conscience of +Fedalma. As in the case of _Romola_, so here, an historic period is used, +not so much for artistic as for philosophic purposes, because it is well +designed to present her ideas about heredity and tradition. _The Spanish +Gypsy_ is essentially a romance, and contains much of those more poetic +and ideal elements which distinguish _Daniel Deronda_ from her other +novels. This romantic element, if it does not develop poetry of the highest +quality, does bring out in its most perfect form all the finest +characteristics of her style. + +While _The Spanish Gypsy_ affords many points of attack for the critic, yet +it cannot be dismissed by saying it is not a great poem. Its strong +qualities are too many to permit of its being disposed of in haste. With +all its defects it is a noble piece of work, and genuinely adds to the +author's expression of genius. It is one of those poems which win, not +popularity, but the heartiest admiration of a choice and elect few who find +life and highest inspiration in it, because giving strength to their +thoughts and purpose to their moral convictions. As a study of some of the +deeper problems of the ethical and social life of man, it is unsurpassed, +and the teaching imparted by it is singularly well and impressively +conveyed by the whole make of the poem. It is also remarkable for its large +and impressive style, its rich command of words, and the lofty beauty of +its diction. One of its most striking qualities, as Mr. Henry James, Jr., +suggests, "is its extraordinary rhetorical energy and eloquence," and "its +splendid generosity of diction." The same writer says of the character of +Don Silva, that "nowhere has her marvellous power of expression, the +mingled dignity and pliancy of her style, obtained a greater triumph." The +critics have almost without exception dealt severely with the poem, but +they have applied to it the canons of poetic art as interpreted by +themselves. Genius creates its own laws, makes its own methods, reverses +old decisions and triumphs against the whole brood of critics. The world +accepts what is true and excellent, however defective in technical +requirements. Imperfect meters, and poetic structures not orthodox, may +disturb those who deal in criticism, but such limitations as these are not +sufficient to fix the final acceptance of a poem. More than one of the +greatest poems could not endure such tests. That _The Spanish Gypsy_ has +vitality of purpose, enduring interest in treatment, and a lofty eloquence +of diction, is doubtless enough to insure it an accepted place among the +few greater poems in the language. Its profoundly thoughtful interpretation +of some of the greater social problems mankind has to deal with, will +necessarily give a permanent interest for the lovers of speculative poetry, +while its genuine poetic merits will largely add to that interest, and add +to it by its tragic power, its rich ethical wisdom, and its fine portrayal +of character. + +No other book of George Eliot's is so filled and inspired by the spirit of +her teachings as _The Spanish Gypsy_. Its inspiration and its interest lie +mainly in the direction of its moral and spiritual inculcations. Verse did +not stimulate her, but was a fetter; it clogged her highest powers. The +rich eloquence of her prose, with its pathos and sentiment, its broad +perspective and vigorous thought, was to her a continual stimulus and +incentive. Her poems are more labored than her novels, and for this very +reason they show the philosophy which gives them meaning more clearly. +Their greater concentration and less varied elements also largely help to +make apparent the teachings they contain. Her sympathy with the evolution +philosophy of the day is conspicuous in _The Spanish Gypsy_. It is simply a +dramatic interpretation of the higher phases of Darwinism. The doctrinal +element does not intrude itself, however; it is not on the surface, it is +well subordinated to the artistic elements of the poem. Even intelligent +readers may not detect it, and the majority of those who read the poem +without any preconceptions may not discover its philosophic bearings. Yet +to the studious reader the philosophy must be the most conspicuous element +which enters into the poem, and it gives character and meaning to the work +far more fully than in the case of any of her novels. + +The aim of the poem is to show how hereditary race influences act as a +tragic element in opposition to individual emotions and inclinations. The +teaching of _Romola_ is much of it reproduced, at least that portion of it +which inculcates renunciation and altruism. Its distinguishing features, +however, more nearly resemble those of _Daniel Deronda_. The race element +is introduced, and the effect of the past is shown as it forms character +and gives direction to duties. One phase of its meaning has been very +clearly described by Mr. R.H. Hutton, who says the poem teaches "how the +inheritance of the definite streams of impulse and tradition stored up in +what we call race, often puts a veto upon any attempt of spontaneous +individual emotion or volitions to ignore or defy their Control, and to +emancipate itself from the tyranny of their disputable and apparently cruel +rule." "How the threads," he says again, "of hereditary capacity and +hereditary sentiment control as with invisible chords the orbits of even +the most powerful characters,--how the fracture of those threads, so far as +can be accomplished by mere _will_, may have even a greater effect in +wrecking character than moral degeneracy would itself produce,--how the man +who trusts and uses the hereditary forces which natural descent has +bestowed upon him, becomes a might and a centre in the world, while the +man, intrinsically the nobler, who dissipates his strength by trying to +swim against the stream of his past, is neutralized and paralyzed by the +vain effort,--again, how a divided past, a past not really homogeneous, may +weaken this kind of power, instead of strengthening it by the command of a +larger experience--all this George Eliot's poem paints with tragical +force." + +The main thought of _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, that the moral and spiritual in +man is the result of social conditions which, if neglected, lead to the +destruction of all that is best in human nature. In the description of Mine +Host, in the opening pages of the poem, this evil result of a severing of +life from tradition is described. He was educated in the Jewish faith, but +was made a Christian at the age of ten. + + So he had to be converted with his sire, + To doff the awe he learned as Ephriam, + And suit his manners to a Christian name. + +The poet then delivers one of her doctrinal utterances, and one which is in +this case the keynote of the whole poem. + + But infant awe, that unborn moving thing, + Dies with what nourished it, can never rise + From the dead womb and walk and seek new pasture. + +That awe which grows up in childhood, if destroyed later, brings anarchy +into human life. All the characters of the poem exemplify this teaching, +and each is but a product of his past, individual or social. Don Silva, +Zarca, Fedalma, the Prior, Sephardo, illustrate this idea. The latter gives +utterance to the thought of the poem, when Don Silva says to him that he +has need of a friend who is not tied to sect or party, but who is capable +of following his "naked manhood" into what is just and right, without +regard to other considerations. + + My lord, I will be frank; there's no such thing + As naked manhood. If the stars look down + On any mortal of our shape, whose strength + Is to judge all things without preference, + He is a monster, not a faithful man. + While my heart beats, it shall wear livery-- + My people's livery, whose yellow badge + Marks them for Christian scorn. I will not say + Man is first man to me, then Jew or Gentile: + That suits the rich _marranos_; but to me + My father is first father and then man. + So much for frankness' sake. But let that pass. + 'Tis true at least, I am no Catholic + But Salomo Sephardo, a born Jew, + Willing to serve Don Silva. + +[Footnote: In a note George Eliot gives the following explanation of the +word _marranos_: "The name given by the Spanish Jews to the multitudes of +their race converted to Christianity at the end of the fourteenth century +and beginning of the fifteenth. The lofty derivation from _Maran-atha_, the +Lord cometh, seems hardly called for, seeing that _marrano_ is Spanish for +_pig_. The 'old Christians' learned to use the word as a term of contempt +for the 'new Christians,' or converted Jews and their descendants; but not +too monotonously, for they often interchanged it with the fine old crusted +opprobrium of the name _Jew_. Still, many Marranos held the highest +secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and were respected +accordingly."] + +In the conversation between Don Silva and this uncle, the Prior expresses +in the strongest language his conviction that Fedalma will in time reveal +her gypsy blood, and that any rejection on the part of Don Silva of the +life assigned him by his birth will end in sorrow and misery. When Don +Silva declares his intention of following his own inclinations the Prior +answers,-- + + Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength + Of fallen angels. Can you change your blood? + You are a Christian, with the Christian awe + In every vein. A Spanish noble, born + To serve your people and your people's faith. + Strong, are you? Turn your back upon the Cross-- + Its shadow is before you. Leave your place: + Quit the great ranks of knighthood: you will walk + Forever with a tortured double self, + A self that will be hungry while you feast, + Will blush with shame while you are glorified, + Will feel the ache and chill of desolation + Even in the very bosom of your love. + +This eloquent expostulation against rejection of any of those ties and +obligations imposed by birth and race is repeated again in the plea of +Zarca to his daughter, when he urges that there is no life and joy for +Fedalma apart from that race to which she belongs and those social +conditions which gave her mind its characteristics. + + Will you adopt a soul without its thoughts, + Or grasp a life apart from flesh and blood? + Till then you cannot wed a Spanish Duke + And not wed shame at mention of your race, + And not wed hardness to their miseries-- + Nay, wed not murder. + +Zarca and the Prior are each faithful to race, religion and social +tradition. Each knows his duty, is content with the opportunities given him +by social inheritance, is thoroughly in harmony with his own past. Both are +consequently strong, resolute, successful. Zarca is a grand character, and +though a hero in a nation of vagabonds, he wholly identifies himself with +his people and accepts their destiny as his own. The Prior is a haughty +Spanish Churchman, who has inherited all the traits of a noble family, and +is proud of his priestly functions. + +In the case of Don Silva and Fedalma there is a conflict between love and +race. The one is a Spanish nobleman, the other the daughter of a Zincala +chief. Yet they love, and feel that no outward circumstances are sufficient +to separate them. This verdict of their hearts is the verdict of mankind in +all ages; but it is not the one arrived at by George Eliot in obedience to +her philosophy. The reasons why these two should not wed grew entirely out +of the social circumstances of the time. An English nobleman of to-day +could marry such a woman as Fedalma without social or other loss. The +capacities of soul are superior to conditions of race. Virtue and genius do +not depend on social circumstances. Yet _The Spanish Gypsy_ has for its +motive the attempt to prove that the life of tradition and inheritance is +the one which provides all our moral and social and religious obligations. +In conformity with this theory the conflict of the poem arises, because Don +Silva is not in intellectual harmony with his own character. A thoughtful, +fastidious, sensitive soul was his, not resolute and concentrated in +purpose, He was no bigot, could not be content with any narrow aim, saw +good on many sides. + + A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious + In his acceptance, dreading all delight + That speedy dies and turns to carrion: + His senses much exacting, deep instilled + With keen imagination's airy needs;-- + Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes, + Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision, + Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream + Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed + With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart. + Silva was both the lion and the man; + First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang, + Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed + And loosed the prize, paying his blood for naught. + A nature half-transformed, with qualities + That oft betrayed each other, elements + Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, + Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. + Haughty and generous, grave and passionate; + With tidal moments of devoutest awe, + Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt; + Deliberating ever, till the sting + Of a recurrent ardor made him rush + Right against reasons that himself had drilled + And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed + Too proudly special for obedience, + Too subtly pondering for mastery: + Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, + Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity, + Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness + And perilous heightening of the sentient soul. + +Too noble and generous to accept the narrow views of his uncle, Don Silva +insisted on marrying Fedalma, because he loved her and because she was a +pure and true woman. He had a poet's nature, was sensitive to all beauty, +and his heart vibrated to all ideal excellence. His love became to him a +thing apart, a sacred shrine; and Fedalma was made one with all joy and +beauty. + + He thought all loveliness was lovelier, + She crowning it; all goodness credible, + Because of that great trust her goodness bred. + +His love gave a delicious content and melody to his day dreams. + + + O, all comforters, + All soothing things that bring mild ecstasy, + Came with her coming, in her presence lived. + Spring afternoons, when delicate shadows fall + Pencilled upon the grass; high summer morns + When white light rains upon the quiet sea + And cornfields flush with ripeness; odors soft-- + Dumb vagrant bliss that seems to seek a home + And find it deep within 'mid stirrings vague + Of far-off moments when our life was fresh; + All sweetly tempered music, gentle change + Of sound, form, color, as on wide lagoons + At sunset when from black far-floating prows + Comes a clear wafted song; all exquisite joy + Of a subdued desire, like some strong stream + Made placid in the fulness of a lake-- + All came with her sweet presence, for she brought + The love supreme which gathers to its realm + All powers of loving. Subtle nature's hand + Waked with a touch the far-linked harmonies + In her own manifold work. Fedalma there, + Fastidiousness became the prelude fine + For full contentment; and young melancholy, + Lost for its origin, seemed but the pain + Of waiting for that perfect happiness. + +So strong was Don Silva's love, so ardent his passion for Fedalma, that he +forsook all duties and social obligations and became a Zincala for her +sake. Yet once awakened to the real consequences of his act, he killed +Zarca and sought to regain by hard penances his lost knighthood. + +With Fedalma also love was an absorbing passion. The passionate devotion of +a woman is in her words. + + No ills on earth, though you should count them up + With grains to make a mountain, can outweigh + For me his ill who is my supreme love. + All sorrows else are but imagined flames, + Making me shudder at an unfelt smart; + But his imagined sorrow is a fire + That scorches me. + +With great earnestness she says she will-- + + Never forsake that chief half of her soul + Where lies her love. + +With what depth of love does she utter these words: + + I belong to him who loves me--whom I love-- + Who chose me--whom I chose--to whom I pledged + A woman's truth. And that is nature too, + Issuing a fresher law than laws of birth. + +Though her love is deep and passionate and full of a woman's devotedness, +the mark of race is set deep within her soul. The moment the claim of race +is brought clearly before her as the claim of duty, as the claim of father +and of kindred, she accepts it. Her love is not thrown hastily aside, for +she loves deeply and truly, and it tears her heart in sunder to renounce +it; but she is faithful to duty. Her love grows not less, loses none of its +hold upon her heart. + + No other crown + Is aught but thorns on my poor woman's brow. + +Hers is not a divided self, however; to see the way of duty with her, was +to follow in it. Her father's invincible will, courage and patient purpose +are her own by inheritance. Once realizing the claim of birth and race, she +does not falter, love is resolutely put aside, all delight in culture and +refinement becomes dross in her eyes. + + I will not count + On aught but being faithful. I will take + This yearning self of mine and strangle it. + I will not be half-hearted: never yet + Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul. + Die, my young joy--die, all my hungry hopes! + The milk you cry for from the breast of life + Is thick with curses. O, all fatness here + Snatches its meat from leanness--feeds on graves. + I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. + The saints were cowards who stood by to see + Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves + Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain-- + The grandest death, to die in vain--for love + Greater than sways the forces of the world! + That death shall be my bridegroom. I will wed + The curse that blights my people. Father, come! + +The poem distinctly teaches that Fedalma was strong, because the ties of +blood were strongly marked upon her mind and willingly accepted by her +intellect and conscience; while Don Silva was weak, because he did not +acknowledge those ties and accept their law. In the end, however, both +declare that the inherited life is the only one which gives joy or duty, +and that all individual aims and wishes are to be renounced. The closing +scene of this great poem is full of sadness, and yet is strong with moral +purpose. Don Silva and Fedalma meet for the last time, she on her way to +Africa with her tribe to find a home for it there, he on his way to Rome, +to seek the privilege of again using his knightly sword. Both are sad, both +feel that life has lost all its joy, both believe it is a bitter destiny +which divides them from the fulfilment of their love, and yet both are +convinced that love must be forsworn for a higher duty. Their last +conversation, opened by Don Silva, is full of power, and concentrates into +its last words the total meaning of the poem. + + I bring no puling prayer, Fedalma--ask + No balm of pardon that may soothe my soul + For others' bleeding wounds: I am not come + To say, "Forgive me:" you must not forgive, + For you must see me ever as I am-- + Your father's... + + FEDALMA. + + Speak it not! Calamity + Comes like a deluge and o'erfloods our crimes, + Till sin is hidden in woe. You--I--we two, + Grasping we knew not what, that seemed delight, + Opened the sluices of that deep. + + DON SILVA. + + We two?-- + Fedalma, you were blameless, helpless. + + FEDALMA. + + No! + It shall not be that you did aught alone. + For when we loved I willed to reign in you, + And I was jealous even of the day + If it could gladden you apart from me. + + And so, it must be that I shared each deed + Our love was root of. + + DON SILVA. + + Dear! you share the woe-- + Nay, the worst part of vengeance fell on you. + + FEDALMA. + + Vengeance! She does but sweep us with her skirts. + She takes large space, and lies a baleful light + Revolving with long years--sees children's children, + Blights them in their prime. Oh, if two lovers leane + To breathe one air and spread a pestilence, + They would but lie two livid victims dead + Amid the city of the dying. We + With our poor petty lives have strangled one + That ages watch for vainly. + + DON SILVA. + + Deep despair + Fills all your tones as with slow agony. + Speak words that narrow anguish to some shape: + Tell me what dread is close before you? + + FEDALMA. + + None. + No dread, but clear assurance of the end. + My father held within his mighty frame + A people's life: great futures died with him + Never to rise, until the time shall ripe + Some other hero with the will to save + The outcast Zincali. + + DON SILVA. + + And yet their shout-- + I heard it--sounded as the plenteous rush + Of full-fed sources, shaking their wild souls + With power that promised sway. + + FEDALMA. + + Ah yes, that shout + Came from full hearts: they meant obedience. + But they are orphaned: their poor childish feet + Are vagabond in spite of love, and stray + Forgetful after little lures. For me-- + I am but as the funeral urn that bears + The ashes of a leader. + + DON SILVA. + + O great God! + What am I but a miserable brand + Lit by mysterious wrath? I lie cast down + A blackened branch upon the desolate ground. + Where once I kindled ruin. I shall drink + No cup of purest water but will taste + Bitter with thy lone hopelessness, Fedalma. + + FEDALMA. + + Nay, Silva, think of me as one who sees + A light serene and strong on one sole path + Which she will tread till death... + He trusted me, and I will keep his trust: + My life shall be its temple. I will plant + His sacred hope within the sanctuary + And die its priestess--though I die alone, + A hoary woman on the altar-step, + Cold 'mid cold ashes. That is my chief good. + The deepest hunger of a faithful heart + Is faithfulness. Wish me naught else. And you-- + You too will live.... + + DON SILVA. + + I go to Rome, to seek + The right to use my knightly sword again; + The right to fill my place and live or die + So that all Spaniards shall not curse my name. + I sate one hour upon the barren rock + And longed to kill myself; but then I said, + I will not leave my name in infamy, + I will not be perpetual rottenness + Upon the Spaniard's air. If I must sink + At last to hell, I will not take my stand + Among the coward crew who could not bear + The harm themselves had done, which others bore. + My young life yet may fill some fatal breach, + And I will take no pardon, not my own, + Not God's--no pardon idly on my knees; + But it shall come to me upon my feet + And in the thick of action, and each deed + That carried shame and wrong shall be the sting + That drives me higher up the steep of honor + In deeds of duteous service to that Spain + Who nourished me on her expectant breast, + The heir of highest gifts. I will not fling + My earthly being down for carrion + To fill the air with loathing: I will be + The living prey of some fierce noble death + That leaps upon me while I move. Aloud + I said, "I will redeem my name," and then-- + I know not if aloud: I felt the words + Drinking up all my senses--"She still lives. + I would not quit the dear familiar earth + Where both of us behold the self-same sun, + Where there can be no strangeness 'twixt our thoughts + So deep as their communion." Resolute + I rose and walked.--Fedalma, think of me + As one who will regain the only life + Where he is other than apostate--one + Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows + Of Spanish knight and noble. But the breach-- + Outside those vows--the fatal second breach-- + Lies a dark gulf where I have naught to cast, + Not even expiation--poor pretence, + Which changes naught but what survives the past, + And raises not the dead. That deep dark gulf + Divide us. + + FEDALMA. + + Yes, forever. We must walk + Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite + Is our resolve that we will each be true + To high allegiance, higher than our love. + Our dear young love--its breath was happiness! + But it had grown upon a larger life + Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled-- + The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed; + For we shall carry each the pressure deep + Of the other's soul. I soon shall leave the shore. + The winds to-night will bear me far away. + My lord, farewell! + +What has been said of _The Spanish Gypsy_ applies very nearly as well to +all her other poems. They are thoughtful, philosophic, realistic; they are +sonorous in expression, stately in style, and of a diction eloquent and +beautiful. On the whole, the volume containing the shorter poems is a +poetical advance on _The Spanish Gypsy_, containing more genuine poetry, +more lyrical fire, and a greater proportion of humor, sympathy and passion. +They are carefully polished and refined; and yet that indefinable something +which marks the truest poetry is wanting. They are saturated with her +ideas, the flavor of her thought impregnates them all, with but two or +three exceptions. + +Her artistic conceptions are more fully developed in some of these poems +than in any of her novels, especially in "Armgart" and "The Legend of +Jubal." The special thought of "Armgart" is, that no artistic success is of +so much worth as a loving sympathy with others. The longing of Armgart was +to be-- + + a happy spiritual star + Such as old Dante saw, wrought in a rose + Of light in Paradise, whose only self + Was consciousness of glory wide-diffused, + Music, life, power--I moving in the midst + With a sublime necessity of good. + +Her ambition runs very high. + + May the day be near when men + Think much to let my horses draw me home, + And new lands welcome me upon their beach, + Loving me for my fame. That is the truth + Of what I wish, nay, yearn for. Shall I lie? + Pretend to seek obscurity--to sing + In hope of disregard? A vile pretence! + And blasphemy besides. For what is fame + But the benignant strength of One, transformed + To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come + As necessary breathing of such joy; + And may they come to me! + +Armgart is beloved of the Graf, and he tries to persuade her to abandon her +artistic career and become his wife. He says to her,-- + + A woman's rank + Lies in the fulness of her womanhood: + Therein alone she is loyal. + +Again he says to her,-- + + Pain had been saved, + Nay, purer glory reached, had you been throned + As woman only, holding all your art + As attribute to that dear sovereignty-- + Concentering your power in home delights + Which penetrate and purify the world. + +Armgart will not listen; her whole heart is enlisted in music. She says to +the Graf,-- + + I will live alone and pour my pain + With passion into music, where it turns + To what is best within my better self. + +A year later Armgart's throat has failed, and her career has ended in +nothing. Then her servant and friend, Walpurga, who has devoted her life to +Armgart, speaks that lesson George Eliot would convey in this little story, +that a true life is a life of service. Walpurga chides Armgart's false +ambition in these words: + + I but stand + As a small symbol for the mighty sum + Of claims unpaid to needy myriads; + I think you never set your loss beside + That mighty deficit. Is your work gone-- + The prouder queenly work that paid itself + And yet was overpaid with men's applause! + Are you no longer chartered, privileged, + But sunk to simple woman's penury, + To ruthless Nature's chary average-- + Where is the rebel's right for you alone? + Noble rebellion lifts a common load; + But what is he who flings his own load off + And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right? + Say, rather, the deserter's. + +Armgart learns from her master, the old and noble Leo, that he had also +been ambitious, that he had won only small success, and that he now lived +for the sake of the good he could do to those about him. He says to her,-- + + We must bury our dead joys, + And live above them with a living world. + +Then Armgart is brought to see that there is a noble privilege in living as +her friend has lived, in making music a joy to others, and in doing what +she can to make life better for humanity. + +There are two very distinct ideas running through the poem, that a life +guided by altruism is better than--a merely artistic life, and that woman +is to find in home and wedded joys that opportunity for the development of +her soul, without which no artistic career can be complete. The words of +the Graf speak George Eliot's own thought, that Armgart's life and her art +would have been both more perfect and more noble had she held all her art +as attribute to the dear sovereignty of affection. + +The same artistic conception pervades "The Legend of Jubal." That fame for +which Jubal also yearns comes to him, he is taught, in the good which he +leaves behind him for humanity to enjoy. He dies, and ceases to be as a +personal being. At least this may be inferred from the concluding lines. + + Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, + The All-creating Presence for his grave. + +A _sun-wave_ while living, his being is now _quenched_. But he lives on in +the life of the race, lives on in man's joy of music, in the deeper life +which music awakens in all bosoms through all ages. He is told that he has +no need of-- + + aught else for share + Of mortal good, than in his soul to bear + The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest + Of the world's springtide in his conscious breast. + +His own loved Past says to him,-- + + This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, + And that immeasurable life to know + From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead, + A seed primeval that has forests bred. + +This poem views death as positivism conceives it, and gives a poetic +interpretation of that subjective immortality, or that immortality in the +race, in which George Eliot so heartily believed. No other artistic +presentation of this theory has ever been made which equals that given in +this poem, and in the one beginning, "O may I join the choir invisible." +This latter poem is not only beautiful in itself, but it has made altruism +attractive and lovely. Its tone of thought is elevated, its spirit lofty +and noble, and its ideal pure and gracious. All that can be said to make +altruism lovely and winning, to inspire men with its spirit and motive, is +here said. The thought presented in these two poems is repeated in "The +Death of Moses." Here we have Moses living forever in the human influence +he created. + + He dwells not with you dead, but lives as Law. + +For her ideas about resignation we must turn to the pages of _The Mill on +the Floss and Romola_, for those about heredity and the past to _The +Spanish Gypsy_ and _Daniel Deronda_; but in these shorter poems she has +completely unfolded the positivist conception, as she accepted it, of death +and immortality. The degree to which she was moved and inspired by this +belief in an immortality in humanity is seen in the greater ardor and +poetic merit of these poems than any others she wrote. + +It is interesting to note that she introduces music into "The Legend of +Jubal" and "Armgart". It was the art she most loved. She even said that if +she could possess the power most satisfactory to her heart, it would be +that of making music the instrument of the homage which the great +performers secure. Yet she teaches in "Armgart" that there is a power +higher than this, the power of affectionate service. Her books are full of +the praise of music. She makes Maggie Tulliver express her own delight in +it. + + "I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have + plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas + into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled + with music." + +In _Adam Bede_ she becomes most poetic when extolling the power of +exquisite music to work on the soul. + + To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your + soul, the delicate fibres of life wherein memory can penetrate, and + binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable + vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the + love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating + in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt + lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with + past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy. + +In the "Minor Prophet" is to be found George Eliot's theory of progress. +That poem also repeats her faith in common humanity, and gives new emphasis +to her joy in the common toils and affections of men. In the "College +Breakfast Party" and "Self and Life," her thoughts take a more truly +philosophic form than in any of her other poems, but the first of these is +the poorest piece of poetic work she gave to the public. Nothing new in the +way of teaching appears in these or her other poems. + +George Eliot is the poet of positivism. What is beautiful, touching and +inspiring in that conception of the world she has sung, and in as poetic a +manner as that philosophy is ever likely to inspire. Her poetry is full of +the thoughts and sentiments of the time. It reflects the mood of her +generation. Prof. Sidney Colvin has truly said that "there is nothing in +the literature of the day so rousing--to the mind of the day there is +scarcely anything so rousing in all literature--as her writing is. What she +writes is full of her time. It is full of observation, imagination, pathos, +wit and humor, all of a high class in themselves; but what is more, all +saturated with modern ideas poured into a language of which every word +bites home with peculiar sharpness to the contemporary consciousness." This +is true even more of her poetry than of her prose. That poetry lacks where +the age lacks, in true poetic quality. The ideal, the breath of eternal +spring, is not in it. + + + + +XVIII. + + +LATER ESSAYS. + +The later essays of George Eliot have the same characteristics as the +earlier ones, and are mainly of interest because they furnish additional +evidences of her philosophical, ethical and political opinions. While they +indicate the profound thoughtfulness of her mind, her deep concern about +the largest problems of human existence, and her rare ethical tone and +purpose, they add little or nothing to her literary reputation. It is very +plain that while George Eliot was not a poet in the largest, truest sense, +she was still less an essayist in that genial, widely sympathetic sense +which has adorned English literature with so many noble books of comment on +the foibles and the virtues of man. Her manner is heavy, her thoughts +philosophical, her purpose doctrinal: and the result is far from +satisfactory to the lover of fine essay-writing. + +She needs the glow of her imagination, the depth of her emotions, to +relieve and lighten the burden of her thoughts. But in her essays she is +less wise, less racy and expressive, than in the didactic passages of her +novels. She could best make her comment on the ways of life while +describing a character or studying an action. These additions to her +narrative and conversation are, to the thoughtful reader, among the best +portions of her novels, for they give meaning to all the rest, and throw a +flood of light on the hidden facts of life. She is never so great, so wise, +so profoundly inspired by her theme, as in many of these passages. + +There is need, however, in her case, of the large surrounding life of her +novels in order to draw out this wisdom and inspiration. Her essays lack in +the fine sentiment and the fervid eloquence of the chorus-utterances in her +novels. They give little evidence that she would have attained to great +things had she followed the early purpose of her life. In view of what she +has written in the shape of essays, no one can regret that she confined her +chief efforts to her imaginative prose creations. Yet her essays have a +special value on account of their subjects, and they will be read by many +with a hearty appreciation, simply because they were George Eliot's. No one +thoroughly interested in the work done by the great realistic novelist can +afford to overlook her essays, even if they do not nearly touch the highest +mark in their kind. + +After she began her career as a novelist George Eliot wrote about twenty +essays, nearly all of which are included in her last book, _Impressions of +Theophrastus Such_. Previous to this, however, she had published in the +first number of the _Fortnightly Review_, issued May 15, 1865, and edited +by Lewes, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in review of Mr. +W.H. Lecky's book on that subject. A year after the appearance of _Felix +Holt_ she wrote out her views on the subject of political reform, in the +shape of an "Address to Workingmen by Felix Holt," which appeared in +_Blackwood's Magazine_ for January, 1868. These essays are significant, +because of the light they afford concerning the author's views on religious +and political subjects. The first is a piece of thorough reviewing, and +shows what George Eliot might have done in that direction. She is a +merciless critic, and yet one inclined to appreciate all that is best in an +author. Her sympathies with positivism and with the "scientific method" in +philosophy find expression in the pages of this essay. In it she gives a +most expressive utterance to her ideas about the universality of law and +the influence of tradition. Her point of view is so antagonistic to Mr, +Lecky's that she does not do full justice to his work. His idealism is +repugnant to her, and he does not give prominence enough to please her to +those positivist influences in which she so strongly believed. Her +dissatisfaction with his idealism appears in her very first words. + + There is a valuable class of books on great subjects which have + something of the character and functions of good popular lecturing. + They are not original, not subtle, not of close logical texture, not + exquisite either in thought or style; but by virtue of these negatives + they are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence. They have + enough of organizing purpose in them to make their facts illustrative, + and to leave a distinct result in the mind even when most of the facts + are forgotten; and they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in + their theory to win them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. The + vagueness and vacillation are not devices of timidity; they are the + honest result of the writer's own mental character, which adapts him to + be the instructor and the favorite of "the general reader." For the + most part, the general reader of the present day does not exactly know + what distance he goes; he only knows that he does not go "too far." Of + any remarkable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he + likes to have it said "that his errors are to be deplored." leaving it + not too certain what those errors are; he is fond of what may be called + disembodied opinions, that float in vapory phrases above all systems of + thought or action; he likes an undefined Christianity which opposes + itself to nothing in particular, an undefined education of the people, + an undefined amelioration of all things: in fact, he likes sound + views--nothing extreme, but something between the excesses of the past + and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader + may be known in conversation by the cordiality with which he assents to + indistinct, blurred statements. Say that black is black, he will shake + his head and hardly think it; say that black is not so very black, he + will reply, "Exactly." He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to + get up at a public meeting and express his conviction that at times, + and within certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be + equal; but, on the other hand, he would urge that the spirit of + geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry + against any clearly defined opinion; not in the least based on a + scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought--a + spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one + thing he is staunch for is the utmost liberty of private haziness. + + But precisely these characteristics of the general reader, rendering + him incapable of assimilating ideas unless they are administered in a + highly diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that there are + clever, fair-minded men who will write books for him--men very much + above him in knowledge and ability, but not too remote from him in + their habits of thinking, and who can thus prepare for him infusions + of history and science that will leave some solidifying deposit, and + save him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skeleton. Among + such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky's _History of the Rise and + Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_ entitles him to a + high place. He has prepared himself for its production by an unusual + amount of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and quotations + with much judgment; and he gives proof of those important moral + qualifications, impartiality, seriousness and modesty. This praise is + chiefly applicable to the long chapter on the history of Magic and + Witchcraft, and to the two chapters on the antecedents and history of + Persecution. + +A further evidence of her wide culture and reading, and of her large +critical ability, may also be found in the first number of the _Fortnightly +Review_, for which she wrote the first of the "notices of new books" which +it published. This was a review of Mr. Owen Jones's _Grammar of Ornament_. +The author was one of her friends, and the decorator of the rooms in which +her Sunday receptions were held. She praised the book very highly. The +first paragraph of this notice betrays her appreciation of the aesthetic +movement in England, and her sympathy with its objects and spirit. The +moral value of aesthetic influences is characteristically expressed. The +influence of the environment, as she understood it, is here seen. The +largeness of her faith in the moral efficiency of material causes is +nowhere so strongly expressed by her as in the words which follow. + + The inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufelsdröckh, was + disbanding hired armies, cashiering most kings and senates, and + creating a whole new democratic world. Has any one yet said what great + things are being done by the men who are trying to banish ugliness + from our streets and our homes, and to make both the outside and the + inside of our dwellings worthy of a world where there are forests, and + flower-tressed meadows, and the plumage of birds; where the insects + carry lessons of color on their wings, and even the surface of a + stagnant pool will show us the wonders of iridescence and the most + delicate forms of leafage? They, too, are modifying opinions, for they + are modifying men's moods and habits, which are the mothers of + opinions, having quite as much to do with their formation as the + responsible father--Reason. Think of certain hideous manufacturing + towns where the piety is chiefly a belief in copious perdition, and + the pleasure is chiefly gin. The dingy surface of wall pierced by the + ugliest windows, the staring shop-fronts, paper-hangings, carpets, + brass and gilt mouldings, and advertising placards, have an effect + akin to that of malaria; it is easy to understand that with such + surroundings there is more belief in cruelty than in beneficence, and + that the best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external + senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is + taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle + relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids + that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our + intellectual discernment; and--more than that--as it is probable that + fine musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily + organization, it is also probable that just coloring and lovely + combinations of lines may be necessary to the complete well-being of + our systems, apart from any conscious delight in them. A savage may + indulge in discordant chuckles and shrieks and gutturals, and think + that they please the gods, but it does not follow that his frame would + not be favorably wrought upon by the vibrations of a grand church + organ. One sees a person capable of choosing the worst style of + wall-paper become suddenly afflicted by its ugliness under an attack of + illness. And if an evil state of blood and lymph usually goes along + with an evil state of mind, who shall say that the ugliness of our + streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the vulgarity of our + upholstery, have not something to do with those bad tempers which + breed false conclusions? + +The address to workingmen which George Eliot put into the mouth of Felix +Holt is a suggestive and valuable piece of political writing. Tradition is +therein presented as a moral and political influence. The spiritual +treasures mankind possesses she says are the products of tradition, and +these must be preserved. This can be done only by keeping the old +institutions and forms until they can be organically supplanted by others. +All the various portions of society are mutually dependent, and the +destruction of any one of them will be to the injury of all. This she says +to workingmen as a reason why they should not antagonize the social orders +above them, whose work is as important as their own. The organs of society +are the various social classes of which it is composed, and society is to +be improved by turning class interests into the functions by which Humanity +is to be developed. The spiritual treasures of the past are only to be +preserved by order and good government; hence all revolutionary methods are +suicidal. Life is to be advanced by giving social influence into the hands +of the wisest. True principles must regulate society, and these George +Eliot would have rest on science and altruism. + +Such are some of the ideas of this remarkable essay, one of the most +suggestive and instructive of all she wrote. The emphasis she laid on +retribution, tradition, heredity and duties appears here in all its force. +Perhaps nothing else she wrote so clearly brings out some of the +characteristics of her mind. Her intense distrust of individualism does not +permit her to say a single word of the _rights_ of the laboring classes. +The right of rebellion and revolution is totally disregarded, rather it is +not recognized that any rights whatever exist. The workingman is not to +think of himself or his class, but of society and humanity; he is to become +an altruistic worker for the common good. While this is fine in theory, yet +history indicates that the aristocratic classes have yielded to the broader +social spirit only when they have been compelled to do so. The concessions +must come from above, not from beneath. George Eliot's political +philosophy, if carried into actual life, would keep the proletariate where +they are, and strengthen the social power of the aristocratic classes. +These words may indicate the drift of the essay: + + But I come back to this: that, in our old society there are old + institutions, and among them the various distinctions and inherited + advantages of classes, which have shaped themselves along with all the + wonderful slow-growing system of things made up of our laws, our + commerce and our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, such + as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, such as scientific thought + and professional skill. Just as in that case I spoke of before, the + irrigation of a country, which must absolutely have its water + distributed or it will bear no crop; these are the old channels, the + old banks and the old pumps, which must be used as they are until new + and better have been prepared, or the structure of the old has been + gradually altered. But it would be fool's work to batter down a pump + only because a better might be made, when you have no machinery ready + for a new one: it would be wicked work, if villages lost their crops by + it. Now the only safe way by which society can be steadily improved and + our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt to do away directly with + the actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if + everybody could have the same sort of work or lead the same sort of + life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by + turning of Class Interests into Class Functions or duties. What I mean + is, that each class should be urged by the surrounding conditions to + perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility + to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a + state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless + conduct. In this way, the public judgment would sift out incapability + and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition + would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the + most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions of those + around them: and for one person to put on a cap and bells, or to go + about dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast + sum of money in having more finery than his neighbors, he must be + pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. Now changes can only be + good in proportion as they help to bring about this sort of result: + in proportion as they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and + fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course of + substitution class distinctions must inevitably change their character, + and represent the varying Duties of men, not their varying Interests. + But this end will not come by impatience. "Day will not break the + sooner because we get up before the twilight." Still less will it come + by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we + believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the + franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in + magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the + franchise will greatly hasten that good end in proportion only as every + one of us has the knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will + make him well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nature of + things in this world has been determined for us beforehand, and in such + a way that no ship can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage, + and reach the right port, unless it is well-manned: the nature of the + winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails and the cordage, will + not accommodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors. + + You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of + joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way and need not + be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, + the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so + that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may + be given to this society of ours, this living body in which our lives + are bound up. After the Reform Bill of 1832, I was in an election riot, + which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what public disorder must + always be; and I have never forgotten that the riot was brought about + chiefly by the agency of dishonest men who professed to be on the + people's side. Now the danger hanging over change is great, just in + proportion as it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large + number of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low and + brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their hands and + may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look round us and say + that he sees no signs of any such danger now, and that our national + condition is running along like a clear broadening stream, safe not to + get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful man; perhaps he does his own + gardening, and seldom takes exercise far away from home. To us who have + no gardens, and often walk abroad, it is plain that we can never get + into a bit of a crowd but we must rub clothes with a set of roughs, who + have the worst vices of the worst rich--who are gamblers, sots, + libertines, knaves, or else mere sensual simpletons and victims. They + are the ugly crop that has sprung up while the stewards have been + sleeping; they are the multiplying brood begotten by parents who have + been left without all teaching save that of a too-craving body, without + all well-being save the fading delusions of drugged beer and gin. They + are the hideous margin of society, at one edge drawing towards it the + undesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening imperceptibly into + the lowest criminal class. Here is one of the evils which cannot be got + rid of quickly, and against which any of us who have got sense, decency + and instruction have need to watch. That these degraded fellow-men + could really get the mastery in a persistent disobedience to the laws + and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not believe; but wretched + calamities would come from the very beginning of such a struggle, and + the continuance of it would be a civil war, in which the inspiration on + both sides might soon cease to be even a false notion of good, and + might become the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have all to see + to it that we do not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in + the breasts of our generation--that we do not help to poison the + nation's blood, and make richer provision for bestiality to come. We + know well enough that oppressors have sinned in this way--that + oppression has notoriously made men mad; and we are determined to + resist oppression. But let us, if possible, show that we can keep sane + in our resistance, and shape our means more and more reasonably towards + the least harmful, and therefore the speediest, attainment of our end. + Let us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to be driven mad, + but can keep that sober determination which alone gives mastery over + the adaptation of means. And a first guarantee of this sanity will be + to act as if we understood that the fundamental duty of a government is + to preserve order, to enforce obedience of the laws. It has been held + hitherto that a man can be depended on as a guardian of order only when + he has much money and comfort to lose. But a better state of things + would be, that men who had little money and not much comfort should + still be guardians of order, because they had sense to see that + disorder would do no good, and had a heart of justice, pity and + fortitude to keep them from making more misery only because they felt + some misery themselves. There are thousands of artisans who have + already shown this fine spirit, and have endured much with patient + heroism. If such a spirit spread and penetrated us all, we should soon + become the masters of the country in the best sense and to the best + ends. For, the public order being preserved, there can be no government + in future that will not be determined by our insistence on our fair and + practicable demands. It is only by disorder that our demands will be + choked, that we shall find ourselves lost amongst a brutal rabble, with + all the intelligence of the country opposed to us, and see government + in the shape of guns that will sweep us down in the ignoble martyrdom + of fools. + +The eighteen essays published as the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ +purport to have been the work of a bachelor of singular habits and tastes, +who had written a book which proved a failure, and who left this volume to +appear posthumously. He had been in the habit of giving an account to +himself of the characters he met with, and he begins his book by describing +his own weaknesses. He classes himself as one of the blunderers he would +portray, as having the faults and foibles he finds in others. Expressively +the author says, "If the human race has a bad reputation, I perceive that I +cannot escape being compromised." This may be taken as the sentiment of +George Eliot herself; and it is she who really speaks in these words +concerning the satirical criticisms of those she describes: + + If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your + labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous + adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavors in a rashly chosen + part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately + I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that + I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?--for even what + we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or + shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we can think of + exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. + +After the second essay Theophrastus disappears, and no further hint is +given that it is he who is the reputed author. This slight fictitious +machinery is too weak to carry the load put upon it. The reader soon feels +that it is George Eliot who is talking, and the opinions put forth, the +sentiments expressed, are recognized as her own. Indeed, it would have been +better, so the reader may probably come to say to himself, if this +attempted disguise had been entirely dispensed with. By the time he has +reached the sixth essay, "Only Temper," the discerning reader, familiar +with George Eliot's books, will be ready to affirm that this is no other +than the author herself speaking very frankly and finely her own +sentiments. In this essay the moral temper of her mind appears, and her +strong inclination to subordinate the individual to the social requirements +of life. + +These papers are modelled on those of the great essay-making period in +English literature. Old-fashioned names are adopted, which have a greater +or less significance in connection with the purpose of the essay. The man +with the excitable temper is called Touchwood, while the man who slides +into a deferential acceptance of opinions made for him is Mixtus. This +method of the old essayists seems antiquated, cumbersome and unsuitable to +the subjects discussed. The persons described lose their individuality by +its use, and the reader forgets that they were meant to be creatures of +flesh and blood. For the most part, they are mere abstractions, mere +figures of straw, to be knocked over by the ingenious pen of the author. +Some special fault or sin is given the name of a personality, but it is too +much isolated from actual existence to produce the impression of a living +thing. + +These essays much resemble occasional chapters in her novels, and might +have been studies for a new work. They are studies simply, done with a fine +skill and polish, but fragmentary. The large setting of her novels is +needed to give them relief and proportion. They disappoint as they are, for +the satire is too apparent, and we do not see these characters in action, +where their follies would obtain for them a more living interest. They are +studies of individual character, portraying types of social and literary +weakness, such as may have come under George Eliot's observation. They are +careful dissections of motives and conduct, and full of a minute analysis +of the moral and intellectual nature of her characters. There is abundance +of candid criticism, shrewd observation and compressed wisdom of statement. +Occasionally she is at her very best; but she uses many long, cumbersome +sentences, the satire is too harsh and the wisdom too unwieldy. Her +sympathy, love, pathos and pity are not so apparent as in her novels; she +takes less delight in these creations, and evidently created them for +purposes of dissection. She is never so weak in her other writings as in +these essays, so wanting in genius and large-heartedness. She scourges many +of the intellectual follies of the time, the conceit of culture, the pride +of literature, and the narrowness of politics; but in most of the essays +this is all. + +The artistic conception of the book is too slight and fragmentary, and it +gives the impression of being unfinished in execution and desultory in +purpose. Yet there is in it much of fine feeling, pure sentiment, lively +satire and apt wisdom. Sometimes the thought is labored; but there is a +wealth of clear-cut conviction, strong thoughts and rich experience. There +is force in the arguments, richness of ideas throughout, and a wonderful +aptness of allusion and illustration. Her culture and learning are +everywhere apparent in the fine perception of the most exact analogies and +in the ease with which she brings science to the support of morals. Those +of her admirers who come closest to her spirit, thoroughly appreciate her +ideas, and delight in them, will read this book with satisfaction, and feel +thankful that she wrote it. No one who would know the mind of George Eliot +can afford to overlook it. + +When George Eliot writes on subjects involving a moral purpose or ideal, +she is always wise and interesting. When, however, she attempts to satirize +some weakness or laugh at some folly, she is not always successful. Rich as +may be the satire and the wit of her novels, both are often heavy and dull +in her essays. + +The greater number of essays in this volume are devoted to the analysis of +special types of character, but a few are given to moral problems. These +latter are of the more interest and value, and they present some new +discussions of those problems with which George Eliot was so much +fascinated. Her earnest faith in altruism, realism, tradition, natural +retribution and the social value of morality, is as distinct here as in her +novels or poems. In the essay on "False Testimonials" she gives a good +realistic definition of imagination, which she says is "always based on a +keen vision, a keen consciousness of what is, and carries the store of +definite knowledge as material for the construction of its inward visions." +She is no realist, however, in the sense of confining poetry merely to a +photographic picture of outward nature. She accepts Dante as a genuine +realist, for "he is at once the most precise and homely in his reproduction +of actual objects, and the most soaringly at large in his imaginative +combinations." She would have faithfulness to facts, but no limitation of +vision; she would have the imagings exact and legitimate, but she would +give our moral and intellectual insights no narrow bounds. Her realism is +well defined when she criticises one of those persons who take mere fancy +for imagination, to whom all facts are unworthy of recognition. + +In at least two of these essays, those on "Debasing the Moral Currency" and +"The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" she has newly expressed herself concerning +tradition. In the first she protests against the too-common custom of +satirizing what is noble and venerable. Our need of faith in the higher +things of life is very great, and that faith is to be established only +through our regard for what has been given us by those who have gone before +us. Whatever lowers our trust in the results of human efforts is +corrupting, for it breaks down our faith in the true sources of human +authority. "This is what I call debasing the moral currency," she says; +"lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition so that it will +command less and less of the spiritual products, the generous motives which +sustain the charm and elevation of our social existence--the something +besides bread by which man saves his soul alive." With her conception of +tradition, as the legitimate source of the moral and spiritual life in man, +and as the influence which builds up all which is truest and purest in our +civilization, she can endure to see no contempt put upon its products. This +essay, more perhaps than anything else she wrote, gives an insight into her +conception of the higher life and her total lack of faith in any idealistic +sources of human motive or inspiration. Contempt for the traditional, with +her, implies contempt for the spiritual and moral. To destroy the +traditional is revolutionary, dangerous and immoral. She cannot reject +tradition in the name of higher wisdom, in the name of higher truth and +authority. It gone, and all is gone; hence her fear of all iconoclastic and +revolutionary methods. So she would keep whole and pure the national +memories of every people. In the last essay of the book she says, "The +preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national +greatness, and their revival a sign of reviving nationality." It is "the +divine gift of memory" as it expresses itself in the life and purposes of a +people, "which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, +and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the +brutes." All which lowers the influence or the sacredness of this memory is +debasing. The corrupting of this memory "is the impoverishment that +threatens our posterity;" and this "new famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd +grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our +human sentiments." That eager yearning of the nineteenth century for truth +and reality, for something more than traditions and national memories, +which displays itself in reforms and revolutions of every kind, had little +of George Eliot's sympathy. Yet this spirit is stronger even than +tradition, and creates for us a new world and a higher life. + +Throughout these essays it is the social side of morality which is praised +and commended. What will increase the altruistic spirit, what will widen +sympathy and helpfulness, is regarded as truly ethical in its import. Ideal +aims are brought to the level of present needs and the possibilities of +human nature as it now exists. + + Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the + highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that + touches the mixed life of the earth. They are archangels with awful + brow and flaming sword, summoning and encouraging us to do the right + and the divinely heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their + presence; but to learn what it is they summon us to do, we have to + consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and + our own appetites.... On the whole, and in the vast majority of + instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of + the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries. + A sour father may reform prisons, but considered in his sourness he + does harm. + +In another essay, that entitled "Only Temper," the social side of morality +is again presented. Especially does it appear in that on "Moral Swindlers." +"Let us refuse to accept as moral," says George Eliot, "any political +leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be +determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less +immoral even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert +Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme +in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous +impartiality." George Eliot is almost without exception sound and just in +her moral judgments, but here her theories have made her overlook the true +conditions of a moral life. + + Seeing that Morality and Morals under their _alias_ of Ethics are the + subject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis a pressing + matter of dispute--seeing that the most famous book ever written on + Ethics, and forming a chief study in our colleges, allies ethical with + political science, or that which treats of the constitution and + prosperity of States, one might expect that educated men would find + reason to avoid a perversion of language which lends itself' to no + wider view of life than that of village gossips. Yet I find even + respectable historians of our own and of foreign countries, after + showing that a king was treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction + gross breaches in the administration of justice, end by praising him + for his pure moral character, by which one must suppose them to mean + that he was not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin of the + typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in + chewing bang and fondling dancing-girls. And since we are sometimes + told of such maleficent kings that they were religious, we arrive at + the curious result that the most serious wide-reaching duties of man + lie quite outside both Morality and Religion--the one of these + consisting in not keeping mistresses (and perhaps not drinking too + much), and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with + God which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest + conduct toward men. With such a classification as this, it is no + wonder, considering the strong re-action of language on thought, that + many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, + are fain to seek for the grounds of social duty; and without + entertaining any private intention of committing a perjury which would + ruin an innocent man, or seeking gain by supplying bad preserved meats + to our navy, feel themselves speculatively obliged to inquire why they + should not do so, and are inclined to measure their intellectual + subtlety by their dissatisfaction with all answers to this "Why?" + +It would be quite impossible for George Eliot to write an essay without +some fresh thought or some new suggestion. To those who admire her genius +and are in sympathy with her teachings this volume will have a special +interest. Its few essays which touch upon moral or speculative subjects are +of the utmost value as interpretations of her life and thought. + +All her essays, the later as the earlier, are mainly of interest as aids to +an understanding of her philosophy. Nothing is worthless which helps us +clearly to comprehend an original mind. + + + + +XIX. + + +THE ANALYTIC METHOD. + +George Eliot's literary method was that of Fielding and Thackeray, both of +whom evidently influenced her manner. Their realism, and especially their +method of comment and moral observation, she made her own. She had little +sympathy with the romanticism of Scott or the idealism of Dickens. Her +moral aims, her intense faith in altruism, kept her from making her art a +mere process of photographing nature. Nature always had a moral meaning to +her, a meaning in reference to man's happiness and health of soul; and that +moral bearing of all human experiences gave dignity and purpose to her art. + +It was the method of Scott to present the romantic, picturesque and poetic +side of life. He was not untrue to nature, but he cared more for beauty and +sentiment than for fact. He sometimes perverted the historic incidents he +made use of, but he caught the spirit of the time with which he was dealing +with absolute fidelity. In this capacity for historic interpretation he +surpassed George Eliot, who had not his instinctive insight into the past. +Scott had no theory about the past, no philosophy of history was known to +him; but above all novelists he had the power to see by the light of other +days, and to make the dead times live again. Not George Eliot and not +Thackeray was his rival in this historic insight and poetic power of +interpretation; and his superior success was due not only to his peculiar +genius but also to his romanticism. Scott failed where George Eliot +succeeded, in giving an intellectual interpretation of life. With certain +social and moral tendencies he was clearly at home. On its side of +adventure and social impulse and craving for a wider life, as a single +instance of his power, he was a true interpreter of the age of Elizabeth. +Its deeper spirit, its intellectual movements, he did not, and could not, +bring within the range of his story. It was here George Eliot was superior, +as is abundantly shown in _Romola_. The thoughtful aspects of Florentine +life she truthfully presented; but its more romantic elements it needed a +Scott to make living and real. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ there is very little +of genuine interpretation. Certain local features may be accurate, but the +spirit of the time is not there; the characters are not such as that age +and country developed. Scott, with all his romanticism, would have +introduced _reality_ into such an historic picture. + +Within her own lines of power George Eliot is much greater than Scott, who +could not have written _Adam Bede_ or _Middlemarch_, or brought out what is +best in those works. Adventure was necessary to Scott; he could not have +transfigured the plain and homely with beauty as George Eliot has done. +Where she is at her best, as in the simple scenes of _Silas Marner_, there +is a charm, pathos and sympathy in her work which must endear it to all +hearts. That peculiar power Scott did not have; yet it would be most +difficult to decide which is the truer to nature. Genuine art, it is true, +has its foundation in the realities of human experience: but those +realities are not always best interpreted by the methods of realism. In his +own province Scott was truer to nature than George Eliot was in the same +field, as may be seen at once by comparing _The Spanish Gypsy_ with +_Ivanhoe_, or any of Scott's novels dealing with the mediaeval and feudal +ages, he took the past into himself, caught its spirit, reflected it in +its wholeness. In this he was a genuine realist, and all the more faithful +to reality because he did not accept realism as a theory. + +In comparing George Eliot with Dickens, it must first of all be noted that +each is the superior of the other in his own special province. Dickens has +more imagination; he appeals to more universal sentiments, touches a wider +circle of experiences, captivates his readers with a resistless interest +and tenderness of spirit. His characters are unreal, mere caricatures +often, mere puppets. Yet he had an imagination of marvellous power, so that +his characters appeared to his own mind as if real, and he describes them +as if they actually stood before him, making them intensely real to his +readers. Many of his persons never lived, never could have lived; yet they +are types or certain traits of character made living and brought out into a +distinctive existence. What those traits of character are he makes all the +more apparent by this method. + +Dickens had not a fine literary taste, he had no clear insight into some of +the purer human sentiments, he was grossly untrue and false in many of his +pictures. Yet all in all, with his many faults, it is to be said that his +idealism, which was not of a high type, made him a true interpreter of +life. If his characters are less faithfully drawn than George Eliot's, his +insight into some of the sentiments and emotions was truer. His pictures +may be false in some particulars, but he has given them the true spirit +with which they should be animated. + +In thoughtful fidelity to the facts of life, George Eliot surpasses Scott +or Dickens. Scott by his insight, Dickens by his imagination, were able to +do what she could not; but they put little thought into their work. They +did not think about what life meant; she did. They worked instinctively, +she thoughtfully. Her characters are more often to be met with than theirs; +and there is a freshness, a wholesomeness, about them theirs do not have. +She is more simple and refined than Fielding, more elevated in tone of +thought, there is a deeper and a richer purpose in her work. None of the +cynicism and hardness of Thackeray appear in her pages. She is fresher, +more genuine, more poetic than he, with more of humanity. + +In her essay on "The Natural History of German Life" she said of Dickens +that he was "gifted with the utmost power of rendering the external traits +of our town population." City life Dickens and Thackeray most truly +photographed in all its features of snobbishness and selfishness. Its +better side, its nobler sentiments, its humanity, they did not succeed +in so well; not so well as George Eliot did, and simply because they did +not so much sympathize with it. Country life they did not understand, and +could not have sketched. Where George Eliot best succeeded they would have +failed. Her real advance upon Dickens and Thackeray, however, lay in +another direction. She says in the essay just quoted, speaking of Diekens's +portraitures of town populations, that "if he could give us their +psychological character--their conception of life and their emotions--with +the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest +contribution art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies." +In the two directions here indicated lay her superiority over other +novelists,--her humanitarian sympathies and her psychologic insight. In +reality, she did not contribute anything new to the realism of literary +art. All which can be said for faithfulness to nature in art and poetry has +been said by Ruskin, and George Eliot was early a reader of his books. Her +predecessors, especially Thackeray, opened the way in the application of +the realistic principles in its newer spirit. The enlargement of realism, +however, was carried on to a much greater extent by the pre-Raphaelites in +painting and poetry, and George Eliot was influenced by them as well. Their +principle of loyal fidelity to the time and circumstances depicted was her +own, at least in theory. + +It was in another direction her chief characteristic lay, that of +describing "psychologic character." Here she was no imitator, but she made +a way of her own, and developed a new method. The method of science she +applied to literature. Science has adopted the method of analysis, of +inductive inquiry, of search in all the facts of nature for the laws which +underlie them. So magnificent have been the results obtained by this +process in the study of the material world, that it has been applied with +the hope of securing the same thorough investigation of the phenomena +presented by history, ethics and religion. Even here the method has +justified itself, and has in recent years opened up new and valuable +results, giving to the world an enriched conception of the life of man. +The speculative mind has been stimulated to fresh activity, and new +philosophies, of vast and imposing proportions, have been the result. The +studies of Charles Darwin, and the elaboration of the theory of evolution, +have given a marvellous incentive to the new method, resulting in its +wide-spread application to all the questions of nature and life. + +A method so productive in all directions must have its effect on +literature. What claims the attention of all thinking men cannot long +be kept out of poetry and art. In painting and in music it has been +largely developed in the direction of a more intimate and sympathetic +interpretation of nature and man. In literature the new method has been +mainly brought into application hitherto in the form of photographic +studies of human life. To describe what is, to make a true word-picture, +has been the chief aim. With George Eliot began a wider use of the new +method and its application in a more sympathetic spirit to the deeper +problems of the mind and heart. She was not content to paint the surface of +nature, to give photographic sketches of the outside of human life, but she +wished to realize every subtle fact and every most secret impulse. An +admirer of the Dutch school in painting, and of Jane Austen as a novelist, +she was not content with their results and methods, wishing to interpret +the spirit as well as the letter of nature and life. + +In literature, the new method as developed in recent years consists in an +application of psychology to all the problems of man's nature. George +Eliot's intimate association with the leaders of the scientific movement in +England, naturally turned her mind into sympathy with their work, and made +her desirous of doing in literature what they were doing in science. In the +special department of physiological psychology, no one did more than George +Henry Lewes, and her whole heart went out in genuine appreciation of his +work. He studied the mind as a function of the brain, as being developed +with the body, as the result of inherited conditions, as intimately +dependent on its environment. Here was a new conception of man, which +regarded him as the last product of nature, considered as an organic whole. +This conception George Eliot everywhere applied in her studies of life and +character. She studied man as the product of his environment, not as a +being who exists above circumstances and material conditions. "In the eyes +of the psychologist," says Mr. James Sully, "the works of George Eliot must +always possess a high value by reason of their large scientific insight +into character and life." This value consists, as he indicates, in the fact +that she interprets the inner personality as it is understood by the +scientific student of human nature. She describes those obscure moral +tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which +enter so much into life. She lays much stress on the subconscious mental +life, the domain of vague emotion and rapidly fugitive thought. + +The aim of the psychologic method is to interpret man from within, in his +motives and impulses. It endeavors to show why he acts, and it unfolds the +subtler elements of his character. This method George Eliot uses in +connection with her evolutionary philosophy, and uses it for the purpose of +showing that man is a product of hereditary conditions, that he has been +shaped into his life of the emotions and sentiments by the influence of +tradition. The psychologic method may be applied, however, without +connection with the positive or evolutionary philosophy. The mind may be +regarded as a distinct force and power, exercised within social and +material limits, and capable of being studied in all its inner motives and +impulses. Yet in her mental inquiries George Eliot did not regard man as an +eternal soul in the process of development by divine methods, but as the +inheritor of the past, moulded by every surrounding circumstance, and as +the creature of the present. Instead of regarding man as _sub specie +eternitatis_, she regarded him as an animal who has through feeling and +social development come to know that he cannot exist beyond the present. +This limitation of his nature affected her work throughout. + +The psychologic method in literature has also been that of Robert Browning, +and he has been as faithful to it as any other. He, too, analyzes his +characters, penetrates all the hidden causes of motive and deed, lays bare +the soul. No other poet has surpassed him in power to unveil the inner +workings of the mind, to discover all the influences affecting it or in +revealing how motives are created and how motives lead up to deeds. In two +important particulars Robert Browning differs from George Eliot. His +characters speak for themselves, reveal the secrets of their own minds. He +does not talk about them, does not criticise their words and conduct, does +not stand off from them as a spectator. He differs from her also in his +conception of man as a being who is here developing an eternal existence +under the laws of an Infinite Spirit. He, too, believes in the natural, and +believes that the highest law of the soul is, to be true to every pure +impulse arising within us. To calculate, to philosophize, he holds to be +always to man's injury, that nature when perfectly obeyed is the only +guide. He studies man as affected by all the circumstances of his +existence, and as wrought upon by the great social forces which have made +him what he is. His analysis is as keen as George Eliot's; he makes the +soul appear before us in all its reality. His is a more creative, a more +dramatic method than hers; yet he is fully as subjective, as much an +interpreter of the soul. Neither is content to record the deeds of men; +both wish to know why men act. + +Browning has fittingly been called the poet of psychology. He is a +dissecter, a prober, an analyzer in the full spirit of scientific research. +He spares no pains to get at and to completely unfold the truth about man's +nature, to show all the hidden causes of his action, all the secret motives +of his life, using this method as thoroughly as George Eliot. It is +interesting to note his attitude towards the great religious problems. His +faith in God is intensely passionate and sublime in its conception. In +words the most expressive in their meaning, and indicating a conviction the +deepest, he reveals his faith. + + "He glows above + With scarce an intervention, presses close + And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours." + +The lifting and inspiring power of faith in an Infinite Being he has sung +with a poet's purity of vision. Along with this faith goes his belief that +man is being glowly perfected for a higher and nobler existence. + + "To whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? + Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands! + What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever the same? + Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands? + There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; + The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; + What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; + On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round. + + "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; + Not its likeness, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power + Whose voice has gone forth, but, each survives for the melodist + When eternity confirms the conceptions of an hour. + The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, + The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, + Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; + Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." + +He teaches that progress is the true mark and aim of man's being, a +progress sure and glorious. + + "Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, + Not God's and not the beast's; God is, they are, + Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." + +Man yearns after more than he can gain here; that yearning is the mark of +his higher nature and the means of progress. If he follows the better +impulses of his nature, all experience will help to unfold his soul into +higher attainments, and impulse will at last become, in clearer moments, +revelation. + + "Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! + But not quite so much that moments, + Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, + When the spirit's true endowments + Stand out plainly from its false ones, + And appraise it if pursuing + Or the right way or the wrong way + To its triumph or undoing. + There are flashes struck from midnights, + There are fireflames noondays kindle, + Whereby piled-up honors perish. + Whereby swol'n ambitions dwindle, + While just this or that poor impulse + Which for once had play unstifled + Seems the sole work of a lifetime, + That away the rest have trifled." + +More impersonal and dramatic than George Eliot, Browning introduces his +doctrines less often. It is not easy to discover what are his theories as +distinguished from those of his characters, for he makes no comments, and +is faithful in developing the unity and integrity of his _dramatis +personae_, whether in his monologues or dramas. Great as his other faults +maybe, he surpasses George Eliot in his power to reveal character, but not +in his power to make his characters stand out distinctly and unprejudiced +from his own mind. His obscurity of expression and his involved style are +serious defects in much of his work; and to most readers his thoroughly +dramatic manner is puzzling. He gives but faint clue to the situation in +his monologues, little explanation of the person, time or place. All is to +be discovered from the obscurest allusions and hints. Defective as this +method is in Browning's treatment, it is the true psychologic method, +wherein motive and character are developed dramatically and without labored +discussion. It is a more vital and constructive process than that followed +by George Eliot, because nothing of the meaning and fulness of life is lost +in the process of analysis. That Browning can never be read by more than a +few, indicates how great are his faults; but in lyric passion, dramatic +power and psychologic analysis he is one of the greatest poets of the +century. The value and range of the new method are well illustrated in its +use by two such thinkers and poets. + +The analytic method as applied by George Eliot regards man as a social +being, studies him as a member of society. All that he is, and all +the influences working upon him, are understood only as affected by +his connection with the life of the race. This fact gives the most +distinguishing characteristic to her literary methods. Her imitators may +not, and nearly all of them do not, follow her into positivism; but they +all study man as a social being. They deal with him as affected by +heredity, education, and social characteristics. Even here it is not her +theories, but her artistic methods, which are imitated. The novel is no +longer regarded as a story to be told dramatically and with moving effect, +but as a study of character, as an analysis of situations and motives. The +advocates of the new method say that "in one manner or another the stories +were all told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist +thinks about persons and situations." [Footnote: W.D. Howells in the +Century for November, 1882.] This interpretation of the mission of the +novelist well describes George Eliot's work, for she never hesitated to +tell her reader what she thought about the situations and the persons of +whom she wrote. + +The new method, as developed in sympathy with agnosticism, fails in +literature just as science fails to be a complete interpretation of the +universe. The process which answers in the material world does not answer +in the spiritual. The instruments which tell the secrets of matter, close +the avenues to the revelations of mind. The methods of experiment and +demonstration which have brought the universe to man's knowledge, have not +been sufficient to make the soul known to itself. Any literary methods +imitating physical science must share in its limitations without its power +over the materials with which it has to deal. Literature has hitherto been +made helpful and delightful and acceptable because of its ideal elements. +Belief in a spiritual world, belief in the imperative law of righteousness +as a divine command, runs through all effective literature. However +realistic the poets have been when they have reached their highest and +best, they have believed that the soul, and what belongs to it, is the only +_reality_. Divorced of this Element, literature is at once lowered in tone, +a dry-rot seizes upon it and eats away its finest portions. If Goethe and +Shakspere are realists in literary method, as some of their interpreters +would claim, yet to them the spiritual is supreme, the soul is monarch. +So it is with Homer, with Dante, with Scott, with Cervantes, with Victor +Hugo, with every supremely artistic and creative mind. Great minds +instinctively believe in the creative power of the mind, in its capacity +for self-direction. An unbiassed mind gifted with genius sees over +and through all obstacles, leaps to magnificent results, will not be +restrained by the momentary conditions of the present. Education or social +environment, however adverse, will not long hinder the poet from his work. +He writes for the future, if the present will not accept him, confident +that what his soul has to utter can be truly uttered only as his own +individuality impels, and that if he is faithful to his genius the world +will listen in due time. This power of personality lies at the basis of all +genuine literature, teaching faith in the soul, faith in a providential +ordering of the world, and overturning all agnostic theories about realism +and environment. + +This instinctive faith in mind is the basis of all genuine idealism. The +idealist is not the creator of an imaginary world, peopling it with shapes +that never existed; but he is one who believes in ideas, and in mind as +their creator and the vehicle of their expression. Contemporary with George +Eliot was a group of men who believed in the mind as something other than +the temporary product of an evolutionary process. With them she may be +contrasted, her work may be measured by theirs. Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning +and Buskin shared with her the radical ideas of the time. Not one of them +has been fettered by narrow theories or cramped by old social doctrines. +The broad, inquiring, scientific spirit of the time has been shared by them +all. Buskin is a realist, Carlyle believed in the enduring realm of facts, +and they have all accepted the spirit of naturalism which has ruled the +century. The scientific, philosophic and social theories of the time have +been their inspiration. Certain ideas about law, progress and social +regeneration have affected them through and through. Yet as regards the one +great characteristic of idealism, all have widely departed from George +Eliot, for all regard mind as supreme, all believe in a spiritual realm +environing man. This fact appears throughout their work. To them the +spiritual is objective; they are the true realists. To George Eliot the +spiritual is subjective, the result of our own feelings, to which it is +limited. When the feelings are gone, all is gone. In the pages of these men +there is consequently to be found a power and an inspiration not to be +found in hers. Wonderful as is her skill as an artist, and in the analysis +of character, yet we feel that we are walking over mocking graves whenever +we reach her spiritual conception of the world. She deceives us with a +shadow, offers us a name in place of what we crave for with every nobler +instinct of the soul. Our own feelings are given us, mirrored in the +feelings of others, in place of the reality we desire to possess. + +These men have linked their work with those spiritual convictions which +have been the moral sustenance of the ages. They have gained in strength +and effectiveness thereby. Tennyson has his many doubts, his teachings have +been questioned; and yet he sings,-- + + "That each, who seems a separate whole, + Should move his rounds, and passing all + The skirts of self again, should fall, + Remerging in the general soul,-- + + "Is faith as vague as all unsweet: + Eternal form shall still divide + The eternal soul from all beside; + And I shall know him when we meet." + +His flight of song is more sustained for this faith. He is a truer poet, of +stronger wing and loftier flight, because life has for him an infinite +meaning, because he opens his mind to the impressions which come of man's +spiritual existence. In the same way, Carlyle has a grander meaning running +through his books, more of sublimity, a finer eloquence, because the +spiritual is to him real. Doubter and scorner as he was, he could not but +see that man's being reaches beyond the material world and interprets some +higher realm. Vague as that faith was with him, it was a source of the most +effective literary power and stimulus. He bursts forth, under its impulse, +into impassioned passages of the noblest poetic beauty. + +"Perhaps my father, all that essentially was my father, is even now near +me, with me. Both he and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God, we +shall in some higher state of being meet one another, recognize one +another. As it is written, we shall be forever with God. The possibility, +nay (in some way) the certainty, of perennial existence daily grows plainer +to me." + +Ruskin has made it plain how necessary is that tone of mind which is +religious to the best work in art. His own faith has been earnest and +strong in the reality of the spiritual. Realist as he is in art, he +believes in the original and creative power of the mind, and his work has +all taken on a higher spirit and a finer expression because of his +religious convictions. Writing in _Modern Painters_ of man as made in the +image of God, he answers the objection which is raised to the idea that all +the revelation man has is contained in a being so imperfect. + +"No other book, nor fragment of book, than that, will you ever +find,--nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. The +flesh-bound volume is the only revelation that is, that was, or that can +be. In that is the image of God painted; in that is the law of God written; +in that is the promise of God revealed. Know thyself; for through thyself +only thou canst know God. Through the glass, darkly; but except through the +glass, in no wise. A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the +ground;--you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure and at +your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you +shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for +those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be +bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love +your life. Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on +subjection to the human soul. Man is the Sun of the world; more than the +real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth +gauge or measure. Where he is, are the tropics; where he is not, the +ice-world." + +Such words may not be scientific, but they convey real meaning. Their +assertion that the world is to be tested and understood by man, not man by +the world, is one worthy of attention. The conviction of this truth has a +literary power and incentive not to be found in "the scientific method" or +any of its corollaries. + +To this group of writers may be added Mrs. Browning, who, as a poet, did +great and lasting work. Its value, in large measure, rests on its depth of +spiritual conviction, and on its idealism in purpose and spirit. Her +conception of love is finer and truer than George Eliot's, because she gave +it an ideal as well as an altruistic meaning; because she thought it has an +eternal as well as a social significance. As a poet she lost nothing of +charm or of power or of inspiration because she could herself believe, with +simple trust, what she has embodied in "A Child's Thought of God." + + "God is so good, He wears a fold + Of heaven and earth across his face-- + Like secrets kept, for love, untold. + But still I feel that his embrace + Slides down by thrills, through all things made, + Through sight and sound of every place." + +That art is to be nothing more than a copying and interpretation of nature +Mrs. Browning did not believe. In _Aurora Leigh_ she says,-- + + "Art's the witness of what is + Beyond this show. If this world's show were all, + Mere imitation would be all in art." + +The glow of genius burns up out of all her pages, and there is an aroma and +a subtle power in them which comes alone of this conception of art. She +could not rest content with the little round of man's experience, but found +that all the universe is bound together and all its parts filled with a +God-spirit. + + "No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee + But finds some coupling with, the spinning stars; + No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere; + No chaffinch but implies the cherubim: + ... Earth's crammed with heaven, + And every common bush afire with God." + +That is a larger faith and a truer faith than appears anywhere in the pages +of George Eliot, and it is one which impregnates most of the best +literature the world posseses with light and life. It is a faith which +gives hope and impulse where the other saddens and unnerves. + +There is wanting in George Eliot's books that freshness of spirit, that +faith in the future, and that peaceful poise of soul which is to be found +in the writings of Tennyson, Ruskin and Mrs. Browning. Even with all his +constitutional cynicism and despair, the teachings of Carlyle are much more +hopeful than hers. An air of fatigue and world-weariness is about all her +work, even when it is most stimulating with its altruism. Though in theory +not a pessimist, yet a sense of pain and sorrow grows out of the touch of +each of her books. In this she missed one of the highest uses of +literature, to quicken new hopes and to awaken nobler purposes. There is a +tone of joy and exultation in the power life confers, an instinctive sense +of might to conquer the world, in the best writing. To make men think, to +move men to action, to confer finer feelings and motives, is the power of +the true poet. When he does not accomplish this he has written to a lesser +purpose. Literature aims either to please or to quicken the mind. It cannot +please when it leaves the heart depressed and burdened with the failures +and sadness of the world. If it is to please, it must make use of that +goodness and joy which are in excess of evil and misery. It cannot quicken +when it unnerves the mind and brings despair of moral purpose. If it is to +inspire it must show that something great is to be done, and awaken the +courage to do it. + +That life has its sad and painful elements is a terrible fact, and the +novelist who would paint life as it is must recognize them. It is quite as +true that the good and the hopeful are more than the sad and painful, that +right is more powerful in human life than wrong. The novelist who would +paint life with an exact and even-handed justice, must not make all his +endings sorrowful, for very many in real life are not so. _The Mill on the +Floss_ would have been a more powerful and effective book could Maggie have +been made to conquer. It would have been quite as true to nature to have +represented her as overcoming her defects, and as being purified through +suffering. Is all suffering to conquer us, instead of our being able to +conquer it, and gaining a more peaceful and a purer life through its aid? +If Maggie is George Eliot in her youthful experiences, then the novel is +untrue to fact in that Marian Evans conquered and Maggie failed. The same +fault is to be found in _Middlemarch_, that Dorothea, great as she is, +deserved a much better fate than that accorded to her. The elements of +womanly greatness were in her character, and with all the barriers created +by society she would have done better things had her creator been true to +her capacities in unfolding her life-history. The effect of both these +great novels is one of depression and disappointment. The reader always +expects more as he goes on his way through these scenes, depicted with such +genius, than is realized at the end. Disappointment is almost inevitable, +for the promise is greater than the fulfilment. The like result is produced +by those books which have the brightest closing scenes, as in _Adam Bede_ +and _Daniel Deronda_, where the author's aim was evidently hopeful and +constructive. _Silas Marner_ and _Felix Holt_ are the only exceptions to +this pessimistic tone, and in which justice is done to the better side of +life. In all her later books the ending is painful. In _The Mill on the +Floss_, Maggie and Tom are drowned after Maggie had been led to a most +bitter end of her love-affairs. In _Romola_ the heroine is left a widow, +after her husband's treachery had brought him to a terrible death, and +after Savonarola had suffered martyrdom. Dorothea marries into a life of +ordinary drudgery, and Lydgate fails. Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen are +separated from each other, and Deronda goes to the east in furtherance of a +wild scheme of Jewish colonization. Fedalma loses her father by the +treachery of her lover, and without hope conducts her tribe to Africa. +Jubal dies dishonored, and Armgart loses her voice. Yet it is not merely +that the conclusion does not lead to the expected result, but throughout +there is a tone of doubt and failure. That George Eliot purposed to give +life this tinge of sadness is not to be accepted as the true explanation of +it. It is known that she did not have such a purpose, that she was +surprised and disappointed that her books should produce such a result on +her readers. The explanation is to be found in another direction. + +She was an agnostic; life had no wide horizon for her. The light of a +genuinely ideal and spiritual conception of life was not hers. The world +was bounded to her vision, rounded into the little capacity possessed by +man. Where others would have cast a glow of hope and sunset brilliance, +promise of a brighter day yet to dawn over the closing scenes of her +novels, she could see nothing beyond but the feeble effect of an earthly +transmitted good. In this regard her books afford a most interesting +contrast to those of the two other great women who have adorned English +literature with their genius. The lot of Mrs. Browning and Charlotte Brontë +was much sadder and more depressing than that of George Eliot; more of +darkness and pain affected their lives. A subtle tone of sadness runs +through their books, but it is not burdensome and depressing as is the case +of George Eliot. There is hope with it, and a buoyant faith in the good, +which lies above and beyond all pain and sorrow. With neither of them was +this faith conventional, a mere reflection of the religion taught them in +childhood. It was a thoughtful result of a large experience, and of hard +contact with many of the severest facts of human experience. That wide +horizon of spiritual reality which shone for them on every hand, lights all +their work with a brilliance which almost puts out of sight the pain and +sorrow of the world. The reader of their books is made to believe that life +is an endless good; he is cheered and made stronger for what life offers +him. + +Agnosticism may have its great and heroic incentives, it may impel men to a +nobler activity, but its literary effect, as a motive towards a more +inspiring life, has not been satisfactory in the hands of George Eliot. +Shakspere is not a teacher of philosophy or ethics, he has no doctrines to +preach, no theories to advocate. What he believed, it would be difficult to +ascertain from his writings; yet he is an effective teacher of morals, he +stimulates into activity all that is best in man, life widens and deepens +under the touch of his genius. So is it with Milton, Schiller, Moliere, +Calderon, Montaigne and Wordsworth. So is it with George Eliot in all that +concerns our duties, and even with our human sympathies. In the one +direction of trust she is wanting, and her books are devoid of it. +Shakspere makes us realize that God rules over the world; George Eliot +leaves us with the feeling that we know nothing, and can hope for but +little. That her theories really cast a shadow over the world, may be seen +in all her dealings with love. Love is with her a human passion, deep, +pure, blessed. It crowns some of her characters with joy and peace and +strength; it is never impure and base in her pages. Yet it is human, it is +a social force, it is to be made altruistic. It never gains that high +poetic influence and charm which glorifies it in the writings of Mrs. +Browning, Browning and Tennyson. Browning conceives of it as an eternal +passion, as one with all that is divinest in man, as a medium of his +spiritual development. In his pages it glows with moral promise, it +inspires and regenerates. The poet should deal with love, not as a thing +base and susceptible of abuse, but as an influence capable of the most +beneficent results in the uplifting of man's nature. If it degrades, it +also sweetens; and only that is love which makes life richer and more +worthy. The true artist can afford to deal with that which pleases, not +with that which saddens and disgusts. The real love is the pure love, not +the depraved. The natural is the noble, not the debased life. + +George Eliot's originality of method has given rise to a new school in +fiction. Her imitators, even when at their best, are not her equals, and +they have degraded her methods oftentimes to paltry uses. They have tried +to take photographs of life, supposing that art has for its aim to copy +nature. They have failed to see, what she did see, though not so clearly as +could have been desired, that art must do much more than imitate some scene +or fact out of nature. It must give beauty, meaning and expression to what +it copies. And it must do more than imitate: it must go beyond mere +description, and introduce unity, purpose and thought into its work. True +art has a soul as well as a body, says something to the mind as well as to +the eye, appeals to the soul as well as to sense. Had George Eliot done +nothing more than to describe common English life there would have been +small excuse for her work. She did more, touched that life with genius, +made it blossom into beauty, and gave to it deep moral meanings. The +defects of her method are to be seen in the fact that her imitators cannot +get above life's surface, and deal mainly with shallow or degraded natures. +Her methods do not inspire great work, while her own genius redeemed the +false ways into which she was led by her philosophic theories. + +Science can dissect the human body, but it can do little towards an +explanation of the subtler meanings of life and mind. Its methods are +analytical; it has reached no truly synthetic results in the regions where +knowledge is most to be desired. Its effects on literature are destructive. +Science destroys poetry, dries up the poetic sense, closes the doors of +imagination. The attempt to make science co-operate with poetry is in +itself the promise of failure. The limitations of George Eliot's work are +the limitations of poetry subdued by science. Could she have rid herself of +that burden, been impelled by a faith and an ideal purpose commensurate +with her genius, the result would have been much greater. This limitation +suggests the fact that literature is synthetic and constructive in its +purpose and spirit. It is this fact which has made the classic literatures +so powerful in their effect on modern Europe. They have given unity, +spiritual purpose and ideal aims to the whole modern world. The freshness +as of an eternal spring was in the literature of Greece, the naturalness of +a healthy manhood. That literature is organic, it is one with life, it is +refreshing as nature itself. That literature lives and flames with power +because it is synthetic, buoyant, touched with an eternal spiritual beauty, +great with promise of a growing earth. Its poets do not dissect, but build; +they do not analyze, but create. And this is the literary need of the +present time. There is need of more poetry, a more poetic interpretation of +life, a richer imagination and a finer sense of beauty. The common is +everywhere, but it is not necessarily great or beautiful or noble. It may +have its elements of pathos and tragedy, its touches of beauty and its +motives of heroism. It has in it also the promise of better things to be. +That is the true poetry, the true fiction, which brings out this promise so +that we know it, so that it moves us to better deeds and enchants us with +music of purer living. The world is bad enough without dragging to the +light all its evils and discords; let us rather know what promise it +contains of the better. In one word, the real oppresses and enthralls; the +ideal liberates, and brings us to ourselves. + +Genius redeems every fault. It must be taken for what it is, must not be +criticised, is to be used to the highest ends. Only when genius unites +itself to false methods and checks itself by false theories, has the critic +a right to complain. Genius, obedient to its own laws, accepts every fact +life presents, and lifts each one to be an instrument for the enlargement +of man's life. When it deliberately strikes out all that is not human, +however, from man's experience, denies the realty of that impression and +that conviction which comes from other than material sources, it cripples +and denies itself. + + + + +XX. + + +THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT. + +It must be remembered that George Eliot does not use the novel merely for +the purpose of inculcating certain doctrines, and that her genius for +artistic creation is of a very high order. In dealing with her as a thinker +and as a moral and religious teacher, she is to be regarded, first of all, +as a poet and an artist. Her ethics are subordinate to her art; her +religion is subsidiary to her genius. That she always deliberately set +about the task of introducing her positivism into the substance of her +novels is not to be supposed. This would be to imply a forgetfulness on her +part of her own methods, and a prostration of art to purposes she would +have scorned to adopt. This is evidently true, however, that certain +features of the positive and the evolution philosophy had so thoroughly +approved themselves to her mind as to cause them to be accepted as a +completely satisfactory explanation of the world, so far as any explanation +is possible. So heartily were they received, so fully did they become +incorporated with the substance of her thinking, that she viewed all human +experiences in their light. They had ceased to be theory and speculation +with her. When she thought about the world, when she observed the acts of +men, the positivist explanation was at once applied, and instinctively. + +That she did teach positivism is unfortunately true, so far as her literary +touch and expression is concerned. That philosophy affects all her books +with its subtly insinuating flavor, and it gives meaning and bias to most +of them. They thus gain in definiteness of purpose, in moral vigor, in +minutely faithful study of some phases of human experience, and in a +massive impression of thoughtfulness which her work creates. At the same +time, they undoubtedly lose in value as studies of life; in free range of +expression for her genius, her poetry and her art; and in that spiritual +vision which looks forward with keen gazing eyes of hope and confident +inquiry. + +Her teaching, like most teaching, is a mingled good and evil. In more than +one direction her ethical and religious influence was most wholesome and +effective. She brought into clear light a few great facts, and made them +the more conspicuous by the strong emphasis she gave them. This is, in the +main, the method of all teaching and of all progress. Development seldom +proceeds in a direct line, but rather, so far as man is concerned, by +forcible emphasis laid on some great fact which has been previously +neglected. The idealism of a previous age had shown the value of certain +facts and tendencies in human nature, but it had exaggerated some faculties +and capacities of man, as well as neglected others. In consequence, our own +time swings to the other extreme, and cannot have too much of evolution and +positivism. + +Idealism is in human nature, and will give itself expression. Positivism is +also a result of our experience and of our study of the universe, both +material and mental; it is a result of the desire for definite knowledge. +As a re-action against the excesses of idealism it is a powerful leaven, +and it brings into necessary prominence those facts which are neglected by +the opposite philosophy. It takes account of facts, and scorns mysticism; +and it thus appeals to a deep-seated bias of the time. + +George Eliot's books have an interest as an attempt at an interpretation +of life from its more practical and realistic side, and not less as a +re-action against the influences of very nearly all the great literary +minds of the earlier half of the century in England. Under the lead of +Coleridge and Wordsworth, and influenced by German thought and literature, +a remarkable movement was then developed in English literature. The outcome +of that movement has been surpassed only by that of the age of Shakspere. +Freshness of thought, love of nature, profound humanitarian convictions, +and spontaneity wedded to great largeness of ideas, characterize this +period and its noble work. Such an age is almost invariably followed by an +age of re-action, criticism, realism and analysis. An instinctive demand +for a portrayal of the more positive side of life, and the influence of +science, have developed a new literary school. For doctrine it teaches +agnosticism, and in method it cares mainly for art and beauty of form. +Towards the development of the new school George Eliot has been a leading +influence, though her sympathies have not gone with all its tendencies and +results. + +If Wordsworth exaggerated the importance of the intuitive and personal, +George Eliot equally exaggerated the value of the historic and hereditary. +It was desirable, however, that the relations of life to the past should be +brought out more distinctly by a literary development of their relations to +the present, and that the influence of social heredity should be seen as +affecting life on all sides. Tradition is a large and persistent element in +the better life of the race, while the past certainly has a powerful +influence over the present. This fact was neglected by Wordsworth, and +especially is it neglected by the intuitive philosophies. They ignore the +lessons of the past, and assume that a new and perfect world is to be +evolved from the depths of consciousness. That to think a better world is +to create a better world, they seem to take for granted, while the fact is +that the truer life is the result of a painful and long-continued struggle +against adverse conditions. What has been, persists in remaining, and the +past, with all its narrowness and prejudices, continues to influence men +more powerfully than does clear thought or regard for the truth. Emotion +and sentiment cling about what has become sacred with age. Channels for +thought and activity having once been made, it is very difficult to abandon +them for untried paths approved even by reason. + +The historic view is one of much importance, and is likely to be overlooked +by the poets and novelists. It is also ignored by the radicals in morals +and religion. Much which George Eliot says on this subject is of great +value, and may be heeded with the utmost profit. Her words of wisdom, +however, lose much of their value because they utterly ignore those +spontaneous and supernatural elements of man's higher life which lift it +quite out of the region of dependence on history. + +There is something to be said in behalf of George Eliot's attitude towards +religion, which caused her to hold it in reverence, even when rejecting the +objective validity of its dogmas. Yet much more is to be said for that +other attitude, which is faithful to the law of reason, and believes that +reason is competent to say some truer and larger word on a subject of such +vital importance and such constant interest to man. That both reason and +tradition are to be listened to reverently is true, but George Eliot so +zealously espoused the cause of tradition as to give it an undue +prominence. Her lesson was needed, however, and we may be all the better +able to profit by it because she was so much an enthusiast in proclaiming +its value. The even poise of perfect truth is no more to be had from her +pages than from those of others. + +The emphasis she laid on feeling and sentiment was a needed one, as a +counterpoise to the exaggerations of rationalism. Man does live in his +feelings more than in his reason. He is a being of sentiment, a creature of +impulse, his social life is one of the affections. In all the ranges of his +moral, religious and social life he is guided mainly by his emotions and +sentiments. It cannot be said, however, as George Eliot would have us say, +that these are human born and have no higher meaning. They are the +outgrowth of spiritual reality, as well as of human experience; they repeat +the foregleams and foresights of a + + "far-off divine event, + To which the whole creation moves." + +Life is enriched and flooded with light by the emotions, and feeling, true +and tender and pure, is as much the symbol of humanity as reason itself. It +was therefore well that some one should attempt to justify the emotional +life against the aspersions of those who have done it grave injustice. It +is true that man is not a being who wholly arrives at his method of life +through reason, but feeling lends quite as important aid. He does not only +think, but he has emotions as well; he not only weighs evidence, but he +acts by impulse. He is continually led by the emotions, sentiments and +impulses created for him by the life of ages past. Without emotion there +could be no art, no poetry and no music. Without emotion there would be no +religion and no spiritual life. Sentiment sweetens, beautifies and endears +all that is human and natural. + +Emotion and the affections, however, seem to be shorn of their highest +beauty and glory when they are restricted to a merely earthly origin and +compass of power. It is altogether impossible to believe that their own +impulse to look beyond the human is a delusion, and that they really have +nothing to report that is valid from beyond the little round which man +treads. To believe in the human beauty and glory of the feelings, and to +rejoice in their power to unite us to our kind, need imply no forgetfulness +of their demand for a wider expression and a higher communion. + +Her theory of the origin of feeling is not to be accepted. It means +something more than an inheritance of ancestral experience. It is the +result rather than the cause of reason, for reason has an influence she did +not acknowledge, and an original capacity which she never saw. Her view of +feeling was mainly theoretical, for she was led in her attitude towards the +facts of life, not by sentiment, but by reason. Hers was a thoughtful +rather than an impulsive mind, and given to logic more than to emotion. + +Her enthusiasm for altruism, her zeal for humanity, lends a delightful +feature to her books. It gives a glow and a consecration to her work, and +makes her as great a prophet as positivism is capable of creating. And it +is no idle power she awakens in her positivist faith in man. She shames +those who claim a broader and better faith. Zeal for man is no mean gospel, +as she gives life and meaning to it in her books. To live for others, too +many are not likely to do. She made altruism beautiful, she made it a +consecration and a religion. Those who cannot accept her agnosticism and +her positivism may learn much from her faith in man and from her enthusiasm +for humanity. No faith is worth much which does not lead to a truer and a +more helpful love of man. Any faith is good in so far as it makes us more +humane and sympathetic. In this regard, the radicalism of George Eliot was +a great advance on much of the free-thinking of our century. She desired to +build, not to destroy. She was no iconoclast, no hater of what other men +love and venerate. Her tendencies were all on the side of progress, good +order and social growth. + +Her conception of the organic social life of the race is one of great +value. It led her to believe in the possibility of a social organization in +the future based on science, and better capable of meeting all the wants of +mankind than the more personal and competitive methods have done. This +belief in the organic unity of the race is not necessarily positivist in +its character, for Hegel entertained it as fully as does Herbert Spencer. +The larger social life will come, however, as individuals are moved to lead +the way, and not alone as the result of a general evolutionary process. On +its mental side, her social theory is to be regarded with grave suspicions, +for it brings all minds to the same level. No mind of commanding influence +is to be found in her books. No powerful intellect gives greatness to any +of her plots. Her Felix Holt is not a man of original and positive thought. +We accept, but do not enthusiastically admire him. Deronda is a noble +character, but he in no sense represents the largest things of which a +social leader is capable. He disappoints and is weak, and he has no power +to create the highest kind of leadership. In other words, he is not a great +man. The world's reformers have been of another temper and mettle. He is no +Mazzini, no Luther. George Eliot's social theories loft no room for such +men. They were superfluous in her social system. The man not to be +explained by heredity and tradition had no place in her books; and no +genius, no great man, can ever be explained by heredity and tradition +alone. + +George Eliot evidently desired to destroy individualism as a social force. +The individual, according to her teaching, is to renounce himself for the +sake of the race. He is to live, not as a personal being, but as a member +of the social organization; to develop his altruistic nature, not to +perfect his personal character. The finer flavor of personality is brushed +mercilessly away by this method. + +Reason needs to be justified in opposition to her excessive praise of +feeling. Meanwhile, the capacity of man to live a life higher than that of +his social state is to be asserted. He is indeed a member of humanity, but +humanity does not absorb him to the cost of his personality. Life is strong +in those ages in which the individual is able to assert his own +personality, in opposition to what is imperfect and untrue in the life of +his time. This failure to recognize the worth and capacity of the +individual is a most serious defect in George Eliot's work, and mars it in +many directions. A very competent critic has shown how serious is the +limitation arising in this manner, and permeating her books with a false +conception of life. + +"So far as George Eliot's life is concerned," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, +"she was eager in her self-development, and as eager in her sympathies. +But it was a different matter in the main drift of her work. She lowered +the power of individualism. Nay, she did not believe in its having any +self-caused or God-caused existence. Few have individualized their +characters more than she did, and of these characters we have many distinct +types. But she individualized them with, I may say, almost the set purpose +of showing that their individualism was to be sacrificed to the general +welfare of the race. The more her characters cling to their individuality +the more they fail in reaching happiness or peace. If they are noble +characters, they are finally obliged, through their very nobility, to +surrender all their ideals, all their personal hopes, all the individual +ends they hoped to develop; and they reach peace finally only through utter +surrender of personality in humanity. The characters in her books who do +not do this, who cling to their individuality and maintain it, succeed in +life, for the most part, if they are strong; are broken to pieces if they +are weak; but in all cases, save one, are not the noble but the ignoble +characters. The whole of her books is a suppressed attack on individualism, +and an exaltation of self-renunciation as the only force of progress, as +the only ground of morality. I leave aside here, as apart from the moral +side of the subject, the view that individual power or weakness of any kind +is the consequence of the past, of race, of physical causes. What a man is +found to do is not affected by that, in her view.... No one can deny that +the morality is a lofty one, and, as far as it asserts self-renunciation, +entirely useful; we have with all our hearts to thank George Eliot for that +part of her work. But when sacrifice of self is made, in its last effort, +equivalent to the sacrifice of individuality, the doctrine of +self-renunciation is driven to a vicious extreme. It is not self-sacrifice +which is then demanded, it is suicide ... Fully accepted, it would reduce +the whole of the human race to hopelessness. That, indeed, is the last +result. A sad and fatal hopelessness of life broods over all the nobler +characters. All their early ideals are sacrificed, all their early joys +depart, all the pictures they formed are blotted out. They gain peace +through renunciation, after long failure; some happiness in yielding to the +inevitable, and harmonizing life with it; and some blessedness in doing all +they can for the progress of those who follow them, for the good of those +that are with them. Their self is conquered, not through ennoblement of +personality, but through annihilation of personality. And having +surrendered their separate personality, they then attain the fitting end, +silence forevermore. It is no wonder that no characters are so sad, that +none steep the reader in such hopelessness of joy, as the noble characters +of the later works of George Eliot. They want the mighty power, the +enkindling hopes, the resurrection of life, the joy and rapture which +deepens towards death and enables man to take up the ideals of youth +again." + +If too severe in some directions, this criticism is substantially sound. It +does not matter what theory of personality we adopt, in a philosophical +sense, if that theory upholds personal confidence and force of will. If it +does not do this, the whole result is evil. This lack of faith in +personality saddened all the work done by George Eliot. In theory a +believer in an ever-brightening future, and no pessimist, yet the outcome +of her work is dark with despondency and grief. + +Life is sad, hard and ascetic in her treatment of it. An ascetic tone runs +through all her work, the result of her theories of renunciation. The same +sternness and cheerlessness is to be seen in the poetry and painting of the +pre-Raphaelites. The joy, freshness and sunniness of Raphael is not to be +found in their work. Life is painful, puritanic and depressing to them. Old +age seems to be upon them, or the decadence of a people that has once been +great. Human nature does not need that this strain be put upon it. Life is +stronger when more assertive of itself. It has a right to assert itself in +defiance of mere rules, and only when it does so is it true and great. The +ascetic tone is one of the worst results of a scientific view of the world +as applied to literature; for it is thoroughly false both in fact and in +sentiment. The strong, hopeful, youthful look at life is the one which +literature demands, and because it is the nearest the heart and spirit of +life itself. The dead nation produces a dead literature. The age made +doubtful by an excess of science produces a literature burdened with +sadness and pain. Great and truthful as it may be, it lacks in power to +conquer the world. It shows, not the power of Homer, but the power of +Lucretius. + +Her altruism has its side of truth, but not all of the truth is in it. Any +system of thought which sees nothing beyond man is not likely to find that +which is most characteristic in man himself. He is to be fathomed, if +fathomed at all, by some other line than that of his own experience. If he +explains the universe, the universe is also necessary to explain him. Man +apart from the supersensuous is as little to be understood as man apart +from humanity. He belongs to a Universal Order quite as much as he belongs +to the human order. Man may be explained by evolution, but evolution is not +to be explained by anything in the nature of man. It requires some larger +field of vision to take note of that elemental law. Not less true is it +that mind does not come obediently under this method of explanation, that +it demands account of how matter is transformed into thought. The law of +thought needs to be solved after mind is evolved. + +There is occasion for surprise that a mind so acute and logical as George +Eliot's did not perceive that the evolution philosophy has failed to settle +any of the greater problems suggested by Kant. The studies of Darwin and +Spencer have certainly made it impossible longer to accept Locke's theory +of the origin of all knowledge in individual experience, but they have not +in any degree explained the process of thought or the origin of ideas. The +gulf between the physiological processes in the brain and thought has not +been bridged even by a rope walk. The total disparity of mind and matter +resists all efforts to reduce them to one. The utmost which the evolution +philosophy has so far done, is to attempt to prove that mind is a function +of matter or of the physiological process. This conclusion is as far as +possible from being that of the unity of mind and matter. + +That man is very ignorant, and that this world ought to demand the greater +share of his attention and energies, are propositions every reasonable +person is ready to accept. Granted their truth, all that is necessarily +true in agnosticism has been arrived at. It is a persistent refusal to see +what lies behind outward facts which gives agnosticism all its practical +justification. Art itself is a sufficient refutation of the assertion that +we know nothing of what lies behind the apparent. That we know something of +causes, every person who uses his own mind may be aware. At the same time, +the rejection of the doctrine of rights argues obedience to a theory, +rather than humble acceptance of the facts of history. That doctrine of +rights, so scorned by George Eliot, has wrought most of the great and +wholesome social changes of modern times. Her theory of duties can show no +historic results whatever. + +To separate George Eliot's theories from her genius it seems impossible +to do, but this it is necessary to do in order to give both their proper +place. All praise, her work demands on its side where genius is active. +It is as a thinker, as a theorizer, she is to be criticised and to be +declared wanting. Her work was crippled by her philosophy, or if not +crippled, then it was made less strong of limb and vigorous of body by that +same philosophy. It is true of her as of Wordsworth, that she grew prosy +because she tried to be philosophical. It is true of her as it is not true +of him, that her work lacks in the breadth which a large view of the world +gives. His was no provincial conception of nature or of man. Hers was so in +a most emphatic sense. The philosophy she adopted is not and cannot become +the philosophy of more than a small number of persons. In the nature of the +case it is doomed to be the faith of a few students and cultured people. +It can stir no common life, develop no historic movements, inaugurate no +reforms, nor give to life a diviner meaning. Whether it be true or +not,--and this need not here be asked,--this social and moral limitation of +its power is enough to condemn it for the purposes of literature. In so far +as George Eliot's work is artistic, poetic, moral and human, it is very +great, and no word too strong can be said in its praise. It is not too +excessive enthusiasm to call her, on the whole, the equal of any novelist. +Her genius is commanding and elemental. She has originality, strength of +purpose, and a profound insight into character. Yet her work is weakened by +its attachment to a narrow theory of life. Her philosophy is transitory in +its nature. It cannot hold its own, as developed by her, for any great +length of time. It has the elements of its own destruction in itself. The +curious may read her for her speculations; the many will read her for her +realism, her humanity and her genius. In truth, then, it would have been +better if her work had been inspired by great spiritual aims and +convictions. + + + + +XXI. + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY. + +As an aid to those who may wish to carry further the preceding study of +George Eliot, the following bibliography and lists of references have been +compiled. In their preparation constant use has been made of _Poole's Index +of Periodical Literature_, the bibliography contained in _The Manchester +Literary Club Papers_ for 1881, and a list of references published in +_The Literary World_ (Boston) for February 24, 1883. Numerous additions +have been made to these bibliographies, while the references have been +verified as far as possible. An occasional reference given in these lists +has not been discoverable, as that of the Manchester Club to the _London +Quarterly Review_ for January, 1874, for an article on "George Eliot and +Comtism," and Poole's reference to the same article in the _London +Quarterly_, 47:446. This will be found in the number for January 1877, +volume ninety-four. + + +1. WRITINGS. + +1846. _The Life of Jesus_, by Strauss. Translated from the fourth German + edition, 3 vols. Chapman Brothers, London. + +1852-3. Assistant editor of the Westminster Review. + +1852. The Westminster Review for January contained her notice of + Carlyle's Life of John Sterling. + + In the July number appeared her article on _The Lady Novelists_. + +1854. _The Essence of Christianity_, by Feuerbach. Translated from the + second German edition. John Chapman, London. + + The Westminster Review for October published her _Woman in France: + Madame de Sablé_. + + She wrote, it is supposed, occasionally for The Leader newspaper, + of which journal Lewes was the literary editor. None of her + contributions have been identified. [Footnote: There is a nearly + complete set of The Leader in the Boston Athenaeum Library.] + +1855. Westminster Review, October, _Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming_. + +1856. Westminster Review, January, _German Wit: Heinrich Heine_. July, + _The Natural History of German Life_. October, _Silly Novels by + Lady Novelists_. + +1857. Westminster Review, January, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness: + the Poet Young_. + + In Blackwood's Magazine for January and February appeared _The Sad + Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton_; in March, April, May and + June, _Mr. Gilfil's Love Story_; from July to December, _Janet's + Repentance_. In December these stories were published in two + volumes under the title of _Scenes of Clerical Life_, by George + Eliot. Edinburgh, Blackwood & Sons. Reprinted in Living Age from + April to December, 1857. + +1859. In February, _Adam Bede_ appeared in three volumes, Blackwoods. + + Blackwood's Magazine for July contained _The Lifted Veil_. + +1860. In April, _The Mill on the Floss_ was published in three volumes, + Blackwoods. + +1861. _Silas Marner_ in March, one volume, Blackwoods. + +1863. _Romola_ appeared in the Cornhill Magazine from July, 1862, to + July, 1863, and was illustrated. It was published in three volumes + in July; Smith, Elder & Co., London. + +1864. The Cornhill Magazine for July contained _Brother Jacob_, with + illustrations. + +1865. The Fortnightly Review for May 15 contained _The Influence of + Rationalism_, and a review of Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament. + +1866. In June, _Felix Holt_ was issued in three volumes, Blackwoods. + +1868. Blackwood's Magazine, January, contained an _Address to Workingmen, + by Felix Holt_. + + In June, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was published by Blackwoods. + +1869. Blackwood's Magazine for May printed _How Lisa Loved the King_. + + The Atlantic Monthly for August contained _Agatha_. + +1870. In Macmillan's Magazine for May, _The Legend of Jubal_. + +1871. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _Armgart_. + + Middlemarch was issued in twelve monthly numbers, beginning with + December, by Blackwoods. + +1874. _The Legend of Jubal and other Poems_ was published by Blackwoods. + It contained: _The Legend of Jubal_, _Agatha_, _Armgart_, _How Lisa + Loved the King_, _A Minor Prophet_, _Brother and Sister_, + _Stradivarius_, _Two Lovers_, _Arion_, _O May I Join the Choir + Invisible_. + +1876. _Daniel Deronda_ was issued in eight monthly parts, beginning in + February, by Blackwoods. + +1878. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _A College Breakfast Party_. + +1879. _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ was published in June by + Blackwoods. + + _The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems, Old and New_, was issued by + Blackwoods, containing, in addition to those in the first edition, + _A College Breakfast Party_, _Self and Life_, _Sweet Evenings Come + and Go_, _Love_, _The Death of Moses_. + + In Blackwood's cabinet edition of George Eliot's complete works, + _The Lifted Veil_ and _Brother Jacob_ are reprinted with _Silas + Marner_. + + After the death of Lewes she edited his _Study of Psychology_ and + his _Mind as a Function of the Organism_. + +1881. The Pall Mall Gazette of January 6 contained her letter to Sara + Hennell concerning the origin of _Adam Bede_. + + Three letters to Professor David Kaufmann appeared in the Athenaeum + of November 26, 1881. + + The following articles also contain sayings of George Eliot's, or + extracts from her letters: In the Contemporary Review, by "One who + knew her," on the Moral Influence of George Eliot; C. Kegan Paul + in Harper's Magazine; F.W.H. Myers in The Century; W.M.W. Call in + the Westminster Review, and a nephew of William Blackwood in + Blackwood's Magazine. + +1882. In Harper's Magazine for March, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps published + numerous extracts from George Eliot's letters under the title of + _Last Words from George Eliot_. + +1883. George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind,--London, W.H. Allen, and Boston, + Roberts Brothers,--contains extracts from several letters. + + The Essays of George Eliot, collected by Nathan Sheppard,--New + York, Funk & Wagnalls,--contains _Carlyle's Life of Sterling_, + _Woman in France_, _Evangelical Teaching_, _German Wit_, + _Natural History of German Life_, _Silly Novels by Lady + Novelists_, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness_, _The Influence + of Rationalism_, _The Grammar of Ornament_, _Felix Holt's Address + to Workingmen_. + + The Complete Essays of George Eliot, Boston, Estes & Lauriat, 1883, + in addition to the above, contains _The Lady Novelists, George + Foster, the German Naturalist, Weimar and its Celebrities_. + + +2. SELECTIONS, TRANSLATIONS AND PORTRAITS. + +Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse, Selected by Alexander +Main. Blackwoods, 1872. + +Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1878; enlarged +and with a biographical memoir prefixed, 1881. + +George Eliot Birthday Book. Blackwoods, 1878. + +George Eliot: Fragments et Pensées, extraits et traduits des ses Oeuvres, +par Ch. Ritter. Genève, Georges, 1879. + +Character Readings from George Eliot, selected and arranged by Nathan +Sheppard. New York, Harpers, 1882. + +The following translations have been published:-- + +_French_.--Adam Bede, by A. Durade; Mill on the Floss, by A. Durade; +Silas Marner, by Durade; Romola, by Durade; Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, +by E. Pasquet; Dorlcote Mill, by E.D. Forques in Revue des Deux Mondes, +June 15, 1860; The Lifted Veil, in Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1880. + +_Dutch_.--Felix Holt, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1867, and by P. Bruyn, +1873; Middlemarch, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1873; Adam Bede, by P. Bruyn, +1870; Mill on the Floss, by P. Bruyn, 1870; Romola, by P. Bruyn, 1870, +and by J.C. Van Deventer, 1864; Novelettes, by P. Bruyn, 1870. + +_German_.--Adam Bede, by J. Frese; Silas Marner, by J. Frese, 1861; +Mill on the Floss, by J. Frese, 1861; Romola, by A.V. Metzsch, 1864; +Middlemarch, by E. Lehmann, 1872-3; Daniel Deronda, by Strodtmann, 1876; +Felix Holt (no translator's name given), 1867. Der Gelüftche Schleier, +Bruder Jakob, by Lehmann. + +The portrait of George Eliot appearing as the frontispiece to this +volume is from that published in The Century for November, 1881. +Accompanying it was the following account of it and of other +portraits:-- + +"We have the pleasure of presenting to our readers an authentic portrait of +George Eliot, the only one by which it is likely that she will be known to +posterity. We are indebted for this privilege, as we shall presently +explain, to the kindness and courtesy of her husband, Mr. J.W. Cross, who +has allowed us to be the first to usher this beautiful work of art to the +world. In doing so, we believe it will interest readers of The Century +Magazine to learn, for the first time, the exact truth regarding the +portraits of George Eliot, and we have therefore obtained from the three +artists to whom, at different times in her life, she sat, some particulars +of those occasions. + +"Miss Evans passed the winter of 1849-50 at Geneva, in the house of M.F. +d'Albert Durade, the well-known Swiss water-color painter, who is also the +translator of the authorized French version of her works. At that time she +had, however, written nothing original, and had attracted no general +interest. While she stayed with M. Durade and his wife, the Swiss painter +amused himself by making a small portrait of her in oils--a head and +shoulders. This painting remains in the possession of M. Durade, who has +not merely refused to sell it, but will not allow it to be photographed or +reproduced in any form. He has, however, we understand, consented to make a +replica of it for Mr. Cross. We have not seen this interesting work, but we +hear that it is considered, by those who still remember the great writer as +she looked in her thirtieth year, to be remarkably faithful. M. Durade +recently exhibited this little picture for a few days at the Athénée in +Geneva, but has refused to allow it to be brought to London. + +"Ten years after this, in 1859, as the distinguished portrait-painter, Mr. +Samuel Laurence, was returning from America, he happened to meet with 'Adam +Bede,' then just published. He was so delighted with the book that he was +determined to know the author, and it was revealed to him that to do so he +had but to renew his old acquaintance with Mr. George Henry Lewes, whom he +had met years before at Leigh Hunt's. He made George Eliot's acquaintance, +and was charmed with her, and before long he asked leave to make a study of +her head. She assented without any affectation, and, in the early months of +1861, Mr. Lewes commissioned the painter to make a drawing of her. She gave +him repeated sittings in his studio at 6 Wells Street, London, and Mr. +Laurence looks back with great pleasure on the long conversations that +those occasions gave him with his vivacious sitter. The drawing was taken +front face, with the hair uncovered, worn in the fashion then prevalent, +and it was made in chalks. While it was proceeding, Mr. Laurence asked her +if he might exhibit it, when finished, at the Royal Academy, and she at +once consented. But when the time for sending in drew near, the artist +received a letter from Mr. Lewes absolutely withholding this consent, and a +certain strain, of which this was the first symptom, began to embarrass the +relations of the two gentlemen, until Mr. Lewes finally refused to take the +drawing at all. But before the summer was out, Mr. Langford, the reader of +Messrs. Blackwood of Edinburgh, who published George Eliot's works, called +on Mr. Laurence, and asked if he would consent to make a copy of the +drawing for the firm. The artist replied that he should be happy to sell +them the original, and accordingly it passed from his studio, in June, +1861, into the back parlor of Mr. Blackwood's shop, where it now hangs. +Like that of M. Durade, Mr. Laurence's portrait of George Eliot is not to +be in any way reproduced. + +"The remaining portrait is that which we reproduce with this number. It is +an elaborate chalk drawing, in black and white, with a slight touch of +color in the eyes, and was executed in the latter part of 1868 and the +early part of 1867, by Mr. Frederick W. Burton, at that time member of the +Society of Painters in Watercolors, and now director of the National +Gallery in London. George Eliot gave Mr. Burton many sittings in his studio +at Kensington, and the picture was eventually exhibited in the Royal +Academy, in 1867, as No. 735, 'The Author of "Adam Bede."' It passed into +Mr. Lewes's possession, was retained at his death by George Eliot, and is +now the property of Mr. J.W. Cross. In the spring of this year, Mr. Cross +came to the conclusion that--as the shop windows were likely to become +filled with spurious and hideous 'portraits' of George Eliot--it was +necessary to overcome the dislike felt by the family of the great novelist +to any publication of her features, to which in life she had been averse, +and he thereupon determined to record in a monumental way what he felt to +be the best existing likeness. Mr. Cross took the drawing over to M. Paul +Rajon, who is acknowledged to be the prince of modern etchers, and in +his retirement at Auvers-sur-Oise, the great French artist has produced +the beautiful etching which we have been permitted to reproduce in +engraving. For this permission, and for great courtesy and kindness under +circumstances the peculiar nature of which it is not necessary here to +specify, we have to tender our most sincere thanks to Mr. J.W. Cross and to +Mr. Burton. + +"These are regarded by her friends to be the only important portraits of +George Eliot which exist, but Mr. Cross possesses a very interesting black +silhouette, cut with scissors, when she was sixteen. In this profile, the +characteristics of the mature face are seen in the course of development. +There is also a photograph, the only one ever taken, dating from about +1850, the eyes of which are said to be exceedingly fine. As an impression +of later life, there should be mentioned a profile drawn in pencil by Mrs. +Alma Tadema, in March, 1877. Of all the portraits here alluded to, the one +we engrave is the only one at present destined for publication. It may be +added that there exist one or two other profile sketches, which, however, +are not approved by the friends of George Eliot." + + +3. BIOGRAPHICAL. + +Atlantic Monthly, 14:66, December, 1864, Kate Field on "English Authors in +Florence." Louise M. Alcott in the Independent for Nov. 1,1866. The Galaxy, +7:801, June, 1869, Justin McCarthy on "George Eliot and George Lewes;" +reprinted in "Modern Leaders," 1872 "Home Sketches in France and other +Papers," by the late Mrs. Henry M. Field, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1875, p. 208, +"The Author of Adam Bede in Her own Home." International Review, 10:447, +497, May and June, 1881, W. Fraser Rae. The Century. 23:55, with portrait, +F.W.H. Myers, reprinted in Essays: Modern, London, 1883; 23:47, "The +Portrait of George Eliot." The Nineteenth Century, 9:778, Edith Simcox. +Blackwood's Magazine February, 1881. Harper's Magazine, May, 1881, C. Kegan +Paul; reprinted in Biographical Sketches, London, 1883; March, 1882, +E.S. Phelps. Westminster Review, 116:154, July, 1881, W.M.W. Call, "George +Eliot: her Life and Writings." Le Livre, April 10, 1881, "Life in Geneva." +London Daily Graphic, 23:27, January 8, 1851, "Reminiscences of George +Eliot." Lippincott's Magazine, 31:510, May, 1883, J.A. Dickson, "An +Afternoon at Ashbourne." Inquirer, January, 1881, Dr. Sadler's address. +Pall Mall Gazette, December 30, 1880, "Early Life." London Daily News, +December, 30, 1880, account of her funeral. Eclectic Magazine, March, 1881, +account of her early life and of her funeral; April, A personal sketch. +"George Eliot," Mathilde Blind, 1883, W.H. Allen, London. "Pen pictures of +Modern Authors," Wm. Sheppard, 1882, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York. The +Congregationalist, May 28, 1879, Mrs. Annie Downs, "A Visit to George +Eliot." The Christian Leader, October 27,1881, Mrs. M.E. Bruce. + + +4. GENERAL CRITICISMS. + +Quarterly Review, 108:469. Macmillan's Magazine, 14:272, J. Morley; same, +Eclectic Magazine, 67:488; reprinted in "Critical Miscellanies," first +series. Atlantic Monthly, 18:479, H. James. Christian Examiner, 70:227, +I.M. Luyster. North British Review, 45:141, 197. H.H. Lancaster; reprinted +in "Essays and Reviews," Edinburgh, 1876. National Review, 11:191. Home and +Foreign Review, 3:522, Richard Simpson. Fraser's Magazine, 103:263, +February, 1881, T.E. Kebbel, "Village Life according to George Eliot;" +same, Living Age, 148:608. National Quarterly, 1:455, E.L. Wentworth. +Potter's American Monthly, 9:260, 334. British Quarterly Review, 45:141. +Catholic World, 17:775, J. McCarthy, "Comparison between George Eliot and +Fleurange." Canadian Monthly, 11:261, "Later Manner of George Eliot." +Dublin Review, 88:371. Southern Review (new style), 13:205, Mrs. S.B. +Herrick. R.H. Hutton, "Essays, Theological and Literary," 2d vol. 1871. +Contemporary Review, 20:403; same, Living Age, 115:109, Eclectic Magazine, +79:562, Professor E. Dowden; reprinted in "Studies of Literature." Atlantic +Monthly, 33:681, June, 1874, George P. Lathrop, "The Growth of the Novel." +A.C. Swinburne, "A Note on Charlotte Brontë," 1877. International Review, +7:17, July, 1879, Francis Maguire, Jr. Cornhill Magazine, 43:152, Leslie +Stephen, "Critical Study of George Eliot;" same, Living Age, 148:731, +Eclectic Magazine, 96:443. Month, 42:272. Every Saturday, 10:186. North +British Review, 33:165, "George Eliot and Hawthorne." Eclectic Magazine, +88:111, "George Eliot and George Sand." The Nation, 32:201, J. Bryce, +"George Eliot and Carlyle;" 31:456, W.C. Brownell. London Quarterly, +57:154. Blackwood's Magazine, 129:255; same, Living Age, 148:664; Eclectic +Magazine, 96:433. St. Paul's, 12:592, G.B. Smith. Living Age, 58:274; +148:318. Eclectic Magazine, 96:353. Southern Monthly, 14:65. Tinsley's +Monthly, 3:565. Victoria, 31:56. The Century, 23:619, February, 1882, +"George Eliot and Emerson." Library Magazine, 7:84, Nathan Sheppard, +"George Eliot's Analysis of Motives;" reprinted as an introduction to +George Eliot's Essays, Funk & Wagnalls, 1883. Macmillan's Magazine, 46:488, +October, 1882, Annie Matheson, "George Eliot's Children;" same, Living Age, +155:211. The Critic, January, 1881, Edward Eggleston; reprinted in Essays +from the Critic, 1881. Christian Union, February, 1881, Noah Porter. The +Independent, February 17, 1881, Mrs. Lippincott, "Three Great Women." A +History of English Prose Fiction from Sir Thomas Malory to George Eliot, +Bayard Tuckerman, New York, 1882. The English Novel and the Principle of +its Development, Sidney Lanier, New York, 1883. Modern Review, 2:399, +April, 1881, George Sarson, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." Literary +World (London), January, 1881, Peter Bayne Athenaeum, January 1, 1881:20. +The Academy, 19:27, January 8, 1881. Temps, December 26, 1880, Edmond +Scherer. Le Roman Naturaliste, Ferdinand Brunetère, 1883, has a chapter on +"English Naturalism: a Study of George Eliot." Études sur la Littérature +Contemporaine, E. Scherer, Paris, 1878. The Pen, 1880, Robert E. +Francillon. East and West: 1:203, June, 1881. Papers of the Manchester +Literary Club, 1881; Bibliography, Charles W. Sutton; "George Eliot as a +Poet," George Milner; "George Eliot as a Novelist," John Mortimer; "George +Eliot's Use of Dialect," William E.A. Axon. National Review, April, 1883, +"New School of Fiction." Merry England, May, 1883, C. Kegan Paul, "The +Rustic of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy." Blackwood's Magazine, April, +1883. Nineteenth Century, October, 1881, John Buskin on "Fiction: Fair and +Foul." + + +5. DISCUSSIONS OF HER TEACHINGS. + +Penn Monthly, 10:579, "The Art of George Eliot." Dublin Review, 89:433, +"Religion of George Eliot." Unitarian Review, 3:357, J.E. Carpenter, +"Religious Influence of George Eliot." "The Ethics of George Eliot's +Works," J.C. Brown, Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1879. Mind, 6:378, +July. 1881, "George Eliot's Art," James Sully. The Spectator, 52:751, +"George Eliot's Ideal Ethics;" same, Littell's Living Age, 142:123, July +12, 1879. Scribner's Magazine. 8:685, Wm. C. Wilkinson; reprinted in +"A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters," 1874. Westminster Review, +117:65, January, 1882, "George Eliot as a Moral Teacher." Contemporary +Review, 39:173, February, 1881, "Moral Influence of George Eliot;" same, +Living Age, 148:501. Unitarian Review, 16:125, 216, August and September, +1881, John A. Bellows, "Religious Tendency of George Eliot's Writings." +Atlantic Monthly, 51:243, February, 1883, M.L. Henry, "The Morality of +Thackeray and George Eliot." The Independent, March 24, 1883, Stopford A. +Brooke, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." "The Religion of Our +Literature," George MacCrie, London, 1875. "George Eliot and Judaism," +David Kaufmann, Blackwoods, 1878. + + +6. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. + +Atlantic Monthly, 1:890. + + +7. ADAM BEDE. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 85:490, April, 1859. Dublin Review, 47:33, November, +1859. Edinburgh Review, 110:223, July, 1859. Westminster Review, 71:486, +April, 1859. Athenaeum, February 26, 1859. Saturday Review, February 26, +1859:191 Atlantic Monthly, 4:521. Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. +"Seth Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors," chiefly by Himself. London: +Tallant & Co., 1859. "George Eliot in Derbyshire," London Society, 27:311, +439; 28:20, by Guy Roslyn (Joshua Hatton); reprinted in book form, London, +1876. + + +8. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 87:611, May, 1860. Dublin University Review, 57:192. +Macmillan's Magazine, 3:441. Westminster Review, 74:24, July, 1860. +Christian Examiner, 69:145, L.G. Ware. + + +9. SILAS MARNER. + +Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. Macmillan's Magazine, 4:305. +Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1861, C. Clarigny. + + +10. ROMOLA. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 116:72. Land We Love, 1:134. Westminster Review, +80:344, October, 1863. Christian Remembrancer, 52:445. Revue des Deux +Mondes, December, 1863, E.D. Forques. + + +11. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 100:94, July, 1866. Edinburgh Review, 124:435, +October, 1866; same, Living Age, 91:432. North American Review, 103:557, +July, 1866, A.G. Sedgwick. The Nation, 3:127, Henry James. Contemporary +Review, 3:51. Eclectic Review, 124:34. Chambers's Journal, 43:508. +Westminster Review, 86:200, July, 1866. + + +12. THE SPANISH GYPSY. + +Atlantic Monthly, 22:380, W.D. Howells. North American Review, 107:620, +October, 1868, Henry James. The Nation, 7:13, July 2, 1868, Henry James. +Edinburgh Review, 128:525. Westminster Review, 90:183, Macmillan's +Magazine, 18:281, J. Morley; same, Eclectic Magazine, 71:1276. Blackwood's +Magazine, 103:760. British Quarterly Review, 48:503, Fraser's Magazine, +78:468, J. Skelton. St. James's, 22:478. St. Paul's, 2:583. London +Quarterly, 31:160. Southern Review (new Style), 4:383, W.H. Browne. Every +Saturday, 6:1. + + +13. POEMS. + +Contemporary Review, 8:387, July 1868, Matthew Browne (W.B. Rands); same, +Every Saturday, 6:79. Every Saturday, 16:667, G.A. Simcox. The Argosy, +2:437, November, 1866, Matthew Browne. Saturday Review, 37:75. Macmillan's +Magazine, 22:1. North American Review, 119:484, Heary James. Atlantic +Monthly, 34:102, July, 1874, W.D. Howells. Harper's Magazine, 49:887. +Academy, 5:33, May 10, 1874, G.A. Simcox. Edinburgh Review, 128:523, +October, 1868. Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, 1881, p. 108, George +Milner. The Nation, 19:124. "Our Living Poets: an Essay in Criticism," +H. Buxton Forman, London, 1871. + + +14. MIDDLEMARCH. + +Quarterly Review, 134:336, April, 1873. Edinburgh Review, 137:246, January, +1873. Fortnightly Review, 19:142, Sidney Colvin. Blackwood's Magazine, +112:727; same, Living Age, 116:131; Eclectic Magazine, 80:215. The Nation, +16:60, 76, January, 1873, A.V. Dicey. North American Review, 116:432, +April, 1873, T.S. Perry. British Quarterly Review, 57:407, April, 1883. +London Quarterly Review, 40:99, April, 1873. Canadian Monthly, 3:549. Old +and New, 7:352, H.G. Spaulding. Southern Monthly, 12:373, W.H. Browne. +Atlantic Monthly, 31:490, A.G. Sedgwick. Catholic World, 17:775, September, +1873. Die Gegen-wart, 1874, Freidrich Speilhagen. + + +15. DANIEL DERONDA. + +Atlantic Monthly, 38:084, Henry James, December, 1876. North American +Review, 124:31, E.P. Whippie, January, 1877. Edinburgh Review, 144:442, +October, 1876. Fortnightly Review, 26:601, November, 1876, Sidney Colvin. +The Nation, 23:230, 245, October 12, 19, 1876, A.V. Dicey. British +Quarterly Review, 64:472. Eclectic Magazine, 87:657. International Review, +4:68, R.R. Bowker. The Western, 3:603, O.G. Garrison. Potter's American +Monthly, 8:75. Gentleman's Magazine (new style), 17:593, November, 1876, +J. Picciotto; 17:411, R.E. Francillon. Canadian Monthly, 9:250, 343; +10:362. Victoria, 28:227, A.S. Richardson. Temple Bar, 49:542, "Deronda's +Mother;" same, Living Age, 133:248; same, Eclectic Magazine, 88:751. +Macmillan's Magazine, 36:101, J. Jacobs, "Mordecai: a Protest against the +Critics, by a Jew;" same, Living Age, 134:112. Athenacum, 1876:160, 327, +461, 593, 762. Westminster Review, 106:280,574. Appleton's Journal (new +style), 3:274, September, 1877, Wirt Sikes. Deutsche Rundachau, February 7, +1877. Contemporary Review, 29:348, February, 1877, Edward Dowden, reprinted +in "Studies of Literature." + + +16. IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. + +Edinburgh Review, 150:557. Fortnightly Review, 32:144, G. Allen. +Westminster Review, 112:185, July, 1879. The Nation, 28:422, June 19, 1879, +G.E. Woodberry. Fraser's Magazine, 100:103. Canadian Monthly, 16.333. +Unitarian Review, 12:292, R.W. Boodle. + + + + +INDEX + + +A. + +Actions, +_Actors and Acting_ +_Adam Bede_ +_Adam Bede_, quoted +"Address to Workingmen," quoted +Agnosticism +Altruism +Analytic Method +_Animal Life, Studies in_ +"Amos Barton," quoted +_Aristotle_ +"Armgart," quoted +Art +Art, love of +Asceticism +Austen, Jane + +B. + +Blackwood, William +_Blackwood's Magazine_ +Blind, Mathilde quoted +Brabant Dr. +Bray Charles +Brontë Charlotte +Brookbank +"Brother and Sister" +"Brother Jacob" +Browning, Robert +Browning, Mrs. + +C. + +Call, W.M.W., quoted +Carlyle +Causes +"Choir Invisible" +Chapman, John +Characteristics, personal +Childhood, influences surrounding +Child Life +Christianity +"College Breakfast Party" +Colvin, Sidney +Combe, George +Comte +Conscience +Conversation +_Cornhill Magazine_ +Cosmopolitanism +Cowper +Criticism +Culture +Cumming, Dr. + +D. + +_Daniel Deronda_ +_Daniel Deronda_ quoted +Darwin +Death +Deeds +Dialect +Dickens, Charles +Dowden, Prof., quoted +Downs, Annie, quoted +Dramatic power +Duty + +E. + +Emerson +Environment +Essays +"Evangelical Teaching" +Evans, Christiana +Evans, Mrs. Elizabeth +Evans, Isaac +Evans, Robert +Evans, Mrs. Robert +Evil +Evolution Philosophy +Experience + +F. + +Familiar, influence of the +Feeling +Feeling for others +_Felix Holt_ +_Felix Holt_, quoted +Feuerbach +Fichte +Field, Kate, quoted +Fielding, Henry +Fields, Mrs., quoted +Foleshill +_Fortnightly Review_ + +G. + +Garth, Caleb +"German life, natural history of" +God +Goethe +_Goethe, Life of_ +Griff House + +H. + +Harrison, Frederic +Heine +Hennell, Charles +Hennell, Sara +Heredity +House +Howells, W.D. +Huge +Humor +Hutton, R.H., quoted + +I. + +Idealism +Imagination +Immortality +Immortality, subjective +Individuality +"Influence of Rationalism" +Inspiration +Intuition + +J. + +James, Henry +Jones, Owen +"Janet's Repentance," quoted + +K. + +Kant +Kaufmann, Prof. + +L. + +"Lady Novelists" +Law +_Leader_ newspaper +_Legend of Jubal_ +Letters, extracts from +Lewes, George Henry + born + school days + early studies + in Germany + _History of Philosophy_ + _Spanish Drama_ + _Ranthorpe_ + writes for Reviews + _Leader_ + _Philosophy of the Sciences_ + _Life of Goethe_, physiological studies + _Fortnightly Review_ + _Problems of Life and Mind_ + characteristics + death +Lewes, influence on George Eliot +Lewes, Marian Evans + born + parents + early reading + school in Nuneaton + school In Coventry + studying at home + moves to Foleshill + studies continued + early religious views + early scepticism + troubles with her family + finds friends + the Brays + the Hennells + drawn towards positivism + father dies + goes to continent + translates Strauss + Feuerbach + assistant editor of _Westminster Review_ + _Review_ contributor + marriage + studies in Germany + writes _Clerical Scenes_ + adopts name of "George Eliot" + again visits Germany + _Adam Bede_ + controversy about _Adam Bede_ + novel-writing + poems written + house + habits of study + description of person + receptions + summers in country + death of Lewes + marriage to John Walter Cross + death + literary traits +"Lifted Veil" +Liggins, Joseph +Lippincott, Mrs., quoted +Literary Methods +Literature defined +Locke +Love +Lucretius + +M. + +Marriage +Martineau, Harriet +Matter +Meliorism +_Middlemarch_ +_Middlemarch_, quoted +Midland England +Mill, J.S. +_Mill on the Floss_, +_Mill on the Floss_, quoted +"Minor Prophet" +Morality +Mordecai +Morley, John +"Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" +Music, Love of +Myers, F.W.H., quoted +Mysticism + +N. + +Nemesis, +Newdigate, Sir Roger +Novel-writing + +P. + +Past, the +Paul, Kegan, quoted +Pessimism +Philosophy, George Eliot's +Philosophy, Lewes's _History of_ +_Philosophy of the Sciences_ +_Physiology of Common Life_ +Plots +Poetry +Positivism +Prayer +Priory, The +_Problems of Life and Mind_ +Psychology + +R. + +_Ranthorpe_ +Realism +Reason +Receptions +Relativity, Moral +Religion +"Religion of Humanity" +Renaissance +Renunciation +Resignation +Retribution +Romanticism +_Romola_ +_Romola_, quoted +_Rose, Blanche and Violet_ +Ruskin + +S. + +Sadler, Dr., quoted +Sand, George +Satire +Savonarola +_Scenes of Clerical Life_ +Schelling +Scientific illustration +Scott +_Seaside Studies_ +"Self and Life" +Sex in literature +Shakspere +Shelley +_Silas Marner_ +"Silly Novels" +Simcox, Edith, quoted +Society +Social Organism +Sorrow +_Spanish Drama_ +_Spanish Gypsy_ +Speculation, Love of +_Spectator_ +Spencer, Herbert +Spinoza +Spiritual, the +"Stradivarius" +Strauss +Sterling, John +Sympathy +Sully, James, quoted +Supernatural +Swinburne, quoted + +T. + +Tennyson +Thackeray +_Theophrastus Such_ +_Theophrastus Such_, quoted +Times +Tradition + +W. + +_Waverley Novel_ +_Westminster Review_ +"Weimar and its Celebrities" +Whipple, E.P., quoted +Wieland +"Woman in France" +Woman, Literary +Wordsworth + +Y. + +Young, Edward + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11680 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6213cdd --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11680 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11680) diff --git a/old/11680-8.txt b/old/11680-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d93a254 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11680-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15821 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, +Writings & Philosophy, by George Willis Cooke + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy + +Author: George Willis Cooke + +Release Date: March 22, 2004 [eBook #11680] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ELIOT; A CRITICAL STUDY OF +HER LIFE, WRITINGS & PHILOSOPHY*** + + +E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Andrea Ball, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +GEORGE ELIOT: A CRITICAL STUDY OF HER LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY. + +BY + +GEORGE WILLIS COOKE + +AUTHOR OF "RALPH WALDO EMERSON: HIS LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY." + +1884 + + + + + + +PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. + + +The publication of a new edition of this work permits me to say that the +essay on "The Lady Novelists," quoted in the seventh chapter, was written +by George Henry Lewes. Its opinions, however, are substantially those of +George Eliot, and they will be found in harmony with her own words. +Confessing to the error, I yet venture to let the quotations, and the +comments on them, stand as at first made. The three poems mentioned on page +75, were among the latest of the productions of George Eliot's pen. + +It has been suggested to me that I have not done perfect justice to George +Henry Lewes, especially in what I say of his books on the Spanish drama and +the life of Goethe. I have carefully reconsidered what I wrote of him, and +find no occasion for any change of judgment, though two or three words +might properly give place to others of a more appreciative meaning. + +My book has met with much greater praise than I could have expected. Its +errors, I have no doubt, are quite numerous enough; and yet I venture to +think the main thought of the book is correct. + +MARCH, 1884. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +PREFACE + + I. EARLY LIFE + + II. TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR + + III. MARRIAGE + + IV. CAREER AS AN AUTHOR + + V. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS + + VI. LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES + + VII. THEORY OF THE NOVEL + + VIII. POETIC METHODS + + IX. PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE + + X. DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS + + XI. RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES + + XII. ETHICAL SPIRIT + + XIII. EARLIER NOVELS + + XIV. ROMOLA + + XV. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH + + XVI. DANIEL DERONDA + + XVII. THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS + +XVIII. LATER ESSAYS + + XIX. THE ANALYTIC METHOD + + XX. THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT + + XXI. BIBLIOGRAPHY + + + + + + +I. + + +EARLY LIFE. + +The poet and the novelist write largely out of personal experience, and +must give expression to the effects of their own history. What they have +seen and felt, gives shape and tone to what they write; that which is +nearest their own hearts is poured forth in their books. To ignore these +influences is to overlook a better part of what they write, and is often to +lose the explanation of many features of their work. Shakspere is one of +those who are of no time or place, whose words gain no added meaning in +view of what he was and how he lived; but it is not so with a great number +of the best and most inspiring writers. The era in which they lived, the +intellectual surroundings afforded them by their country and generation, +the subtle phases of sentiment and aspiration of their immediate time and +place, are all essential to a true appreciation of their books. It is so of +Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Hugo, Wordsworth, Emerson, and how many more! + +As we must know the eighteenth century in its social spirit, literary +tendencies, revolutionary aims, romantic aspirations, philosophy and +science, to know Goethe, so must we know the nineteenth century in its +scientific attainments, agnostic philosophy, realistic spirit and +humanitarian aims, in order to know George Eliot. She is a product of her +time, as Lessing, Goethe, Wordsworth and Byron were of theirs; a voice to +utter its purpose and meaning, as well as a trumpet-call to lead it on. As +Goethe came after Lessing, Herder and Kant, so George Eliot came after +Comte, Mill and Spencer. Her books are to be read in the light of their +speculations, and she embodied in literary forms what they uttered as +science or philosophy. + +Not only is a poet's mind affected by the tone of thought about him, but +his personal experiences and surroundings are likely to have a large +influence on what he writes. Scott was deeply affected by the romantic +atmosphere of his native land. Her birthplace and youthful surroundings had +a like effect on George Eliot. The Midland home, the plain village life, +the humble, toiling country folk, shaped for her the scenes and characters +about which she was to write. Some knowledge of her early home and the +influences amidst which her mind was formed, help largely to an +appreciation of her books and the views of life which she presents in them. + +The Midland region of England she has pictured with something of that +accuracy with which Scott described the Border. It is a country of historic +memories. Near by her childhood home was the forest of Arden and Astly +Castle, the home of Sir John Grey, whose widow, Elizabeth Woodville, became +the queen of Edward IV. This was also one of the homes of Henry Grey, Duke +of Suffolk, who was found in a hollow tree near by after his rebellion; and +the home, likewise, of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. In another direction +was Bosworth Field; and within twenty miles was Stratford-upon-Avon. The +ancient city of Coventry was not far distant. It was not these historic +regions which attracted her, however, so much as the pleasant country, the +common people, the quiet villages. With observant eyes she saw the world +about her as it was and she entered into the heart of its life, and has +painted it for us in a most sympathetic, appreciative spirit. The simple, +homely, unromantic life of middle England she has made immortal with her +wit, her satire, her fine description, and her keen love of all that is +human. She herself recognized the importance of her early surroundings. In +one of her letters she used these words: + + It is interesting, I think, to know whether a writer was born in a + central or border district--a condition which always has a strongly + determining influence. I was born in Warwickshire, but certain family + traditions connected with more northerly districts made these districts + a region of poetry to me in my early childhood. I was brought up in the + Church of England, and have never joined any other religious society, + but I have had close acquaintance with many Dissenters of various + sects, from Calvinistic Anabaptists to Unitarians. + +The influence of the surroundings of childhood upon character she has more +than once touched upon in her books. In the second chapter of _Theophrastus +Such_, she says,-- + + I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where + my affections were fledged. + +In the same essay she says,-- + + Our Midland plains have never lost their familiar expression and + conservative spirit for me. + +In _Daniel Deronda_ she most tenderly expresses the same deep conviction +concerning the soul's need of anchorage in some familiar and inspiring +scene, with which the memories of childhood may be delightfully associated. +Her own fond recollections lent force to whatever philosophical +significance such a theory may have had for her. + + A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where + it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for + the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, + for whatever will give that home a familiar, unmistakable difference + amidst the future widening of knowledge; a spot where the definiteness + of early knowledge may be inwrought with affection, and kindly + acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and monkeys, may + spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit + of the blood. + +Mary Ann Evans was born at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish of +Colton, Warwickshire, England, November 22, 1819. In after years she +adopted the abbreviated form of her name, and was known by her friends as +Marian. When she was six months old the family moved to Griff House, which +was situated half-way between Bedworth, a mining village, and the +manufacturing town of Nuneaton. In approaching Griff from Nuneaton, a +little valley, known as Griff Hollows, is passed, much resembling the "Red +Deeps" of _The Mill on the Floss_. On the right, a little beyond, is Griff +House, a comfortable and substantial dwelling surrounded by pleasant +gardens and lawns. + +Robert Evans, her father, was born at Ellaston, Staffordshire, of a +substantial family of mechanics and craftsmen. He was of massive build, +tall, wide-shouldered and strong, and his features were of a marked, +emphatic cast. He began life as a master carpenter, then became a forester, +and finally a land agent. He was induced to settle in Warwickshire by Sir +Roger Newdigate, his principal employer, and for the remainder of his life +he had charge of five large estates in the neighborhood. In this employment +he was successful, being respected and trusted to the fullest extent by his +employers, his name becoming a synonym for trustworthiness. Marian many +times sketched the main traits of her father's character, as in the love of +perfect work in "Stradivarius." He had Adam Bede's stalwart figure and +robust manhood. Caleb Garth, in _Middlemarch_, is in many ways a fine +portrait of him as to the nature of his employment, his delight in the +soil, and his honest, rugged character. + +Caleb was wont to say that "it's a fine thing to have the chance of getting +a bit of the country into good fettle, and putting men into the right way +with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building +done--that those who are living and those who come after will be the better +for. I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work +that is." Robert Evans, like Caleb Garth, "while faithfully serving his +employers enjoyed great popularity among their tenants. He was gentle but +of indomitable firmness; and while stern to the idle and unthrifty, he did +not press heavily on those who might be behindhand with their rent, owing +to ill luck or misfortune, on quarter days." + +While still living in Staffordshire, Robert Evans lost his first wife, by +whom he had a son and a daughter. His second wife, the mother of Marian, +was a Miss Pearson, a gentle, loving woman, and a notable housewife. She is +described in the Mrs. Hackit of "Amos Barton," whose industry, sharp +tongue, epigrammatic speech and marked character were taken from life. +Something of Mrs. Poyser also entered into her nature. She had three +children, Christiana, Isaac and Mary Ann. The house at Griff was situated +in a rich landscape, and was a large, commodious farm-house of red brick, +ivy-covered, and of two stories' height. At the back was a large garden, +and a farm-yard with barns and sheds. + +In the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and Sister," Marian has given +some account of her early life. She had the attachment there described for +her brother Isaac, and followed him about with the same persistence and +affection. The whole of that poem is autobiographical. The account of the +mother gives a delightful glimpse into Marian's child-life: + + Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, + Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, + Then with the benediction of her gaze + Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still + Across the homestead to the rookery elms, + Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, + So rich for us, we counted them as realms + With varied products. + +The early life of Marian Evans has, in many features of it, been very fully +described in the story of Maggie Tulliver. How far her own life is that of +Maggie may be seen by comparing the earlier chapters in _The Mill on the +Floss_ with the "Brother and Sister." The incident described in the poem, +of her brother leaving her in charge of the fishing-rod, is repeated in all +its main features in the experiences of Maggie. In the poem she describes +an encounter with a gipsy, which again recalls Maggie's encounter with some +persons of that race. The whole account of her childhood life with her +brother, her trust in him, their delight in the common pleasures of +childhood, and the impression made on her by the beauties of nature, +reappears in striking similarity in the description of the child-life of +Maggie and Tom. These elements of her early experience and observation of +life have been well described by one who knew her personally. This person +says that "Maggie Tulliver's childhood is clearly full of the most accurate +personal recollections." + +Marian Evans very early became an enthusiastic reader of the best books. In +an almanac she found a portion of one of the essays of Charles Lamb, and +remembered reading it with great delight. In her seventh year a copy +of _Waverley_ was loaned to her older sister. She became herself intensely +fascinated by it, and when it was returned before she had completed it she +was thrown into much distress. The story so possessed her that she began to +complete it in writing, according to her own conception. When this was +discovered, the book was again secured for her perusal. This incident she +has described in a sonnet, which appears as the motto to the fifty-seventh +chapter of _Middlemarch_. + + They numbered scarce eight summers when a name + Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there + As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame + At penetration of the quickening air: + His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, + Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor, + Making the little world their childhood knew + Large with a land of mountain, lake and scaur, + + And larger yet with wonder, love, belief, + Toward Walter Scott, who living far away + Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. + The book and they must part, but day by day, + In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran, + They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan. + +Not only was she a great reader, but she was also a diligent and even a +precocious student, learning easily and rapidly whatever she undertook to +acquire in the way of knowledge. + +She was first sent, with her brother Isaac, to a free school in the village +of Griff. Among her mates was William Jacques, the original of Bob Jakins +in _The Mill on the Floss_. When seven years old she went to a girls' +school at Nuneaton. Her schoolmates describe her as being then a "quiet, +reserved girl, with strongly lined, almost masculine features, and a +profusion of light hair worn in curls round her head." The abundance of +her curling hair caused her much trouble, and she once cut it off, as +Maggie Tulliver did, because it would not "lie straight." "One of her +school-fellows," we are told, "recalls that the first time she sat down to +the piano she astonished her companions by the knowledge of music she had +already acquired. She mastered her lessons with an ease which excited +wonder. She read with avidity. She joined very rarely in the sports of her +companions, and her diffidence and shrinking sensibility prevented her from +forming any close friendship among her school-fellows. When she stood up in +the class, her features, heavy in repose, were lighted by eager excitement, +which found further vent in nervous movements of her hands. At this school +Marian was well taught in English, with drawing, music, and some little +French." + +Leaving this school at the age of twelve, she went to that of the Misses +Franklin in Coventry, a large town a few miles distant. To the careful +training received there she was much indebted, and in after years often +spoke of it with the heartiest appreciation. One of her friends, Edith +Simcox, has given an account of this school and of Marian's studies +there. "Almost on the outskirts of the old town of Coventry, towards the +railway station, the house may still be seen, itself an old-fashioned +five-windowed, Queen Anne sort of dwelling, with a shell-shaped cornice +over the door, with an old timbered cottage facing it, and near adjoining +a quaint brick and timber building, with an oriel window thrown out upon +oak pillars. Between forty and fifty years ago, Methodist ladies kept the +school, and the name of 'little mamma,' given by her school-fellows, is +a proof that already something was to be seen of the maternal air which +characterized her in later years, and perhaps more especially in +intercourse with her own sex. Prayer meetings were in vogue among the +girls, following the example of their elders; and while taking, no doubt, +a leading part in them, she used to suffer much self-reproach about her +coldness and inability to be carried away with the same enthusiasm as +others. At the same time, nothing was farther from her nature than any +sceptical inclination, and she used to pounce with avidity upon any +approach to argumentative theology within her reach, carrying Paley's +_Evidences_ up to her bedroom, and devouring it as she lay upon the floor +alone." + +During the three years Marian attended this school she held aloof from the +other pupils, was grave and womanly in her deportment. She acquired Miss +Rebecca Franklin's slow and precise method of speaking, and to her diligent +training owed her life-long habit of giving a finished completeness to all +her sentences. It seems that her imagination was alive at this time, and +being slowly cultivated. She was in the habit of scribbling verses in her +books and elsewhere. + +A fellow-pupil during the time she was a member of this boarding-school has +given these reminiscences of Marian's life there: "She learned everything +with ease," says this person, "but was passionately devoted to music, and +became thoroughly accomplished as a pianist. Her masters always brought the +most difficult solos for her to play in public, and everywhere said she +might make a performer equal to any then upon the concert stage. She was +keenly susceptible to what she thought her lack of personal beauty, +frequently saying that she was not pleased with a single feature of her +face or figure. She was not especially noted as a writer, but so uncommon +was her intellectual power that we all thought her capable of any effort; +and so great was the charm of her conversation, that there was continual +strife among the girls as to which of them should walk with her. The +teachers had to settle it by making it depend upon alphabetical +succession." + +Leaving the school in Coventry at the age of fifteen, Marian continued her +studies at home. The year following, her mother died; and this event, as +she afterwards said, first made her acquainted with "the unspeakable grief +of a last parting." Soon after, her older sister and her brother were +married and left home. She alone remained with her father, and was for +several years his housekeeper. "He offered to get a housekeeper," says Miss +Blind, "as not the house only, but farm matters had to be looked after, and +he was always tenderly considerate of 'the little wench,' as he called her. +But his daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into +her own hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge +of her domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on +at the same time." Her experiences at this period have been made use of in +more than one of her characters. The dairy scenes in _Adam Bede_ are so +perfectly realistic because she was familiar with all the processes of +butter and cheese making. + +In 1841 her father gave up his business to his son and moved to Foleshill, +one mile from Coventry. A pleasant house and surroundings made the new +home, and her habits of thought and life became more exact and fastidious. +The frequent absence of her father gave her much time for reading, which +she eagerly improved. Books were more accessible, though her own library +was a good one. + +She zealously began and carried on a systematic course of studies, such as +gave her the most thorough results of culture. She took up Latin and Greek +with the head master of the Coventry grammar-school, and became familiar +with the classic literatures. French, German and Italian were read in all +the master-pieces of those languages. The Old Testament was also studied +in the original; at the same time she became a proficient player on the +piano, and obtained a thorough knowledge of music. During several years of +quiet and continuous study she laid the foundations of that accurate and +wide-reaching knowledge which was so notable a feature of her life and +work. It was a careful, systematic knowledge she acquired, such as entitled +her to rank as an educated person in the fullest sense. Her painstaking +thoroughness, and her energetic application, were as remarkable at this +time as in later years. Her knowledge was mainly self-acquired, but it was +in no sense superficial. It is difficult to see in what way it could have +been improved, even if the universities had been open to her. + +Her life and her studies at Coventry have been well described by one who +knew her. We are told that "in this somewhat more populous neighborhood she +soon became known as a person of more than common interest, and, moreover, +as a most devoted daughter and the excellent manager of her father's +household. There was perhaps little at first sight which betokened genius +in that quiet gentle-mannered girl, with pale grave face, naturally pensive +in expression: and ordinary acquaintances regarded her chiefly for the +kindness and sympathy that were never wanting to any. But to those with +whom, by some unspoken affinity, her soul could expand, her expressive gray +eyes would light up with intense meaning and humor, and the low, sweet +voice, with its peculiar mannerism of speaking--which by the way wore off +in after years--would give utterance to thoughts so rich and singular that +converse with Miss Evans, even in those days, made speech with other people +seem flat and common. Miss Evans was an exemplification of the fact that a +great genius is not an exceptional, capricious product of nature, but a +thing of slow, laborious growth, the fruit of industry and the general +culture of the faculties. At Foleshill, with ample means and leisure, her +real education began. She acquired French, German and Italian from Signor +Brezzi. An acquaintance with Hebrew was the result of her own unaided +efforts. From Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michaels, Coventry, +she received lessons in music, although it was her own fine musical sense +which made her in after years an admirable pianoforte player. Nothing once +learned escaped her marvellous memory; and her keen sympathy with all human +feelings, in which lay the secret of her power of discriminating character, +caused a constant fund of knowledge to flow into her treasure-house from +the social world about her." + +Marian Evans early showed an unusual interest in religious subjects. Her +parents belonged to the Established Church, while other members of the +family were zealous Methodists. Religion was a subject which occupied much +of their attention, and several of them were engaged in one way and another +in its inculcation. Marian was an attentive listener to the sermons +preached in the parish church, and at the age of twelve was teaching in a +Sunday school held in a cottage near her father's house. Up to the age of +eighteen she was a most devoted believer in Christianity, and her zeal was +so great that Evangelicalism came to represent her mode of thought and +feeling. She was a somewhat rigid Calvinist and full of pious enthusiasm. +After her removal to Coventry, where her reading was of a wider range and +her circle of friends increased, doubts gradually sprang up in her mind. In +a letter written to Miss Sara Hennell she gave a brief account of her +religious experiences at this period. In it she described an aunt, Mrs. +Elizabeth Evans, who was a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah +Morris in _Adam Bede_. + + There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident + in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family--few and far-between + visits of (to my childish feeling) strange uncles and aunts and cousins + from my father's far-off native country, and once a journey of my own, + as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William + (a rich builder) in Staffordshire--but _not_ my uncle and aunt Samuel, + so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I remember + of northerly relatives in my childhood. + + But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married and I was + mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in + which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived + in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate + state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he + persuaded her to return with him, telling her that _I_ should be very, + very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly + under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavoring to + shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some + consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New + Testament. I _was_ delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard + her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of + exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that I should find + sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--about sixty--and, I + believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little + woman, with bright, small, dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I + imagine, but was now gray--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a + totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will + believe--was not _simply_ physical; no difference is. She was a woman + of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I + have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the + exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this + vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and + quiet in her manners--very loving--and (what she must have been from + the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and the + love of man were fused together. There was nothing highly distinctive + in her religious conversation. I had had much intercourse with pious + Dissenters before; the only freshness I found, in our talk, came from + the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and + though _she left the society when women were no longer allowed to + preach_, and joined the New Wesleyans, she retained the character of + thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked + with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about + predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority + came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which + at the time I disapproved; it was not strictly a consequence of her + Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it, yet it + came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of + Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with + us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, + once greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had + taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. "But I hope the + good man's in heaven, for all that," said my uncle. "Oh, yes," said my + aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, "Mr. A's in + heaven--that's sure." This was at the time an offence to my stern, + ascetic, hard views--how beautiful it is to me now! + +One who has been permitted to read the letters of Marian Evans written to +this aunt, has given the following account of them, which throws much light +on her religious attitude at this period: "Most of the epistles are +addressed to my 'dear uncle and aunt,' and all reveal George Eliot's great +talents. The style is elegant and graceful, and the letters abound in +beautiful metaphor; but their most striking characteristic is the religious +tinge that pervades them all. Nearly every line denotes that George Eliot +was an earnest biblical student, and that she was, especially in the years +1839 and 1840, very anxious about her spiritual condition. In one of these +letters, written from Griff to Elizabeth Evans, in 1839, she says she is +living in a dry and thirsty land, and that she is looking forward with +pleasure to a visit to Wirksworth, and likens her aunt's companionship and +counsel to a spring of pure water, acceptable to her as is the well dug for +the traveller in the desert. That the most affectionate and loving +relationship existed between the eminent author and Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, +is apparent from this correspondence. The inmost secrets of George Eliot's +heart are laid bare in these letters to the famous Methodist preacher, who +was at that time her dearest friend. She is ever asking for advice and +spiritual guidance, and confesses her faults with a candor that is rendered +additionally attractive by reason of the polished language in which it is +clothed. When quite a girl, George Eliot was known as pious and clever; and +in the letters she wrote in 1839, when she was twenty years old, the +cleverness has grown and expanded, although she is not so sure about her +piety. She says that 'unstable as water thou shalt not excel,' seems to be +a description of her character, instead of the progress from strength to +strength that should be experienced by those who wish to stand in the +presence of God. In another letter she admits that she cannot give a good +account of her spiritual state, says that she has been surrounded by +worldly persons, and that love of human praise is one of her great +stumbling-blocks. But in a letter written in 1840 the uncertainty has gone +from her mind, and she writes that she has resolved in the strength of the +Lord to serve him evermore. In a later communication, however, she does not +appear so confident, and admits that she is obliged to strive against the +ambition that fills her heart, and that her fondness of worldly praise is a +great bar and hindrance to spiritual advancement. Still she thinks it is no +use sitting inactive with folded hands; and believing that the love of God +is the only thing to give real satisfaction to human beings, she hopes, +with his help, to obtain it. One of the letters is chiefly devoted to the +concern felt by Marian Evans at Elizabeth Evans' illness; and another, +written at Foleshill, betrays some humor amid the trouble that afflicts her +about her own future. Their outward circumstances, she writes, are all she +can desire; but she is not so certain about her spiritual state, although +she feels that it is the grace of God alone that can give the greatest +satisfaction. Then she goes on to speak of the preacher at Foleshill, with +whom she is not greatly pleased: 'We get the truth, but it is not +recommended by the mode of its delivery,' is how she writes of this divine; +yet she is charitable withal, and removes the sting by adding that more +good may sometimes be obtained from humble instruments than from the +highest privileges, and that she must examine her own heart rather than +speak unkindly of the preacher. Up to this period it is evident that Marian +Evans' views upon religion were orthodox, and that her life was passed in +ceaseless striving for the 'peace that passeth understanding;' but in 1843 +a letter was written to Elizabeth Evans by a relative in Griff, in which +Marian Evans is spoken of, and the change in her religious opinions +indicated. She writes that they are in great pain about Mary Ann; but the +last portion of the letter, dealing more fully with the subject, has +unfortunately got lost or destroyed. The close association of George Eliot +with Derbyshire, as well as her love for the quaint village of Wirksworth, +and its upright, honest, God-fearing people, breaks forth in more than one +of these communications." + +Partly as the result of her studies and partly as the result of contact +with other minds, Marian began to grow sceptical about the religious +beliefs she had entertained. This took place probably during her +twenty-third year, but the growth of the new ideas was slow at first. As +one of her friends has suggested, it was her eagerness for positive +knowledge which made her an unbeliever. She had no love of mere doubt, no +desire to disagree with accepted doctrines, but she was not content unless +she could get at the facts and reach what was just and reasonable. "It is +seldom," says this person, "that a mind of so much power is so free from +the impulse to dissent, and that not from too ready credulousness, but +rather because the consideration of doubtful points was habitually crowded +out, one may say, by the more ready and delighted acceptance of whatever +accredited facts and doctrines might be received unquestioningly. We can +imagine George Eliot in youth, burning to master all the wisdom and +learning of the world; we cannot imagine her failing to acquire any kind of +knowledge on the pretext that her teacher was in error about something else +than the matter in hand; and it is undoubtedly to this natural preference +for the positive side of things that we are indebted for the singular +breadth and completeness of her knowledge and culture. A mind like hers +must have preyed disastrously upon itself during the years of comparative +solitude in which she lived at Foleshill, had it not been for that +inexhaustible source of delight in every kind of intellectual acquisition. +Languages, music, literature, science and philosophy interested her alike; +it was early in this period that in the course of a walk with a friend she +paused and clasped her hands with a wild aspiration that she might live 'to +reconcile the philosophy of Locke and Kant!' Years afterward she remembered +the very turn of the road where she had spoken it." + +The spiritual struggles of Maggie Tulliver give a good picture of Marian +Evans' mental and spiritual experiences at this time. Her friends and +relatives were scandalized by her scepticism. Her father could not at all +sympathize with her changed religious attitude, and treated her harshly. +She refused to attend church, and this made the separation so wide that it +was proposed to break up the home. By the advice of friends she at last +consented to outwardly conform to her father's wishes, and a partial +reconciliation was effected. This alienation, however, had a profound +effect upon her mind. She slowly grew away from the intellectual basis +of her old beliefs, but, with Maggie, she found peace and strength in +self-renunciation, and in the cultivation of that inward trust which makes +the chief anchorage of strong natures. She bore this experience patiently, +and without any diminution of her affection; but she also found various +friends among the more cultivated people of Coventry, who could sympathize +with her in her studies and with her radical views in religion. These +persons gave her the encouragement she needed, the contact with other and +more matured minds which was so necessary to her mental development, and +that social contact with life which was so conducive to her health of mind. +In one family especially, that of Mr. Charles Bray, did she find the true, +and cordial, and appreciative friendship she desired. These friends +softened the growing discord with her own family, and gave her that devoted +regard and aid that would be of most service to her. "In Mr. Bray's +family," we are told by one who has written of this trying period of her +career, "she found sympathy with her ardent love of knowledge and with the +more enlightened views that had begun to supplant those under which (as she +described it) her spirit had been grievously burdened. Emerson, Froude, +George Combe, Robert Mackay, and many other men of mark, were at various +times guests at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill while Miss Evans was there +either as inmate or occasional visitor; and many a time might have been +seen, pacing up and down the lawn or grouped under an old acacia, men of +thought and research, discussing all things in heaven and earth, and +listening with marked attention when one gentle woman's voice was heard to +utter what they were quite sure had been well matured before the lips +opened. Few, if any, could feel themselves her superior in general +intelligence; and it was amusing one day to see the amazement of a certain +doctor, who, venturing on a quotation from Epictetus to an unassuming young +lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his Greek by his feminine +auditor. One rare characteristic belonged to her which gave a peculiar +charm to her conversation. She had no petty egotism, no spirit of +contradiction; she never talked for effect. A happy thought well expressed +filled her with delight; in a moment she would seize the thought and +improve upon it--so that common people began to feel themselves wise in her +presence; and perhaps years after she would remind them, to their pride and +surprise, of the good things they had said." + +She was an ardent reader of Emerson and other thinkers of his cast of +thought, and some traces of this early sympathy are to be seen in her +books. On his second visit to England Emerson spent a day or two at the +house of Charles Bray, with whose writings he had previously become +acquainted. Emerson was much impressed with the personality of Marian +Evans, and more than once said to Bray, "That young lady has a calm, +serious soul." When Emerson asked her somewhat suddenly, "What one book do +you like best?" she at once replied, "Rousseau's _Confessions_." She +cherished this acquaintance with Emerson, and held him in grateful +remembrance through life. + +The painful experiences of this period are undoubtedly reflected in another +of her autobiographic poems, that entitled "Self and Life." She speaks of +the profound influence the past had over her mind, and that her hands and +feet were still tiny when she began to know the historic thrill of contact +with other ages. She also makes Life say to Self, in regard to her pain and +sorrow: + + But all thy anguish and thy discontent + Was growth of mine, the elemental strife + Towards feeling manifold with vision blent + To wider thought: I was no vulgar life + That like the water-mirrored ape, + Not discerns the thing it sees, + Nor knows its own in others' shape, + Railing, scorning, at its ease. + Half man's truth must hidden lie + If unlit by sorrow's eye. + I by sorrow wrought in thee + Willing pain of ministry. + +The intellectual surroundings of Marian Evans at this time gave shape to +her whole after-life. There were now laid the foundations of her mode of +thinking, and her philosophic theories began to be formed. It was in the +home of one of her friends she learned to think for herself, and it was +there her positivist doctrines first appeared. Charles Bray was affected by +the transcendental movement, and was an ardent admirer of Newman, Emerson +and others among its leaders. This interest prepared him, as it has so many +other minds, for the acceptance of those speculative views which were built +up on the foundation of science when the transcendental movement began to +wane. The transcendental doctrines of unity, the oneness of mind and +matter, the evolution of all forms of life and being from the lowest, the +universal dominion of law and necessity, and the profound significance of +nature in its influence on man, as they were developed by Goethe, +Schelling, Carlyle and Emerson, gave direction to a new order of +speculation, which had its foundations in modern science. + +Bray was an ardent phrenologist, and in 1832 published a work on _The +Education of the Feelings_, based on phrenological principles. In 1841 +appeared his main work, _The Philosophy of Necessity_; this was followed +several years later by a somewhat similar work, _On Force, its Mental and +Moral Correlates_. His philosophy was summarized in a volume published in +1871, which was entitled _A Manual of Anthropology_. He also wrote +pamphlets on "Illusion and Delusion," "The Reign of Law," "Toleration," and +"Christianity." In his work on necessity he promulgated very many of those +ideas which have formed so prominent a part of the philosophy of George +Eliot. The dominion of law, the reign of necessity, experience as the +foundation of knowledge, humanity as an organism that develops a larger +life for man by the aid of experience and tradition,--these are among the +doctrines of the book. There is every reason for believing that in the +teachings of Charles Bray, Marian Evans found many of the main elements of +her philosophy, and with his aid her opinions were largely shaped. + +Mrs. Bray was also a woman of large intelligence, and of a mind freely +open to new theories. She wrote a _Physiology for Schools_ and a +school-book on _Duties to Animals_, which have been well received by the +public and used as text books in the schools of the Midland counties. In +1882 she published a little book on the _Elements of Morality_, consisting +of a series of easy lessons for Unitarian Sunday schools and for home +teaching. To the Brays, Marian Evans owed much in the way of sympathy, +culture and direct influence. Perhaps more than any other persons they gave +tone and direction to her mind. One who knew them has said, "Besides being +a practical as well as theoretical philanthropist, Mr. Bray was also a +courageous impugner of the dogmas which form the basis of the popular +theology. Mrs. Bray shared in this general largeness of thought, while +perhaps more in sympathy with the fairer aspects of Christianity." + +A brother and a sister of Mrs. Bray's, Charles C. Hennell and Sara S. +Hennell, also had a large influence on Marian Evans during this period. It +was Charles Hennell who induced her to translate Strauss, and it was Sara +Hennell to whom she wrote about her aunt after the publication of _Adam +Bede_. Hennell's _Inquiry concerning the origin of Christianity_ was +published in 1838, and appeared in a second edition in 1841. In the latter +year the book was read by Marian Evans, after a faithful perusal of the +Bible as a preparation for it, and quickly re-read, and with great interest +and delight. She then pronounced it "the most interesting book she had ever +read," dating from it a new birth to her mind. The book was translated into +German, Strauss writing a preface for it, and that interpreter of +Christianity praised it highly. Hennell rejected all supernaturalism and +the miraculous, regarding Christianity as a slow and natural development +out of Judaism, aided by Platonism and other outside influences. He finds +the sources of Jesus' teachings in the Jewish tendencies of the time, while +the cause of the supremacy of the man Jesus was laid in a long course of +events which had swelled to a crisis at the time of his appearance, and +bore him aloft to a height whence his personal qualities told with a power +derived from the accumulated force of many generations. Jesus was an +enthusiast who believed himself the predicted king of the Jews, and he was +a revolutionist expecting to establish an earthly kingdom for the supremacy +of Judaism. Jesus was largely influenced by the Essenes, but he rejected +their austerity. Hennell found a mixture of truth and error in the Gospels, +and believed that many mythical elements entered into the accounts given of +Jesus. A thorough rationalist, he claimed to accept the spiritual essence +of Christianity, and to value highly the moral teachings of Jesus. In a +later work on _Christian Theism_ he finds an argument for belief in God +mainly in nature. In his conclusions he is not far from F.W. Newman and +Theodore Parker; but he does not give the credit to intuition and the +religious faculty they do, though he is an earnest believer in God, and +inclined to accept Christianity as the highest expression of religion. + +Sara S. Hennell early published _An Essay on the Skeptical Tendency of +Butler's Analogy_, and a Baillie prize essay on _Christianity and +Infidelity: An Exposition of the Arguments on Both Sides_. A work of much +merit and thought appeared from her pen in 1860, under the title of +_Thoughts in Aid of Faith_. In this work she follows her brother, Strauss, +Feuerbach and Spencer in an interpretation of religion, which constantly +recalls the theories of George Eliot. In a series of more recent books she +has continued the same line of thought. The early and intimate friendship +of Marian Evans and Miss Hennell may explain this similarity of opinion, +and the beliefs they held in common were doubtless developed to a greater +or less extent even when the former lived in Coventry. + +Another friend of this period was a German scholar by the name of Brabant, +resident in England, a friend of Strauss, Paulus, Coleridge and Grote. +Grote described him as "a vigorous self-thinking intellect." A daughter of +Dr. Brabant first undertook the translation of Strauss, and she it was who +married Charles Hennell. After this marriage Miss Evans offered to take to +Dr. Brabant the place of his daughter, and did act as his housekeeper for +some months. + +Marian Evans was surrounded at the most impressible period of her life by +this group of intellectual, free-thinking people, who seem to have fully +indoctrinated her with their own opinions. None of them had rejected +Christianity or theism, but they were rationalists in spirit, and eager +students of philosophy and science. Here were laid the foundations of the +doctrines she afterwards held so strongly, and even during this period very +many of the theories presented in her books were fully developed. Here her +mind was thoroughly prepared for the teachings of Comte, Spencer and Lewes; +and her early instructors had gone so far in their lessons that the later +teachers had little to do more than to give system to her thoughts. + +It was essential to George Eliot's novel-writing that she was educated +amidst religious influences, and that she earnestly accepted the religious +teaching of her childhood. Not less important was her humble home and her +association with the common life of the people. Through all her work these +influences appear, coloring her thought, shaping her views of life, and +increasing her sympathies and affections. Her tender, enthusiastic love of +humble life never lost any of its quickening power. The faith of childhood +was lost, but its memory was left in a warm appreciation of all phases of +religious life and a heartfelt sympathy with all the sorrows and +aspirations of men. + +Her father's health becoming very poor, Marian spent the next two or three +years in the care of him. She read to him most of Scott's novels, devoting +several hours each day to this task. During this period she made a visit to +the Isle of Wight, and there read the novels of Richardson. Her father died +in 1849, and she was very much affected by this event. She grieved for him +overmuch, and could find no consolation. Her friends, the Brays, to divert +and relieve her mind, invited her to take a continental tour with them. +They travelled extensively in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Her +grief, however, was so excessive as to receive little relief, and her +friends began to fear the results. On their return to England they left her +at Geneva, where she remained for nearly a year. After some months in a +boarding-house near Geneva she became an inmate of the family of M. +d'Albert Durade, a Swiss water-color painter of some reputation, who +afterwards became the translator of her works into French. She devoted the +winter of 1849-50 to the study of French and its literature, to mathematics +and to reading. Her teacher in mathematics soon told her that she was able +to proceed without his aid. She read Rousseau and studied the French +socialists. M. Durade painted her portrait, making a remarkable picture. +The softness of the clear blue eyes, in which is expressed a profound depth +of thought, is one of its characteristics. M. Durade accompanied her to +England in the spring of 1850, and she went to live with her brother, where +she remained for a few months. The old family differences about religion +had alienated the brother and sister so far intellectually that she +accepted an invitation from the Brays to find a home with them. Her sadness +and grief continued, and her health was not good. Her fits of nervousness +and of tears were frequent, but her studies continued to occupy her mind. +She delighted to converse with Mr. Bray, and other persons of earnest +thought had their influence on her mind. Among these was George Dawson, the +famous preacher who cut himself loose from all denominations. + + + + +II. + + +TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR. + +It was while living at Foleshill, and amidst the intellectual influences of +awakening radicalism, that Marian Evans undertook her first literary labor. +This was the translation of the _Leben Jesu_ of David Strauss. A book so +daring in its interpretations of the origin of Christianity excited much +attention, and especially among those who had broken away from the old +religious beliefs. The work of translation was at first undertaken by Miss +Brabant, who soon married Charles Hennell. Then the task was taken up by +Marian Evans, who gave three years to it, renewing her Hebrew studies for +the purpose, and the book was published in 1846. The work was thoroughly +done, so much so that Strauss complimented the translator on its accuracy +and correctness of spirit. Concerning the translation the _Westminster +Review_ had this word of praise to offer: "We can testify that the +translator has achieved a very tough work with remarkable spirit and +fidelity. The author, though indeed a good writer, could hardly have spoken +better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently +fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both +languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological +criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another +critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the +German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the +English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the +original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought +and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the +present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of +preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, +combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which impart to +the volumes before us the air and the spirit of an original. A modest and +kindly care for his reader's convenience has induced the translator often +to supply the rendering into English of a Greek quotation when there was no +corresponding rendering into German in the original. Indeed, Strauss may +well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for this English +edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is _et +accurata et perspicua_." + +The book had a successful sale, but Marian Evans received only twenty +pounds, and twenty-five copies of the book, for her share of the +translation. A little later she translated Feuerbach's _Essence of +Christianity_, receiving fifty pounds for this labor. It was published in +1854, but the sale was small, and it proved a heavy loss to the publisher. +While translating Strauss she aided a friend interested in philosophical +studies (probably Charles Bray) by the translation, for his reading, of the +_De Deo_ of Spinoza. Some years later she completed a translation of the +more famous _Ethica_ of the same thinker. It was not published, probably +because there was at that time so little interest in Spinoza. + +The execution of such work as this, and all of it done in the most +creditable and accurate manner, indicates the thoroughness of Marian Evans' +scholarship. Though she doubtless was somewhat inclined to accept the +opinions she thus helped to diffuse, yet Miss Simcox tells us that "the +translation of Strauss and the translation of Spinoza were undertaken, not +by her own choice but at the call of friendship; in the first place to +complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the second to +make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly phrenologist +who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded translation as a work +that should be undertaken as a duty, to make accessible any book that +required to be read; and though undoubtedly she was satisfied that the +_Leben Jesu_ required to be read in England, it would be difficult to +imagine a temper more naturally antipathetic to her than that of its +author; and critics who talk about the 'Strauss and Feuerbach period' +should be careful to explain that the phrase covers no implication that +she was at anytime an admirer or a disciple of Strauss. There are extremes +not only too remote but too disparate to be included in the same life." + +Marian Evans did not become an admirer or disciple of Strauss, probably +because she preferred Charles Hennell's interpretation of Christianity, It +is certain, however, that she was greatly affected by Feuerbach, and that +his influence was ever after strongly marked in her thinking. The teachings +of Charles Bray and Charles Hennell had prepared her for the reception of +those of Feuerbach, and he in turn made her mind responsive to the more +systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to +regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had +shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made +ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of +the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. +According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images +corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the +outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these +subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary +product of its own activity. The mind necessarily believes in God, which is +man's way of conceiving his species and realizing to himself the perfect +type of his own nature. God does not exist, and yet he is a true picture of +man's soul, a necessary product of his feeling and consciousness. All +religious ideas are true subjectively, and Christianity especially +corresponds to the inward wants and aspirations of the soul. To Feuerbach +it is true as a poetic interpretation of feeling and sentiment, and to him +it gives the noblest and truest conception of what the soul needs for its +inward satisfaction. + +The influence of Feuerbach is to be seen in the profound interest which +Marian Evans ever took in the subject of religion. That influence alone +explains how it was possible for one who did not accept any religious +doctrines as true, who did not believe in God or immortality, and who +rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as +she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy +with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times +she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a +just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she +learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to +man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like +so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping +scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, +arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration, +revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed +most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by +its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation. Religion +was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger +realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of +feeling. To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to +rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true +interpretation of the soul's wants, at the same time that she totally +rejected it as fact and dogma. + +In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist +him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, Chapman had been the +publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the +way to the continent the year before. He was the publisher of a large +number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and +radical sentiment of the time. The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker, +Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note, +appeared on his list. The _Westminster Review_ was devoted to scientific +and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, +Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of +contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a +wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able +departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries. +Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in +writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide +reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the acquaintance of +a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women. Under this +influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of +the ablest among them. Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was +"distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which +have since made her known to all the world." We are told by another that +"her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and +the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression +on all who wore thrown into her society." + +Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of +his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors. She was +extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave +herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A +fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the _Review_ was held in Mr. +Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the +scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time. Harriet +Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the +London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke. She visited George Combe and +his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return. + +While assisting Mr. Chapman, Marian Evans contributed only one article, +beyond her editorial work, to the pages of the _Westminster Review_. The +work she did, almost wholly that of digesting and reviewing new books, +could have been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except +in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally, +however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of +current English literature for January, 1852. she had Carlyle's _Life of +Sterling_ in hand. Her notice of the book is highly appreciative of +Carlyle's genius, and full of cordial praise. This passage gives her idea +of a true biography: + + We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently + to the task of the biographer,--that when some great or good personage + dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of + letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds + of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the + inclination, to read, we could have a real "Life," setting forth + briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims and + achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has + for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) + the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on + the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the + conditions required for the perfection of life writing,--personal + intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the + depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes + characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect,--are + seldom found in combination. _The Life of Sterling_ is an instance of + this rare conjunction. Its comparatively tame scenes and incidents + gather picturesqueness and interest under the rich lights of Carlyle's + mind. We are told neither too little nor too much; the facts noted, the + letters selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest + conception of what Sterling was and what he did; and though the book + speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind of + scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose. + +The earliest of the regular articles, and the only one printed while she +was the associate editor of the _Review_, is on "The Lady Novelists." It +appeared in the number for July, 1852, and contained a striking discussion +of woman's place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that +field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of +the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her +treatment of Jane Austen and George Sand, praising as well as criticising +with insight and fine discrimination. At the outset she defines literature +as an expression of the emotions, and gives a remarkably clear and original +description of its functions. + +Her editorial connection with the _Westminster Review_ continued for about +two years, until the end of 1853. For the next three years she was a +contributor to its pages, where there appeared "Woman in France: Madame de +Sablé," in October, 1854; "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," October, +1855; "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," January, 1856; "The Natural History of +German Life," July, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856; +and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two +other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little +value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its +Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these +articles are still as great as when they were first published. This will +justify the publication here of numerous extracts from their most salient +and important paragraphs. As indicating her literary judgment, and her +capacity for incisive characterization and clear, trenchant criticism, +reference may be made to the essay on Heine, which is one of the finest +pieces of critical writing the century has produced. + + Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age; no echo, but a + real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth + studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us + in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic + wand of his fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art--who + sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous + rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his + mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose + literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the + possibilities of German prose; and--in spite of all charges against + him, true as well as false--a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and + brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering + man, who, with all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to + endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an + intellectual interest. It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight + in the other scale--that Heine's magnificent powers have often served + only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so + that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but + have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the + precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and + personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly + been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness, + all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings + of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of + exquisite poetry, of wit, humor and just thought. It is apparently too + often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions + committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the + advantage of being himself a man of _no_ genius, so that those + transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; _he_, forsooth, never + lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse + allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the + temptation that lies in transcendent power.... + + In Heine's hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, + becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, + brilliant; it is German in an _allotropic_ condition. No dreary, + labyrinthine sentences in which you find "no end in wandering mazes + lost;" no chains of adjectives in linked harshness long drawn out; no + digressions thrown in as parentheses; but crystalline definiteness and + clearness, fine and varied rhythm, and all that delicate precision, + all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest + order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty + in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was + pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant + does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in + prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm + development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign + to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to + the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects. + Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates + between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and + daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness, + tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet. + +The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and +humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds +is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only +nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of +European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found +both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany, +having a flavor and a spirit quite his own. + +Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological +character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling +with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her +entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes +unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The +terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr. +Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends +each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds +in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a +perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection +of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their +minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that +Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or +1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare +the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen +psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as +accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the +circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education, +the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they +lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with +those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by +whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places +of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was +because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before +it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them. +In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no +deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism. +She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their +purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so +unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into +character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere. + + Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is + not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity--no + indication of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual + communion with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of + justification, and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an + experience. He insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith, + as labors to be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely represents + them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with divine + love. He is at home in the external, the polemical, the historical, the + circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and practical. The + great majority of his published sermons are occupied with argument or + philippic against Romanists and unbelievers, with vindications of the + Bible, with the political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism + of public events; and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual and + practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of fringe in a + hurried sentence or two at the end. He revels in the demonstration that + the Pope is the Man of Sin; he is copious on the downfall of the + Ottoman empire; he appears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story + which tends to show how he abashed an "infidel;" it is a favorite + exercise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the earth + is to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce + being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, Puseyites + and infidels are given over to gnashing of teeth. But of really + spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a + manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of sympathy with that + yearning over the lost and erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, + and prompted the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them," of the gentler + fruits of the Spirit, and the peace of God which passeth + understanding--of all this, we find little trace in Dr. Cumming's + discourses. + +Even more severe is her account of the poet Young. She speaks of him as "a +remarkable individual of the species _divine_." This is her account of his +life: + + He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his + metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if + you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a + psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last + Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic + applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After + spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a + hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a + parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with + fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his + imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general + mendicancy business to a particular branch; in other words, he has + determined on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking + orders," with the prospect of a good living and an advantageous + matrimonial connection. And no man can be better fitted for an + Established Church. He personifies completely her nice balance of + temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the + momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for + immortal life and for "livings;" he has a vivid attachment to patrons + in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with + something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly + things; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his + meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are + not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man + believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire + for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never + forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the + King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar + than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among + the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, + and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it + were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers it would be wise + and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven + apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. + Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is + to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and + frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and + skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and + exalting the next; and by this double process you get the + Christian--"the highest style of man." With all this, our new-made + divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the + worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of + Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes and + objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, + in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and + jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive; for this divine is Edward + Young, the future author of _Night Thoughts_. + +She says, "One of the most striking characteristics of Young is his +_radical insincerity as a poetic artist_." + + Indeed, we remember no mind in poetic literature that seems to have + absorbed less of the beauty and the healthy breath of the common + landscape than Young's. His images, often grand and finely presented, + lie almost entirely within that circle of observation which would be + familiar to a man who lived in town, hung about the theatres, read the + newspaper, and went home often by moon and star light. There is no + natural object nearer than the moon that seems to have any strong + attraction for him, and even to the moon he chiefly appeals for + patronage, and "pays his court" to her.... He describes nothing so well + as a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail over nothing more + familiar than the day of judgment and an imaginary journey among the + stars.... The adherence to abstractions, or to the personification of + abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the _want of genuine + emotion_. He sees Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists + and storms of earth: he sees Religion coming down from the skies, with + this world in her left hand and the other world in her right; but we + never find him dwelling on virtue or religion as it really exists--in + the emotions of a man dressed in an ordinary coat, and seated by his + fireside of an evening, with his hand resting on the head of his little + daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish ends, in the internal + triumph of justice and pity over personal resentment, in all the + sublime self-renunciation and sweet charities which are found in the + details of ordinary life. + +In these essays there are various indications of her religious opinions, +and those of a decided character. In that on Dr. Cumming, she has this word +to say of the rationalistic conception of the Bible: + + He seems to be ignorant, or he chooses to ignore the fact, that there + is a large body of eminently instructed and earnest men who regard the + Hebrew and Christian scriptures as a series of historical documents, to + be dealt with according to the rules of historical criticism, and that + an equally large number of men, who are not historical critics, find + the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the scriptures, opposed to + their profoundest moral convictions. + +This statement is suggestive of her position on religious subjects: + + The best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system, + believe that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the saving but + the educating of men's souls, the creating within them of holy + dispositions, the subduing of egoistical pretensions, and the perpetual + enhancing of the desire that the will of God--a will synonymous with + goodness and truth--may be done on earth. But what relation to all this + has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of the Christian in + the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show, of which Satan is + the wild beast in the shape of a great red dragon, and two thirds of + mankind the victims--the whole provided and got up by God for the + edification of the saints? + +She calls Dr. Cumming's teachings "the natural crop of a human mind where +the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic beliefs." +Then she deals with that belief in this trenchant fashion: + + Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids the complete + prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as religious systems have + been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and + though dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth: + build walls around the living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar + have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the + sap. But next to the hatred of the enemies of God which is the + principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more + obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a + reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the + sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in + proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into activity by + their proper objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly + impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as it is compassion that + speaks through the eyes when we soothe, and moves the arm when we + succor, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the soothing or the succor be + given because another being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to + be one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of + self-interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in producing an + action, but they presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and + conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the actions of accessory + motives will be excluded. + +In writing of Young she says,-- + + The God of the _Night Thoughts_ is simply Young himself "writ large"--a + didactic poet, who "lectures" mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of + mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven, and + expects the tribute of inexhaustible applause. Young has no conception + of religion as anything else than egoism turned heavenward; and he does + not merely imply this, he insists on it. + +She contrasts Young with Cowper, preferring the latter because he dwells +more on the things of a common and simple life. + + In Young we have the type of that deficient human sympathy, that + impiety toward the present and the visible, which flies for its + motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague and + unknown: in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which + cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its + reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. + +This warm human sympathy is all she cares for in religion. + + See how a lovely, sympathetic nature manifests itself in spite of creed + and circumstance! Where is the poem that surpasses the _Task_ in the + genuine love it breathes, at once toward inanimate and animate + existence--in truthfulness of perception and sincerity of + presentation--in the calm gladness that springs from a delight in + objects for their own sake, without self-reference--in divine sympathy + with the lowliest pleasures, with the most shortlived capacity for + pain? Here is no railing at the earth's "melancholy map," but the + happiest lingering over her simplest scenes with all the fond + minuteness that belongs to love; no pompous rhetoric about the + inferiority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their behalf against + man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, and a sense of enlarged happiness + from their companionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about human misery + and human virtue, but that close and vivid presentation of particular + deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How + Cowper's exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of morning sunlight + on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every detail and investing + every detail with beauty! No object is too small to prompt his song-- + not the sooty film on the bars, or the spoutless teapot holding a bit + of mignonette that serves to cheer the dingy town lodging with a "hint + that nature lives;" and yet his song is never trivial, for he is alive + to small objects, not because his mind is narrow, but because his + glance is clear and his heart is large. + +Her contributions to the _Westminster Review_ indicate that Marian Evans +had read much and well, and that she was possessed of a thoroughly +cultivated mind and much learning. To their preparation she gave herself +diligently, writing slowly, after a careful study of her subject and much +thought devoted to a faithful thinking out of all its parts. It has been +many times suggested that these articles gave indication only of learning +and studious effort. They certainly give strong hint of these, but also of +much more. That on human life shows how much she had thought, and how +thoroughly and philosophically, on one of the largest problems; while the +one on Heine indicates her penetrating literary judgment and her capacity +for analysis and interpretation. These essays are not mere compilations, +mere digests of learned information; they are studies of large subjects +done in a large and inspiring manner. Her essays on the poet Young and Dr. +Cumming, and the two on lady novelists, as well as that on Heine, show many +indications of that subtle power and that true genius which were displayed +in her later work. There was genius displayed in these articles, without +doubt, and genius of a high order. It was genius not as yet aware of +itself, and not yet at the height of its power and capable of its truest +expression, but genius nevertheless. Many of the most striking +characteristics of her novel-writing were shown in these essays. Here was +the same love of common human life; the same interest in its humbler forms +and expressions; the like penetrating analysis and subtle portrayal of +character; a psychological method of the same probing and comprehensive +nature. Her main philosophical ideas were indicated here, though not given +that clear and incisive expression they afterwards received. When she wrote +of the natural history of German life she indicated in the very title of +her essay one of her main theories, and her conception of man as a social +being was brought out in it. These essays fully indicate that her opinions +were already formed, that the leading ideas she was to give expression to +in her novels had been arrived at by diligent study and thought, and that +she had equipped herself with ample reasons for the acceptance of the +opinions she held. Their chief defect is in their occasional arrogance of +expression, as if the writer had not yet wholly escaped the superior airs +of the young woman elated with the greatness of her knowledge, and a +certain rudeness and vehemence of statement not seen later. It is a defect +that is not very prominent, but one that is apparent enough to mar some of +the best of these pages. It was one she never wholly outgrew, though in her +novels her large information was usually so managed and subordinated as to +give little annoyance to the intelligent reader. + +It must be quite evident to any reader of her _Westminster Review_ +contributions, that Marian Evans would never have attained to any such high +literary eminence as an essayist as that which she has secured as a +novelist. Readable as are her essays,--and the five just named are +certainly worthy of a place in her complete works,--yet they are not of the +highest order. She could attain the highest range of her power only when +something far more subtile and intrinsic was concerned. That this is true +may be seen in these essays; for even here she writes the best only when +she has human motives, feelings and aspirations to weigh and explain. That +she could dissect and explain the inner man they made apparent enough; but +her genius demanded also the opportunity to create, to build up a life of +high beauty and purpose from materials of its own construction. Her +_Review_ articles gave her a high place in the eyes of her friends, and +their chief value seems to have been, that they caused these friends to see +that she could do other and better work, and led them to induce her to +apply her genius in a direction more congenial to its capacity. + + + + +III. + + +MARRIAGE. + +In 1853 Marian Evans became the wife of George Henry Lewes. He had married +at an early ago a woman possessed of many charms of person. They went to +live in a large house at Kensington with five other young couples, keeping +house on a co-operative arrangement, with many attractions of social +entertainment therewith. One result was the desertion of her home by Mrs. +Lewes in connection with one of the men into whose company she was +constantly thrown by this manner of life. She soon repented, and Lewes +forgave her, receiving her back to his home. A second time, however, she +left him. His having condoned her fault made it impossible for him to +secure a divorce according to the laws of England at that time. He seems to +have done what he could to retain her faithful devotion to her marriage +relations, so long as that seemed possible. + +When Lewes and Marian Evans met, on her going to live in London, and after +his wife had deserted him, there sprang up a strong attachment between +them, As they could not be legally married, she agreed to live with him +without that formality. + +It is to be said of this affair that George Eliot was very far from looking +at such a problem as Goethe or, George Sand would have looked at it, from +the position of personal inclination. Yet we are told by Miss Blind that +she early entertained liberal views in regard to divorce, believing that +greater freedom in this respect is desirable. There could have been no +passionate individualistic defiance of law in her case, however. No one has +insisted more strongly than she on the importance and the sanctity of the +social regulations in regard to the union of the sexes. That her marriage +was a true one in all but the legal form, that she was faithful to its +every social obligation, has been abundantly shown. She was a most faithful +wife to Lewes, and the devoted mother of his three children by the previous +marriage, while she found in him that strong, self-reliant helpmate she +needed. + +Her marriage under these circumstances required no little individualism of +purpose, and some defiance of social obligations. Her intimate friends were +unable to comprehend her conduct, and she was alienated from most of them. +Especially her friends in Coventry were annoyed at such a marriage, and +were not reconciled with her for a long time, and not until they saw that +she had acted with a conscientious purpose. She was excluded from society +by this act, and her marriage was interpreted as a gross violation of +social morality. To a sensitive nature, as hers assuredly was, and to one +who so much valued the confidence of her friends as she did, such exclusion +must have been a serious cross. She freely elected her own course in life, +however, and she never seems to have complained at the results it brought +her. That it saddened her mind seems probable, but there is no outward +evidence that she accepted her lot in a bitter or complaining spirit. No +one could have written of love and marriage in so high and pure a spirit as +everywhere appears in her books with whom passion was in any degree a +controlling influence. In _Adam Bede_ her own conception of wedded love is +expressed out of the innermost convictions and impulses of her own heart, +when she exclaims,-- + + What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they + are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on + each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be + one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the + last parting. + +In _Felix Holt_ there is a passage on this subject which must have come +directly from her own experience, and it gives us a true insight into the +spirit in which she accepted the distrust of friends and the coldness of +the world which her marriage brought her. + + A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, + and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not + to be had when and how she will: to know that high initiation, she must + often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and + watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes all things easy; + it makes us choose what is difficult. + +Throughout her novels she exalts marriage, never casts any slur upon it, +treats it as one of the most sacred of all human relations. She makes it +appear as a sacrament, not of the Church, but of the sublime fellowship of +humanity. It is pure, holy, a binding tie, a sacred obligation, as it +appears in her books. When Romola is leaving Florence and her husband, her +love dead and all that made her life seem worthy gone with it, she meets +Savonarola, who bids her return to her home and its duties. What the great +prophet-priest says on this occasion we have every reason to believe +expressed the true sentiments of George Eliot herself. He proclaims, what +she doubtless thoroughly believed, that marriage is something far more than +mere affection, more than love; that its obligation holds when all love is +gone; that its obligation is so sacred and binding as to call for the +fullest measure of renunciation and personal humiliation. As throwing light +on George Eliot's manner of looking at this subject, the whole chapter +which describes the meeting of Romola and Savonarola deserves to be read. +That portion of it in which Savonarola gives his views of marriage may here +be reproduced, not as giving the doctrine of the Church, but as presenting +the positivist conception of marriage as interpreted by George Eliot. + + His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life, which + made it seem impossible toiler that she could go on her way as if she + had not heard it; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she must + take, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. And the instinctive + shrinking from a return to her husband brought doubts. She turned away + her eyes from Fra Girolamo, and stood for a minute or two with her + hands hanging clasped before her, like a statue. At last she spoke, as + if the words were being wrung from her, still looking on the ground. + + "My husband--he is not--my love is gone!" + + "My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Marriage is not + carnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads you + to! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all the + obligations of your place and name. That would not have been if you had + learned that it is a sacramental vow, from which none but God can + release you. My daughter, your life is not as a grain of sand, to be + blown by the winds; it is as flesh and blood, that dies if it be + sundered. Your husband is not a malefactor?" + + Romola flushed and started. "Heaven forbid! No; I accuse him of + nothing." + + "I did not suppose he was a malefactor. I meant that if he were a + malefactor your place would be in the prison beside him. My daughter, + if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You + may say, 'I will forsake my husband,' but you cannot cease to be a + wife." + + "Yet if--oh, how could I bear--" Romola had involuntarily begun to say + something which she sought to banish from her mind again. + + "Make your marriage sorrows an offering, too, my daughter: an offering + to the great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease. + The end is sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is + beginning, and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our + blessedness to die for it: to die daily by the crucifixion of our + selfish will--to die at last by laying our bodies on the altar. My + daughter, you are a child of Florence; fulfil the duties of that great + inheritance. Live for Florence--for your own people, whom God is + preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron + is sharp--I know, I know--it rends the tender flesh. The draught is + bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup--there is the + vision which makes all life below it dross forever. Come, my daughter, + come back to your place!" [Footnote: Chapter XL.] + +Again, when Dorothea goes to see Rosamond to intercede in Dr. Lydgate's +behalf with his wife, we have an expression of the sacredness of marriage, +and the renunciation it demands of all that is opposed to its trust and +helpfulness. Dorothea says,-- + + "Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful + in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved some one else better + than--than those we were married to, it would be of no use"--poor + Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language + brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or + getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very + dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us + like a murder--and everything else is gone. And then our husband--if he + loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in + his life--" + +If Marian Evans rejected the sanctions which society has imposed on the +love of man and woman in the legal forms of marriage, it was not in a +wilful and passionate spirit. There are reasons for believing that she was +somewhat touched in her youth with the individualistic theories of the +time, which made so many men and women of genius reject the restraints +imposed by society, as in the case of Goethe, Heine, George Sand, Shelley +and many another; yet she does not appear to have been to more than a very +limited extent influenced by such considerations in regard to her own +marriage. The matter for surprise is, that one who regarded all human +traditions, ceremonies and social obligations as sacred, should have +consented to act in so individualistic a manner. She makes Rufus Lyon +say--and it is her own opinion--that "the right to rebellion is the right +to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness." Her +marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. +She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to +this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and +personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she +was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be +seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the _Westminster +Review_, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the +tone of his books was not "immaculate," and that it was "strangely at +variance, with that sound and lofty morality which ought to form the basis +of every education." She also speaks of the philosophy of that day as "the +delusive though plausible theory that no license of tone, or warmth of +coloring, could injure any really healthy and high-toned mind." In the +article on "Woman in France," she touches on similar theories. As this +article was written just at the time of her marriage, one passage in it may +have a personal interest, and shows her conception of a marriage such as +her own, based on intellectual interest rather than on passionate love. She +is speaking of + + the laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage tie. + Heaven forbid [she adds] that we should enter on a defence of French + morals, most of all in relation to marriage! But it is undeniable that + unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, grounded only on + inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more + intelligent sympathy with men, and to heighten and complicate their + share in the political drama. The quiescence and security of the + conjugal relation are, doubtless, favorable to the manifestation of the + highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard + of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the + faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object--to convert + indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness + into perspicuity. + +Her conception of marriage may have been affected by that presented by +Feuerbach in his _Essence of Christianity_. In words translated into +English by herself, Feuerbach says, "that alone is a religious marriage +which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of +marriage--love." Again, he says that marriage is only sacred when it is an +inward attraction confirmed by social and personal obligations; "for a +marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the +voluntary, contented self-restriction of love--in short, a marriage which +is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing--is +not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage." As a moral +and social obligation, marriage is to be held sacred; its sacredness grows +out of its profound human elements of helpfulness, nurture and emotional +satisfaction, while its obligation rises from its primary social +functions. It does not consist in any legal form, but in compliance with +deep moral and social responsibilities. Some such conception of marriage +as this she seems to have accepted, which found its obligation in the +satisfaction it gives to the inner nature, and in the fulfilment of social +responsibilities. The influence of Compte may also have been felt in the +case of both Lewes and Marian Evans; they saw in the marriage form a +fulfilment of human, not of legal, requirements. + +While there is no doubt they would both gladly have accepted the legal +form had that been possible, yet they were sufficiently out of sympathy +with the conventionalities of society to cause them to disregard that form +when it could not be complied with. They regarded themselves, however, as +married, and bound by all the ties and requirements which marriage +imposes. They proclaimed themselves to their friends as husband and wife, +and they were so accepted by those who knew them. In her letters to +literary correspondents she always mentioned Lewes as "my husband." The +laws of most civilized nations recognize these very conditions, and +regard the acceptance of the marriage relation before the world as a +sufficient form. + +Those who have written of this marriage, bear testimony to its devotion +and beauty. The author of the account of her life and writings in the +_Westminster Review_, an early and intimate friend, says the "union was +from the first regarded by themselves as a true marriage, as an alliance +of a sacred kind, having a binding and permanent character. When the fact +of the union was first made known to a few intimate friends, it was +accompanied with the assurance that its permanence was already irrevocably +decreed. The marriage of true hearts for a quarter of a century has +demonstrated the sincerity of the intention. 'The social sanction,' said +Mr. Lewes once in our hearing, 'is always desirable.' There are cases in +which it is not always to be had. Such a ratification of the sacrament of +affection was regarded as a sufficient warrant, under the circumstances of +the case, for entrance on the most sacred engagement of life. There was +with her no misgiving, no hesitation, no looking back, no regret; but +always the unostentatious assertion of quiet, matronly dignity, the most +queenly expression and unconscious affirmation of the 'divine right' of +the wedded wife. We have heard her own oral testimony to the enduring +happiness of this union, and can, as privileged witnesses, corroborate it. +As a necessary element in this happiness she practically included the +enjoyment inseparable from the spontaneous reciprocation of home +affection, meeting with an almost maternal love the filial devotion of Mr. +Lewes's sons, proffering all tender service in illness, giving and +receiving all friendly confidence in her own hour of sorrowful +bereavement, and crowning with a final act of generous love and +forethought the acceptance of parental responsibilities in the +affectionate distribution of property, the visible result of years of the +intellectual toil whose invisible issues are endless." + +Their marriage helped both to a more perfect work and to a truer life. She +gave poise and purpose to the "versatile, high-strung, somewhat wayward +nature" of her husband, and she "restrained, raised, ennobled, and +purified" his life and thought. He stimulated and directed her genius life +into its true channel, cared for her business interests with untiring +faithfulness, made it possible for her to pursue her work without burdens +and distractions, and gave her the inspiration of a noble affection and a +cheerful home. Miss Edith Simcox speaks of "the perfect union between +these two," which, she says, "lent half its charm to all the worship paid +at the shrine of George Eliot." She herself, Miss Simcox proceeds to say, +"has spoken somewhere of the element of almost natural tenderness in a +man's protecting love: this patient, unwearying care for which no trifles +are too small, watched over her own life; he stood between her and the +world, her relieved her from all those minor cares which chafe and fret +the artist's soul; he wrote her letters; in a word, he so smoothed the +course of her outer life as to leave all her powers free to do what she +alone could do for the world and for the many who looked to her for help +and guidance. No doubt this devotion brought its own reward; but we are +exacting for our idols and do not care to have even a generous error to +condone, and therefore we are glad to know that, great as his reward was, +it was no greater than was merited by the most perfect love that ever +crowned a woman's life." Mr. Kegan Paul also writes of the mutual +helpfulness and harmony of purpose which grew out of this marriage. "Mr. +Lewes's character attained a stability and pose in which it had been +somewhat lacking, and the quiet of an orderly and beautiful home enabled +him to concentrate himself more and more on works demanding sustained +intellectual effort, while Mrs. Lewes's intensely feminine nature found +the strong man on whom to lean in the daily business of life, for which +she was physically and intellectually unfitted. Her own somewhat sombre +cast of thought was cheered, enlivened and diversified by the vivacity and +versatility which characterized Mr. Lewes, and made him seem less like an +Englishman than a very agreeable foreigner." + +This marriage presents one of the curious ethical problems of literature. +In this case approval and condemnation are alike difficult. Her own +teaching condemns it; her own life approves it. We could wish it had not +been, for the sake of what is purest and best; and yet it is not difficult +to see that its effects were in many ways beneficial to her. That it was +ethically wrong there is no doubt. That it was condemned by her own +teaching is so plain as to cause doubt about how she could herself approve +it. + +Lewes had a brilliant and versatile mind. He was not a profound thinker, +but he had keen literary tastes, a vigorous interest in science, and a +remarkable alertness of intellect. His gifts were varied rather than deep; +literary rather than philosophical. As a companion, he had a wonderful +charm and magnetism; he was a graceful talker, a marvellous story-teller, +and a wit seldom rivalled. His intimate friend, Anthony Trollope, says, +"There was never a man so pleasant as he with whom to sit and talk vague +literary gossip over a cup of coffee and a cigar." By the same friend we +are told that no man related a story as he did. "No one could say that he +was handsome. The long bushy hair, and the thin cheeks, and the heavy +mustache, joined as they were, alas! almost always to a look of sickness, +were not attributes of beauty. But there was a brilliance in his eye which +was not to be tamed by any sickness, by any suffering, which overcame all +other feeling on looking at him." + +George Henry Lewes was born in London, April 18, 1817. His grandfather was +a well-known comedian. His education was received in a very desultory +manner. He was at school for a time in Jersey, and also in Brittany, where +he acquired a thorough command of French. Later he attended a famous school +in Greenwich, kept by a Dr. Burney. After leaving school he went into a +notary's office, and then he became a clerk to a Russia merchant. His mind +was, however, attracted to scientific and philosophic studies, and he +betrayed little interest either in the law or in commercial pursuits. Then +he took up the study of medicine, giving thorough attention to anatomy and +physiology. It is said that his horror of the dissecting-room was so great +as to cause him to abandon the purpose to become a physician. All this time +his mind was steadily drawn to philosophy, and he gave as much time to it +as he could. The bent, of his mind was early developed, and in 1836, when +only nineteen, he had projected a treatise on the philosophy of mind, in +which he proposed to give a physiological interpretation to the doctrines +of Reid, Stewart and Brown. At the age of twenty he gave a course of +lectures on this subject; and to this line of thought he held ever after. +One of the influences which led to his departure from a strict +interpretation of the Scotch metaphysicians was the influence of Spinoza. +As indicating the eagerness with which he pursued his studies in all +directions, and the earnestness of his purpose at so early an age, his own +account of a club he attended at this time [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, +April 1,1866, introductory to the article on Spinoza.] may be mentioned. In +this account he describes a Jew by the name of Cohen, who first introduced +him to the study of Spinoza, and who has mistakenly been supposed to be the +original of Mordecai in _Daniel Deronda_. + +The sixth member of this club, who "studied anatomy and many other things, +with vast aspirations, and no very definite career before him," was Lewes +himself, in all probability. His eager desire for knowledge took him to +Germany in 1838, where he remained for two years in the same desultory +study of many subjects. He became thoroughly acquainted with the German +language and life, and gave much attention to German literature and +philosophy. On his return to England, Lewes entered upon his literary +career, which was remarkable for its versatility and productiveness. In +1841 he wrote "The Noble Heart," a three-act tragedy, published in 1852. +His studies of Spinoza found expression in one of the first essays on the +subject published in England. In 1843, he published in the _Westminster +Review_ his conclusions on that thinker. His essay was reprinted in a +separate form, attracting much attention, and in 1846 was incorporated into +a larger work, the result of his studies in Germany and of his interest in +philosophy. In 1845, at the age of twenty-nine, he published a history of +philosophy, in which he undertook to criticise all metaphysical systems +from the inductive and scientific point of view. This work was his +_Biographical History of Philosophy_. It appeared in four small volumes in +Knight's weekly series of popular books devoted to the diffusion of +knowledge among the people. Lewes touched a popular demand in this book, +reaching the wants of many readers. He continued through many years to +elaborate his studies on these subjects and to re-work his materials. New +and enlarged editions, each time making the book substantially a new one, +were published in 1857, in 1867 and in 1871. No solid book of the century +has sold better; and it has been translated into several continental +languages. + +Lewes did not confine himself to philosophy. Other and very different +subjects also attracted his attention. His mind ranged in many directions, +and his flexible genius found subjects of interest on all sides. In 1846 he +published a little book on _The Spanish Drama: Lope de Vega and Calderon_, +a slight affair, full of his peculiar prejudices, and devoted mainly to an +unsympathetic criticism. The following year he gave to the world an +ambitious novel, _Ranthorpe_. It seems to have been well read in its day, +was translated into German and reprinted on the continent by Tauchnitz. The +plot is well conceived, but the story is rapidly told, full of incident and +tragedy, and there is a subtle air of unreality about it. The experiences +of a poet are unfolded in a romantic form, and the attempt is made to show +what is the true purpose and spirit in which literature can be successfully +pursued. To this end there is a discussion running through the book on the +various phases of the literary life, much in the manner of Fielding. +_Ranthorpe_ would now be regarded as a very dull novel, and it is crude, +full of the sensational, with little analysis of character and much action. + +It was read, however, by Charlotte Brontë with great interest, and she +wrote of it to the author in these words: "In reading _Ranthorpe_ I have +read a new book--not a reprint--not a reflection of any other book, but _a +new book_. I did not know such books were written now. It is very different +to any of the popular works of fiction; it fills the mind with fresh +knowledge. Your experience and your convictions are made the reader's; and +to an author, at least, they have a value and an interest quite unusual." +In 1848, Lewes published another novel of a very different kind--_Rose, +Blanche and Violet_. This was a society novel, intended to reach the minds +of the ordinary novel-readers, but was not so successful as the first. It +has little plot or incident, but has much freshness of thought and +originality of style. + +The same year appeared his _Life of Robespierre_, the result of original +investigations, and based largely on unpublished correspondence. Without +any sympathy of opinion with Robespierre, and without any purpose of +vindicating his character, Lewes told the true story of his life, and +showed wherein he had been grossly misrepresented. The book was one of +much interest, though it lacked in true historic insight and was clumsily +written. While these works were appearing, Lewes was a voluminous +contributor to the periodical literature of the day. He wrote, at this +time and later, for the _Edinburgh Review_, the _Foreign Quarterly_, +_British Quarterly_, _Westminster Review_, _Fraser's Magazine_, +_Blackwood's Magazine_, _Cornhill Monthly_, _Saturday Review_, in the +_Classical Museum_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Atlas_ and various other +periodicals, and on a great variety of subjects. His work of this kind was +increased when in 1849 he became the literary editor of _The Leader_ +newspaper, a weekly journal of radical thought and politics. His +versatility, freshness of thought and vigor of expression made this +department of _The Leader_ of great interest. His reviews of books were +always good, and his literary articles piquant and forcible. In the first +volume he published a story called _The Apprenticeship of Life_. In April, +1852, he began in its columns a series of eighteen articles on Comte's +Positive Philosophy. In connection with the second article of this series +he asked for subscriptions in aid of Comte, and in the third reported that +three workingmen had sent in money. These subscriptions were continued +while the articles were in progress, and amounted to a considerable sum. In +1854 these essays were republished in Bohn's _Scientific Library_ under the +title of _Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences_. The _Leader_ was ably +conducted, but it was radical and outspoken, and did not receive the +support it deserved. In 1854 his connection with it came to an end. + +While connected with _The Leader_, Lewes had turned his attention to +Goethe, and made a thorough study of his life and opinions. After spending +many months in Weimar, and as a result of his studies in Germany, he +published in 1855 his _Life and Works of Goethe_. It was carefully +re-written in 1873, and the substance of it was given in an abbreviated +and more popular form a few years later. This has usually been accepted +as the best book about Goethe written in English. Mr. Anthony Trollope +expresses the usual opinion when he says, "As a critical biography of +one of the great heroes of literature it is almost perfect. It is short, +easily understood by common readers, singularly graphic, exhaustive, and +altogether devoted to the subject." On the other hand, Bayard Taylor +said that "Lewes's entertaining apology hardly deserves the name of a +biography." It is an opinionated book, controversial, egotistic, and +unnecessarily critical. It was written less with the purpose of +interpreting Goethe to the English reader than of giving expression +to Lewes's own views on many subjects. His chapters on Goethe's science +and on his realism are marked by an extreme dogmatism. The poetic and +religious side of Goethe's nature he was incapable of understanding, and +always misrepresents, as he did that side of his nature which allied Goethe +with Schiller and the other idealists. Lewes was always polemical, had some +theory to champion, some battle to fight. He did not write for the sake of +the subject, but because the subject afforded an arena of battle for the +theories to the advocacy of which he gave his life. + +With the completion of his _Life of Goethe_, Lewes turned his attention +more than ever to physiological studies, though he had continued to give +them much attention in the midst of his other pursuits. In 1858 appeared +his _Seaside Studies_, in which he recorded the results of his original +investigations at Ilfracombe, Tenby, Scilly Isles and Jersey. This volume +is written in a plain descriptive style, containing many interesting +accounts of scenery and adventure, explanations of the methods of study of +animal life at the seashore, how experiments are carried on, the results of +these special studies, and much of controversy with other observers. It +combines science and description in a happy manner. Another result of his +physiological studies was a paper "On the Spinal Cord as a Centre of +Sensation and Volition," read before the British Association for the +Advancement of Science, in 1858. This was followed the next year by three +published addresses on "The Nervous System," in which he presented those +theories which were more carefully developed in his latest work, where he +gave a systematic account of his philosophy. From this time on to his death +the greater part of his energies were given to these studies, and to the +building up of a philosophy based on physiology. A popular work, in which +many of his theories are unfolded, and marked throughout by his peculiar +ideas in regard to the relations of body and mind, was published in 1858. +This was his _Physiology of Common Life_, a work of great value, and +written in a simple, comprehensive style, suited to the wants of the +general reader. In the first volume he wrote of hunger and thirst, food and +drink, digestion, structure and uses of the blood, circulation of the +blood, respiration and suffocation, and why we are warm and how we keep so. +The second treats of feeling and thinking, the mind and the brain, our +senses and sensations, sleep and dreams, the qualities we inherit from our +parents, and life and death. In 1860 he printed in _The Cornhill Magazine_ +a series of six papers on animal life. They were reprinted in book form in +1861, under the title of _Studies in Animal Life_. More strictly scientific +than his _Seaside Studies_, they were even more popular in style, and +intended for the general reader. While these books were being published he +was at work on a more strictly scientific task, and one intended for the +thoughtful and philosophic reader. This was his _Aristotle: a Chapter from +the History of Science, including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific +Writings_, which was completed early in 1862, but not published until 1864. +As in his previous works, Lewes is here mainly concerned with an exposition +of his theories of the inductive method, and he judges Aristotle from this +somewhat narrow position. He refuses Aristotle a place among scientific +observers, but says he gave a great impulse towards scientific study, while +in intellectual force he was a giant. The book contains no recognition of +Aristotle's value as a philosopher; indeed his metaphysics are treated with +entire distrust or indifference. His fame is pronounced to be justifiably +colossal, but it is said he did not lay the basis of any physical science. +It is a work of controversy rather than of unbiassed exposition, and its +method is dry and difficult. + +Early in the year 1865, a few literary men in London conceived the project +of a new review, which should avoid what they conceived to be the errors of +the old ones. It was to be eclectic in its doctrinal position, contain only +the best literature, all articles were to be signed by the author's name, +and it was to be published by a joint-stock company. Lewes was invited to +become the editor of this new periodical, and after much urging he +consented. The first number of _The Fortnightly Review_ was published May +15,1865, It proved a financial failure, and was soon sold to a publishing +firm. The eclectic theory was abandoned, and the _Review_ became an +agnostic and radical organ under the management of its second editor, John +Morley. Lewes edited six volumes, when, in 1867, he was obliged, on account +of his health, to resign his position. He made the _Review_ an independent +and able exponent of current thought, and he kept it up to a very high +standard of literary excellence. His own contributions were among the best +things it contained, and give a good indication of the wide range of his +talent. In the first volume he published papers on "The Heart and the +Brain," and on the poetry of Robert Buchanan, as well as a series of four +very able and valuable papers on "The Principles of Success in Literature." +In the second volume he wrote about "Mr. Grote's Plato." In the third he +dealt with "Victor Hugo's Latest Poems," "Criticism in relation to Novels," +and "Auguste Comte." In this volume he began a series of essays entitled +"Causeries," in which he treated, in a light vein, of the passing topics of +the day. He wrote of Spinoza in the fourth volume, and of "Comte and Mill" +in the sixth, contributing nothing to the fifth. After Morley became the +editor, in the ninth and tenth volumes, he published three papers on +Darwin's hypothesis, and in 1878 there was a paper of his on the "Dread and +Dislike of Science." He also had a criticism of Dickens in the July number +of 1872, full of his subtle power of analysis and literary insight. + +Lewes in early life had a strong inclination to become an actor, and he did +go on the stage for a short time. He wrote and translated several plays, +one of his adaptations becoming very popular. He wrote dramatic criticisms +for the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and other journals, during many years. In 1875, +a volume of these papers was published with the title, _On Actors and the +Art of Acting_. It treated in a pleasant way, and with keen insight, of +Edmund Kean, Charles Kean, Rachel, Macready, Fan-en, Charles Matthews, +Frédéric Lemaitre, the two Keeleys, Shakspere as actor and critic, natural +acting, foreign actors on our stage, the drama of Paris in 1865, Germany in +1867, and Spain in 1867, and of his first impressions of Salvini. Another +piece of work done by him was the furnishing, in 1867, of an explanatory +text to accompany Kaulbach's _Female Characters of Goethe_. + +The last years of Lewes's life were devoted to the preparation of a +systematic exposition of his physiological philosophy. As early as the year +1858, he was at work on the nervous system, and, soon after, his studies +took a systematic shape. In his series of volumes on the _Problems of Life +and Mind_ he gave to the world a new theory of the mind and of knowledge. +In the first two volumes, published in 1874, and entitled _The Foundations +of a Creed_, he developed his views on the methods of philosophic research. +These were followed in 1877 by a third volume, on _The Physical Basis of +Life_. After his death his wife edited two small volumes on Psychology, +which included all the writing he left in a form ready for publication. His +work was left incomplete, but its publication had gone far enough to show +the methods to be followed and the main conclusions to be reached. + +Concerning the work done by Lewes in philosophy, there will be much +difference of opinion. He did much through his various expositions to make +the public familiar with the inductive methods of inquiry and with the +conclusions of positive thought. He made his books readable, and even +popular, giving philosophy an exposition suited to the wants of the general +reader. At the same time, he was polemical and dogmatic, and more concerned +to be clever than to be exact in his interpretation. Into the meanings of +some of the greatest thinkers he had little clear insight, and he is seldom +to be implicitly trusted as an expositor of those whose systems were in any +way opposed to his own. His limitations have been well defined by Ribot, in +his _Contemporary English Psychology_. + +"Mr. Lewes lacks the vocation of the scholar, which, indeed, is generally +wanting in original minds. His history resembles rather that of Hegel than +that of Ritter. His review of the labors of philosophers is rather occupied +with that which they have thought, than with their comparative importance. +He judges rather than expounds; his history is fastidious and critical. It +is the work of a clear, precise and elegant mind, always that of a writer, +often witty, measured, possessing no taste for declamation, avoiding +exclusive solutions, and making its interest profitable to the reader whom +he forces to think." Ribot speaks of the work again as being original but +dogmatic and critical. He says it belongs to that class of books which make +history a pretext for conflict. "The author is less occupied with the +exposition of facts than he is with his method of warfare; he thinks less +of being exact than of being clever.... He has evidently no taste, or, if +we prefer so to put it, he has not the virtue necessary to face these +formidable folios, these undigested texts of scholastic learning, which the +historian of philosophy ought to penetrate, however repulsive to his +positive and lucid mind." + +On the other hand, Mr. Frederic Harrison has described the great success of +the _Biographical History of Philosophy_, and made it apparent what are its +chief merits. "This astonishing work was designed to be popular, to be +readable, to be intelligible. It was all of these in a singular degree. It +has proved to be the most popular account of philosophy of our time; it has +been republished, enlarged, and almost re-written, and each re-issue has +found new readers. It did what hardly any previous book on philosophy ever +did--it made philosophy readable, reasonable, lively, almost as exciting as +a good novel. Learners who had been tortured over dismal homilies on the +pantheism of Spinoza, and yet more dismal expositions of the pan-nihilism +of Hegel, seized with eagerness upon a little book which gave an intense +reality to Spinoza and his thoughts, which threw Hegel's contradictories +into epigrams, and made the course of philosophic thought unfold itself +naturally with all the life and coherence of a well-considered plot.... +There can be no possible doubt as to the success of this method. Men to +whom philosophy has been a wearisome swaying backward and forward of +meaningless phrases, found something which they could remember and +understand.... For a generation this 'entirely popular' book saturated the +minds of the younger readers. It has done as much as any book, perhaps-more +than any, to give the key to the prevalent thought of our time about the +metaphysical problems.... That such a book should have had such a triumph +was a singular literary fact. The opinions frankly expressed as to +theology, metaphysics, and many established orthodoxies; its conclusion, +glowing in every page, that metaphysics, as Danton said of the Revolution, +was devouring its own children, and led to self-annihilation; its +proclamation of Comte as the legitimate issue of all previous philosophy +and positive philosophy as its ultimate _irenicon_--all this, one might +think, would have condemned such a book from its birth. The orthodoxies +frowned; the professors sneered; the owls of metaphysic hooted from the +gloom of their various jungles; but the public read, the younger students +adopted it, the world learned from it the positive method; it held its +ground because it made clear what no one else had made clear--what +philosophy meant, and why philosophers differed so violently." + +This extravagant praise becomes even absurd when the writer gravely says +that this book "had simply killed metaphysic." A popular style and method +gave the book success, along with the fact that the temper of the time made +such a statement acceptable. It cleverly indicated the weak places in the +metaphysical methods, and it presented the advantages of the inductive +method with great eloquence and ingenuity. Its satire, and its contempt for +the more spiritualistic systems, also helped to make it readable. + +His later work, in which he develops his own positive conclusions, has the +merit of being one of the best expositions yet made of the philosophy of +evolution. In view, however, of his unqualified condemnation of the +theories of metaphysicians, his system is one of singular audacity of +speculation. Not even Schelling or Hegel has gone beyond him in theorizing, +or exceeded him in the ground traversed beyond the limits of demonstration. +He who had held up all speculative systems to scorn, distanced those he had +condemned, and showed how easy it is to take theory for fact. Metaphysic +has not had in its whole history a greater illustration of the daring of +speculation than in the case of Lewes's theory of the relations of the +subjective and objective. He interprets matter and mind, motion and +feeling, objective and subjective, as simply the outer and inner, the +concave and convex, sides of one and the same reality. Mind is the same as +matter, except that it is viewed from a different aspect. In this opinion +he resembles Schelling more than any other thinker, as he does in some +other of his speculations. As a monist, his conclusions are similar to +those of the leading German transcendentalists. Indeed, the evolution +philosophy he expounds is, in some of its aspects, but a development of the +identity philosophy of Schelling. In its monism, its theory of the +development of mind out of matter, and its conception of law, they are one +and the same. The evolution differs from the identity philosophy mainly in +its more scientific interpretation of the influence of heredity and the +social environment. The one is undoubtedly an outgrowth from the other, +while the audacious nights of speculation indulged in by Lewes rival +anything attempted even by Schelling. + +Lewes was one of the earliest English disciples of Auguste Comte, and he +probably did more than any other person to introduce the opinions of that +thinker to English students. He was a zealous and yet not a blind disciple, +rejecting for the most part the later speculations of Comte. Comte's +theories of social and religious construction were repugnant to Lewes's +mind, but his positive methods and his entire rejection of theology were +acceptable. Comte's positivism was the foundation of his own philosophy, +and he did little more than to expand and more carefully work out the +system of his predecessor. In psychology he went beyond Comte, through his +physiological studies, and by the adoption of the methods and results of +evolution. His discovery of the sociological factors of mind was a real +advance on his master. + +George Eliot's connection with Lewes had much to do with the +after-development of her mind. An affinity of intellectual purpose +and conviction drew them together. She found her philosophical theories +confirmed by his, and both together labored for the propagation of +that positivism in which they so heartily believed. Their lives and +influence are inseparably united. There was an almost entire unanimity of +intellectual conviction between them, and his books are in many ways the +best interpreters of the ethical and philosophical meanings of her novels. +Her thorough interest in his studies, and her comprehension of them, is +manifest on many of her pages. Her enthusiastic acceptance of positivism in +that spirit in which it is presented by Lewes, is apparent throughout all +her work. Their marriage was a companionship and a friendship. They lived +in each other, were mutual helpers, and each depended much on--the advice +and counsel of the other. Miss Mathilde Blind has pointed out how +thoroughly identical are their views of realism in art, and on many other +subjects they were as harmonious. They did not echo each other, but there +was an intimate affinity of intellectual apprehension and purpose. + +Immediately after their marriage, Lewes and his wife went to Germany, and +they spent a quiet year of study in Berlin, Munich and Weimar. Here he +re-wrote and completed his _Life of Goethe_. On their return to England +they took a house in Blandford Square, and began then to make that home +which was soon destined to have so much interest and attraction. A good +part of the year 1858 was also spent on the continent in study and travel. +Three months were passed in Munich, six weeks in Dresden, while Salzburg, +Vienna and Prague were also visited. The continent was again visited in the +summer of 1865, and a trip was taken through Normandy, Brittany and +Touraine. Other visits preceded and followed, including a study of Florence +in preparation for the writing of _Romola_, and a tour in Spain in 1867 to +secure local coloring for _The Spanish Gypsy_. In 1865, the house in +Blandford Square was abandoned for "The Priory," a commodious and pleasant +house on the North Bank, St. John's Wood. It was here Mr. and Mrs. Lewes +lived until his death. + + + + +IV. + + +CAREER AS AN AUTHOR. + +Until she was thirty-six years old Mrs. Lewes had given no hint that she +was likely to become a great novelist. She had shown evidence of large +learning and critical ability, but not of decided capacity for imaginative +or poetic creation. The critic and the creator are seldom combined in one +person; and while she might have been expected to become a philosophical +writer of large reputation, there was little promise that she would become +a great novelist. Before she began the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, she had +written but very little of an original character. She was not drawn +irresistibly to the career for which she was best fitted, and others had to +discover her gift and urge her to its use. Mr. Lewes saw that the person +who could write so admirably of what a novel ought to be, and who could so +skilfully point out the defects in the lady novelists of the day, was +herself capable of writing much better ones than those she criticised. It +was at his suggestion, and through his encouragement, she made her first +attempt at novel-writing. Her love of learning, her relish for literary and +philosophical studies, led her to believe that she could accomplish the +largest results in the line of the work she had already begun. Yet Lewes +had learned from her conversational powers, from her keen appreciation of +the dramatic elements of daily life, and from her fine humor and sarcasm, +that other work was within the range of her powers. Reluctantly she +consented to turn aside from the results of scholarship she had hoped to +accomplish, and with many doubts concerning her ability to become a writer +of fiction. The history of the publication of her first work, _Scenes +of Clerical Life_, has been fully told, and is helpful towards an +understanding of her career as an author. + +In the autumn of 1856, William Blackwood received from Lewes a short story +bearing--the title of "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," which he +sent as the work of an anonymous friend. His nephew has described the +results that followed on the reception of this novel by Blackwood, and its +publication in _Blackwood's Magazine_. "The story was offered as the first +instalment of a series; and though the editor pronounced that 'Amos' would +'do,' he wished to satisfy himself that it was no chance hit, and requested +a sight of the other tales before coming to a decision. Criticisms on the +plot and studies of character in 'Amos Barton' were frankly put forward, +and the editor wound up his letter by saying,' If the author is a new +writer, I beg to congratulate him on being worthy of the honors of print +and pay. I shall be very glad to hear from him or you soon.' At this time +the remaining _Scenes of Clerical Life_ were unwritten, and the criticisms +upon 'Amos' had rather a disheartening effect upon the author, which the +editor hastened to remove as soon as he became sensible of them, by +offering to accept the tale. He wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'If you think it would +stimulate the author to go on with the other tales, I shall publish 'Amos' +at once;' expressing also his 'sanguineness' that he would be able to +approve of the contributions to follow, as 'Amos' gave indications of +great freshness of style. Some natural curiosity had been expressed as +to the unknown writer, and a hint had been thrown out that he was 'a +clergyman,'--a device which, since it has the great sanction of Sir Walter +Scott, we must regard as perfectly consistent with the ethics of anonymous +literature. + +"'Amos Barton' occupied the first place in the magazine for January, 1857, +and was completed in the following number. By that time 'Mr. Gilfil's Love +Story' was ready, and the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ appeared month by +month, until they ended with 'Janet's Repentance' in November of that year. +As fresh instalments of the manuscript were received, the editor's +conviction of the power, and even genius, of his new contributor steadily +increased. In his first letter to the author after the appearance of 'Amos +Barton,' he wrote, 'It is a long time since I have read anything so fresh, +so humorous and so touching. The style is capital, conveying so much in so +few words.' In another letter, addressed 'My dear Amos,' for lack of any +more distinct appellation, the editor remarks, 'I forgot whether I told you +or Lewes that I had shown part of the MS. to Thackeray. He was staying with +me, and having been out at dinner, came in about eleven o'clock, when I had +just finished reading it. I said to him, 'Do you know that I think I have +lighted upon a new author who is uncommonly like a first-class passenger?' +I showed him a page or two--I think the passage where the curate returns +home and Milly is first introduced. He would not pronounce whether it came +up to my ideas, but remarked afterwards that he would have liked to have +read more, which I thought a good sign.' + +"From the first the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ arrested public attention. +Critics were, however, by no means unanimous as to their merits. They +had so much individuality--stood so far apart from the standards of +contemporary fiction--that there was considerable difficulty in applying +the usual tests in their case. The terse, condensed style, the exactitude +of expression, and the constant use of illustration, naturally suggested to +some the notion that the new writer must be a man of science relaxing +himself in the walks of fiction. The editor's own suspicions had once been +directed towards Professor Owen by a similarity of handwriting. Guesses +were freely hazarded as to the author's personality, and among other +conjectures was one that Lord Lyttoll, whose 'Caxton' novels were about +the same period delighting the readers of this magazine, had again struck +a new vein of fiction. Probably Dickens was among the first to divine that +the author must be a woman; but the reasons upon which he based this +opinion might readily have been met by equally cogent deductions from the +_Scenes_ that the writer must be of the male sex. Dickens, on the +conclusion of the _Scenes_, wrote a letter of most generous appreciation, +which, when sent through the editor, afforded the unknown author very +hearty gratification. + +"While 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' was passing through the magazine, the +editor was informed that he was to know the author as 'George Eliot.' It +was at this time, then, that a name so famous in our literature was +invented. We have no reason to suppose that it had been thought of when the +series was commenced. It was probably assumed from the impossibility of a +nameless shadow maintaining frequent communication with the editor of a +magazine; possibly the recollection of George Sand entered into the idea; +but the designation was euphonious and impressive. + +"Before the conclusion of the _Scenes_, Mr. Blackwood felt satisfied that +he had to do with a master mind, and that a great career as a novelist lay +open to George Eliot; and his frequent communications urged her warmly to +persevere in her efforts. When 'Janet's Repentance' was drawing to a close, +and arrangements were being made for re-issuing the sketches as a separate +publication, he wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'George Eliot is too diffident of his +own powers and prospects of success. Very few men, indeed, have more reason +to be satisfied as far as the experiment has gone. The following should be +a practical cheerer,'--and then he proceeded to say how the Messrs, +Blackwood had seen reason to make a large increase in the forthcoming +reprint of the _Scenes_. The volumes did not appear until after the New +Year of 1858; and their success was such that the editor was able, before +the end of the month, to write as follows to Lewes: 'George Eliot has +fairly achieved a literary reputation among judges, and the public must +follow, although it may take time. Dickens's letter was very handsome, and +truly kind. I sent him an extract from George Eliot's letter to me, and I +have a note from him, saying that 'he has been much interested by it,' and +that 'it has given him the greatest pleasure.' Dickens adheres to his +theory that the writer must be a woman.' To George Eliot herself he wrote +in February, 1858, 'You will recollect, when we proposed to reprint, my +impression was that the series had not lasted long enough in the magazine +to give you a hold on the general public, although long enough to make your +literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases, a very long time often +elapses between the two stages of reputation, the literary and the public. +Your progress will be _sure_, if not so quick as we could wish.'" + +The success of the _Clerical Scenes_ determined the literary career of Mrs. +Lewes. She began at once an elaborate novel, which was largely written in +Germany. It was sent to Blackwood for publication, and his nephew has given +a full account of the reception of the manuscript and the details of giving +the work to the public. + +"_Adam Bede_ was begun almost as soon as the _Scenes_ were finished, and +had already made considerable progress before their appearance in the +reprint. In February, 1858, the editor, writing to Mr. Lewes, says, 'I am +delighted to hear from George Eliot that I might soon hope to see something +like a volume of the new tale. I am very sanguine.' In a few weeks after, +the manuscript of the opening chapters of _Adam Bede_ was put into his +hands, and he writes thus to Lewes after the first perusal: 'Tell George +Eliot that I think _Adam Bede_ all right--most lifelike and real. I shall +read the MS. quietly over again before writing in detail about it.... For +the first reading it did not signify how many things I had to think of; I +would have hurried through it with eager pleasure. I write this note to +allay all anxiety on the part of George Eliot as to my appreciation of the +merits of this most promising opening of a picture of life. In spite of all +injunctions, I began _Adam Bede_ in the railway, and felt very savage when +the waning light stopped me as we neared the Scottish border.' A few weeks +later, when he had received further chapters, and had reperused the +manuscript from the beginning, Mr. Blackwood wrote to George Eliot, 'The +story is altogether very novel, and I cannot recollect anything at all like +it. I find myself constantly thinking of the characters as real personages, +which is a capital sign.' After he had read yet a little further he +remarks, 'There is an atmosphere of genuine religion and purity that fears +no evil, about the whole opening of the story.' George Eliot made an +expedition to Germany in the spring of 1858, and the bulk of the second +volume was sent home from Munich. Acknowledging the receipt of the +manuscript, the editor wrote to Lewes, 'There can be no mistake about the +merits, and I am not sure whether I expressed myself sufficiently warmly. +But you know that I am not equal to the _abandon_ of expression which +distinguishes the large-hearted school of critics.' Adam Bede was completed +in the end of October, 1858, and Mr. Blackwood read the conclusion at once, +and sent his opinions. He says, 'I am happy to tell you that I think it is +capital.--I never saw such wonderful efforts worked out by such a +succession of simple and yet delicate and minute touches. Hetty's night in +the fields is marvellous. I positively shuddered for her, poor creature; +and I do not think the most thoughtless lad could read that terrible +picture of her feelings and hopeless misery without being deeply moved. +Adam going to support her at the trial is a noble touch. You really make +him a gentleman by that act. It is like giving him his spurs. The way poor +Hetty leans upon and clings to Dinah is beautiful. Mr. Irwine is always +good; so are the Poysers, lifelike as possible. Dinah is a very striking +and original character, always perfectly supported, and never obtrusive in +her piety. Very early in the book I took it into my head that it would be +'borne in upon her' to fall in love with Adam. Arthur is the least +satisfactory character, but he is true too. The picture of his happy, +complacent feelings before the bombshell bursts upon him is very good.' + +"_Adam Bede_ was published in the last week of January, 1859. The author +was desirous on this occasion to test her strength by appealing directly to +the public; and the editor, though quite prepared to accept _Adam Bede_ for +the magazine, willingly gratified her. Sending George Eliot an early copy, +before _Adam Bede_ had reached the public, he says, 'Whatever the +subscription may be, I am confident of success--great success. The book is +so novel and so true, that the whole story remains in my mind like a +succession of incidents in the lives of people I know. _Adam Bede_ can +certainly never come under the class of popular agreeable stories; but +those who love power, real humor, and true natural description, will stand +by the sturdy carpenter and the living groups you have painted in and about +Hayslope.' + +"_Adam Bede_ did not immediately command that signal success which, looking +back to it now, we might have expected for it. As the editor had warned the +author, the Scenes had secured for her a reputation with the higher order +of readers and with men of letters, but had not established her popularity +with the public in general. The reviewers, too, were somewhat divided. Many +of them recognized the merits of the work, but more committed the blunder +of endeavoring to fix the position of the book by contrasting the author +with the popular novelists of the time, and by endeavoring to determine +from which of them she had drawn her inspiration. In 1859 a review of _Adam +Bede_ from the pen of one of the oldest and ablest of our contributors was +published in this magazine, and on its appearance George Eliot wrote the +editor, 'I should like you to convey my gratitude to your reviewer. I see +well he is a man whose experience and study enabled him to relish parts of +my book which I should despair of seeing recognized by critics in London +back drawing-rooms. He has gratified me keenly by laying his fingers on +passages which I wrote either from strong feeling or from intimate +knowledge, but which I had prepared myself to find passed over by +reviewers.' Soon after, _The Times_ followed with an appreciative notice of +the book which sounded its real merits, and did justice to the author's +originality of genius; and by the month of April the book was steadily +running through a second edition. Readers were beginning to realize that +the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ was not a mere chance success, but the work +of a writer capable of greater and better things." + +It was Mrs. Lewes's desire not to be known to the public in her own +personality, hence her adoption of a _nom de plume_. She shrank from the +consequences of a literary fame, had none of George Sand's love of +notoriety or desire to impress herself upon the world. It was her hope that +George Eliot and Mrs. Lewes would lead distinct lives so far as either was +known outside her own household; that the two should not be joined together +even in the minds of her most intimate friends. When her friend, the editor +of the _Westminster Review_, detected the authorship of _Adam Bede_, and +wrote to her in its praise, congratulating her on the success she had +attained, Lewes wrote to him denying positively that Mrs. Lewes was the +author. Charles Dickens also saw through the disguise, and wrote to the +publisher declaring his opinion that _Adam Bede_ was written by a woman. +When this was denied, he still persisted in his conviction, detecting the +womanly insight into character, her failure adequately to portray men, +while of women "she seemed to know their very hearts." + +The vividness with which scenes and persons about her childhood home were +depicted, speedily led to the breaking of this disguise. One of her +school-fellows, as soon as she had read _Adam Bede_, said, "George Eliot +is Marian Evans;" but others were only confident that the author must be +some Nuncaton resident, and began to look about them for the author. Some +portions of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ had already been discovered to +have a very strong local coloring, and now there was much curiosity as to +the personality of the writer. A dilapidated gentleman of the neighborhood, +who had run through with a fortune at Cambridge, was selected for the +honor. While the _Scenes_ were being published, an Isle of Man newspaper +attributed the authorship to this man, whose name was Liggins, but he at +once repudiated it. On the appearance of _Adam Bede_ this claim was again +put forward, and a local clergyman became the medium of its announcement +to the public. The London _Times_ printed the following letter in its issue +of April 15, 1859: "Sir,--The author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam +Bede_ is Mr. Joseph Liggins, of Nuncaton, Warwickshire. You may easily +satisfy yourself of my correctness by inquiring of any one in that +neighborhood. Mr. Liggins himself and the characters whom he paints are +as familiar there as the twin spires of Coventry.--Yours obediently, +H. ANDERS, Rector of Kirkby." + +The next day the following was printed by the same paper:-- + + Sir,--The Rev. H. Anders has with questionable delicacy and + unquestionable inaccuracy assured the world through your columns that + the author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam Bede_ is Mr. Joseph + Liggins, of Nuncaton. I beg distinctly to deny that statement. I + declare on my honor that that gentleman never saw a line of those works + until they were printed, nor had he any knowledge of them whatever. + Allow me to ask whether the act of publishing a book deprives a man of + all claim to the courtesies usual among gentlemen? If not, the attempt + to pry into what is obviously meant to be withheld--my name--and to + publish the rumors which such prying may give rise to, seems to me + quite indefensible, still more so to state these rumors as ascertained + facts. I am, sir. Yours, &c., GEORGE ELIOT. + +Liggins found his ardent supporters, and he explained the letter +repudiating the authorship of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ as being +written to further his own interests. He obtained money on the plea that he +was being deprived of his rights, by showing portions of a manuscript which +he had copied from the printed book. Neighboring clergymen zealously +espoused his cause, and a warm controversy raged for a little time +concerning his claim. Very curiously, it became a question of high and low +church, his own fellow-believers defending Liggins with zeal, while the +other party easily detected his imposition. Finally, Blackwood published a +letter in _The Times_ denying his claims, accompanied by one from George +Eliot expressing entire satisfaction with her publisher. A consequence of +this discussion was, that the real name of the author was soon known to the +public. + +The curiosity excited about the authorship of _Adam Bede_, the Liggins +controversy, and the fresh, original character of the book itself, soon +drew attention to its merits. It was referred to in a Parliamentary debate, +and it became the general topic of literary conversation. Its success was +soon assured, and it was not long before it was recognized that a new +novelist of the first order had appeared. + +It is as amusing as interesting now to look back upon the reception given +to _Adam Bede_ by the critics. It is not every critic who can detect a +great writer in his first unheralded book, and some very stupid blunders +were made in regard to this one. It was reviewed in _The Spectator_ for +February 12, 1859, in this unappreciative manner: "George Eliot's +three-volume novel of _Adam Bede_ is a story of humble life, where +religious conscientiousness is the main characteristic of the hero and +heroine, as well as of some of the other persons. Its literary feature +partakes, we fear, too much of that Northern trait which, by minutely +describing things and delineating individuals as matters of substantive +importance in themselves, rather than as subordinate to general interest, +has a tendency to induce a feeling of sluggishness in the reader." + +Not all the critics were so blundering as this one, however, and in the +middle of April, _The Times_ said there was no mistake about the character +of _Adam Bede_, that it was a first-rate novel, and that its author would +take rank at once among the masters of the craft. In April, also, +_Blackwood's Magazine_ gave the book a hearty welcome. The natural, genuine +descriptions of village life were commended, and the boot was praised for +its "hearty, manly sympathy with weakness, not inconsistent with hatred of +vice." Throughout this notice the author is spoken of as "Mr. Eliot." The +critic of the _Westminster Review_, in an appreciative and favorable +notice, expressed a doubt if the author could be a man. He cited Hetty as +proof that only a woman could have written the book, and said this +character could "only be delineated as it is by an author combining the +intense feelings and sympathies of a woman with the conceptive power of +artistic genius." The woman theory was pronounced to be beset with serious +difficulties, however, and the notice concluded with these words: "But +while pronouncing no decisive opinion on this point, we may remark that the +union of the best qualities of the masculine and feminine intellect is as +rare as it is admirable; that it is a distinguishing characteristic of the +most gifted artists and poets, and that to ascribe it to the author of +_Adam Bede_ is to accord the highest praise we can bestow." + +With the writing of _Adam Bede_, George Eliot accepted her career as a +novelist, and henceforth her life was devoted to literary creation. Even +before _Adam Bede_ was completed, her attention was directed to Savonarola +as the subject for a novel. Though this subject was in her mind, yet it was +not made use of until later. As soon as _Adam Bede_ was completed, she at +once began another novel of English life, and drawn even more fully than +its predecessors from her own experience. Of this new work a greater +portion of the manuscript was in the hands of the publishers with the +beginning of 1860. She called it _Sister Maggie_, from the name of the +leading character. This title did not please the publisher, and on the 6th +of January, Blackwood wrote to her suggesting that it be called _The Mill +on the Floss_. This title was accepted by George Eliot, and the new work +appeared in three volumes at the beginning of April, 1860. + +In July, 1859, there appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ a short story from +George Eliot bearing the title of "The Lifted Veil." This was followed by +another, in 1864, called "Brother Jacob." Both were printed anonymously and +are the only short stories she wrote after the _Clerical Scenes_. They +attracted attention, but were not reprinted until 1880, when they appeared +in the volume with _Silas Marner_, in Blackwood's "cabinet edition" of her +works. In March, 1861, _Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe_, her only +one-volume novel, was given to the public by Blackwood. + +Having carefully studied the life and surroundings of Savonarola, she now +took up this subject, and embodied it in her _Romola_. This novel appeared +in the _Cornhill Magazine_ from July, 1862, to July, 1863. It has been +reported that it was offered to Blackwood for publication, who rejected it +because it was not likely to be popular with the public. The probable +reason of its publication in the _Cornhill Magazine_ was that a large sum +was paid for its first appearance in that periodical. In a letter written +July 5, 1862, Lewes gave the true explanation. "My main object in +persuading her to consent to serial publication was not the unheard-of +magnificence of the offer, but the advantage to such a work of being read +slowly and deliberately, instead of being galloped through in three +volumes. I think it quite unique, and so will the public when it gets over +the first feeling of surprise and disappointment at the book not being +English and like its predecessor." The success it met with while under way +in the pages of the magazine may be seen from a letter written by Lewes on +December 18. "Marian lives entirely in the fifteenth century, and is much +cheered every now and then by hearing indirectly how her book is +appreciated by the higher class of minds, and some of the highest, though +it is not, and cannot be, popular. In Florence we hear they are wild with +delight and surprise at such a work being executed by a foreigner, as if an +Italian had ever done anything of the kind." _Romola_ was illustrated in +the _Cornhill Magazine_, and on its completion was reprinted by Smith, +Elder & Co., the publishers of that periodical. + +The success of _Romola_ was such as to lead George Eliot to begin on +another historical subject, though she was probably induced to do this much +more by its fitness to her purposes than by the public reception of the +novel. This time she gave her work a poetical and dramatic form. _The +Spanish Gypsy_ was written in the winter of 1864-5, but was laid aside for +more thorough study of the subject and for careful revision. She had +previously, in 1863, written a short story in verse, founded on the pages +of Bocaccio, entitled "How Lisa Loved the King." Probably other poems had +also been written, but poetry had not occupied much of her attention. As a +school-girl, and even after she had gone to London, she had written verses. +Among these earlier attempts, it may not be unsafe to conjecture, may have +been the undated poems which she has published in connection with _The +Legend of Jubal_. These are "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and go, +Love," and "The Death of Moses." + +After laying aside _The Spanish Gypsy_ she began on another novel of +English life, and _Felix Holt: the Radical_ was printed in three volumes by +Blackwood, in June, 1866. Shortly after, she printed in _Blackwood's +Magazine_--an "Address to workmen, by Felix Holt," in which she gave some +wholesome and admirable advice to the operative classes who had been +enfranchised by the Reform Bill. In the same magazine, "How Lisa Loved the +King" was printed in May, 1869. This was the last of her contributions to +its pages. Its publisher gave her many encouragements in her literary +career, and was devoted to her interests. After his death she gave +expression to her appreciation of his valuable aid in reaching the public, +through a letter addressed to his successor. + + I feel that his death was an irreparable loss to my mental life for + nowhere else is it possible that I can find the same long-tried + genuineness of sympathy and unmixed impartial gladness in anything I + might happen to do well. To have had a publisher who was in the fullest + sense of the word a gentleman, and at the same time a man of excellent + moral judgment, has been an invaluable stimulus and comfort to me. Your + uncle had retained that fruit of experience which makes a man of the + world, as opposed to the narrow man of literature. He judged well of + writing, because he had learned to judge well of men and things, not + merely through quickness of observation and insight, but with the + illumination of a heart in the right place--a thorough integrity and + rare tenderness of feeling. + +After a visit to Spain in the summer of 1867, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was +re-written and published by Blackwood, in June, 1868. During several years, +at this period of her life, her pen was busy with poetical subjects. "A +Minor Prophet" was written in 1865, "Two Lovers" in 1866, and "Oh may I +join the Choir Invisible" in 1867. "Agatha" was written in 1868, and was +published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for August, 1869. _The Legend of Jubal_ +was written in 1869 and was printed in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for May, +1870. In 1869 were also written the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and +Sister." "Armgart" was written in 1870, and appeared in _Macmillan's +Magazine_ in July, 1871. "Arion" and "Stradivarius" were written in 1873. +"A College Breakfast Party" was written in April, 1874, and was printed in +_Macmillan's Magazine_ for July, 1878. _The Legend of Jubal and other +Poems_ was published by Blackwood in 1874, and contained all the poems just +named, except the last. A new edition was published in 1879 as _The Legend +of Jubal and other Poems, Old and New_. The "new" poems in this edition are +"The College Breakfast Party," "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and +go, Love," and "The Death of Moses." + +To the longer of these poetical studies succeeded another novel of English +Life. _Middlemarch: a Study of Provincial Life_ was printed in twelve +monthly parts by Blackwood, beginning in December, 1871. Five years later, +_Daniel Deronda_ was printed in eight monthly parts by the same publisher, +beginning with February, 1876. This method of publication was probably +adopted for the same reason assigned by Lewes for the serial appearance of +_Romola_. Both novels attracted much attention, and were eagerly devoured +and discussed as the successive numbers appeared, the first because of its +remarkable character as a study of English life, the other because of its +peculiar ideas, and its defence of the Jewish race. Her last book, +_Impressions of Theophrastus Such_, a series of essays on moral and +literary subjects, written the year before, was published by Blackwood in +June, 1879. Its reception by the public was somewhat unfavorable, and it +added nothing of immediate enlargement to her reputation. + +Of miscellaneous writing George Eliot did but very little. While Mr. Lewes +was the editor of _The Leader_ newspaper, from 1849 to 1854, she was an +occasional contributor of anonymous articles to its columns. When he +founded _The Fortnightly Review_ she contributed to its first number, +published in May, 1865, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in +which she reviewed Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_. These occasional +efforts of her pen, together with the two short stories and the poems +already mentioned, constituted all her work outside her series of great +novels. She concentrated her efforts as few authors have done; and having +found, albeit slowly and reluctantly, what she could best accomplish, she +seldom strayed aside. When her pen had found its proper place it was not +often idle; and though she did not write rapidly, yet she continued +steadily at her work and accomplished much. Within twenty years she wrote +eight great works of fiction, including _The Spanish Gypsy_; works that are +destined to an immortality of fame. From almost entire obscurity her name +appeared, with the publication of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, to attract +attention among a few most appreciative readers, and it was destined then +to rise suddenly to the highest place of literary reputation with the +publication of _Adam Bede_. Her genius blazed clearly out upon the world in +the fulness of its powers, and each new work added to her fame, and +revealed some new capacity in the delineation of character. Her literary +career shows throughout the steady triumph of genius and of persistent +labor. + + + + +V. + + +PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. + +The home of Mrs. Lewes during the later years of her life was in one of the +London suburbs, near Regent's Park, in what is known as St. John's Wood, at +number 21, North Bank Street. This locality was not too far from the city +for the enjoyment and the use of its advantages, while it was out of the +noise and the smoke. The houses stand far apart, are surrounded with trees +and lawns, while all is quiet and beautiful. The square, unpretentious +house in which the Leweses lived was surrounded by a fine garden and green +turf, while flowers were abundant. A high wall shut it out from the street. +Within, all was refinement and good taste; there were flowers in the +windows, the furniture was plain and substantial, while quiet simplicity +reigned supreme. The house had two stories and a basement. On the first +floor were two drawing-rooms, a small reception room, a dining-room and Mr. +Lewes's study. These rooms were decorated by Owen Jones, their artist +friend. The second floor contained the study of George Eliot, which was a +plain room, not large. Its two front windows looked into the garden, and +there were book-cases around the walls, and a neat writing-desk. All things +about the house indicated simple tastes, moderate needs, and a plain method +of life. + +Mrs. Lewes usually went into her study at eight o'clock in the morning, and +remained there at work until one. If the weather was fine, she rode out in +the afternoon, or she walked in Regent's Park with Mr. Lewes. In case the +weather did not permit her going out, she returned again to her study in +the afternoon. The affairs of her household were so arranged that she could +give herself uninterruptedly to her work. The kitchen was in the basement, +a housekeeper had entire charge of the management of the house, and Mrs. +Lewes was carefully guarded from all outside interruptions. She very seldom +went into society, and she received but few visitors, except on Sunday +afternoons. Her letters were written by Mr. Lewes, with the exception of +those to personal friends or an occasional outside correspondent; and all +the details of the publication of her books and the management of her +business affairs were in his hands. The immediate success of her novels +made them profitable to the publisher, and she was paid comparatively large +sums for them. + +Her evenings were spent by Mrs. Lewes at home, in reading and singing, +unless she went to the theatre, as she often did. She walked much, often +visiting the zoological gardens, and she had a great liking for all kinds +of small animals. She greatly enjoyed travelling. Music was her passion, +and art her delight. She preferred the realistic painters, and she never +tired of the collections she often visited in London. + +The health of Mrs. Lewes was never good. She was a constant sufferer, was +nervous, excitable and low-spirited. Only by the utmost care and husbanding +of her powers was she enabled to accomplish her work. In a note to one of +her correspondents she has given some hint of the almost chronic languor +and bodily weakness from which she suffered. + + The weather, our ailments, and various other causes, have made us put + off our flight from one week to another, but now we are really + fluttering our wings and making a dust about us. I wish we had seen you + oftener. I was placidly looking forward to your staying in England + another year or more, and gave way to my general languor about seeing + friends in these last months, which have been too full of small bodily + miseries for me to feel that I had much space to give to pleasanter + occupation. + +Only those who knew her long and well can fitly describe such a woman as +Mrs. Lewes. Personal intimacy gives a color to the words used, and a +meaning to the delicate shades of expression, that can be had in no other +way. One of her friends has described her as being of "the middle height, +the head large, the brow ample, the lower face massive; the eyes gray, +lighting up from time to time with a sympathetic glow; the countenance +sensitive, spiritual, with 'mind and music breathing' from it; the general +demeanor composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but +somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving evenly, as it were +in a monotone, though now and then rising, with a sort of quiet eagerness, +into a higher note." The same writer speaks of the close-fitting flow of +her robe, and the luxuriant mass of light-brown hair hanging low on both +sides of her head, as marked characteristics of her costume. Her features +were very plain and large, too large for anything like beauty, but strongly +impressive by their very massiveness. More than one of her friends has +spoken of her resemblance to Savonarola, perhaps suggested by her +description of that monk-prophet in _Romola_. Mr. Kegan Paul finds that she +also resembled Dante and Cardinal Newman, and that these four were of the +same spiritual family, with a curious interdependence of likeness. All +these persons have "the same straight wall of brow; the droop of the +powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion kept resolutely +under control; a square jaw, which would make the face stern were it not +counteracted by the sweet smile of lips and eye." Her friends say that no +portrait does her justice, that her massive we features could not be +portrayed. "The mere shape of the head," says Kegan Paul, "would be the +despair of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely +be possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to the +frame, of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her, +although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that, after all, she +was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow and brain." + +An account of her personal traits has been given by Mrs. Lippincott. "She +impressed me," says this writer, "at first as exceedingly plain, with the +massive character of her features, her aggressive jaw and evasive blue +eyes. But as she grew interested and earnest in conversation, a great light +flashed over or out of her face, till it seemed transfigured, while the +sweetness of her rare smile was something quite indescribable. But she +seemed to me to the last lofty and cold. I felt that her head was among the +stars--the stars of a wintry night." Another American, Miss Kate Field, in +writing of the English authors to be seen in Florence half a dozen years +after George Eliot began her career, was the first to give an account of +this new literary star. "She is a woman of large frame and fair Saxon +coloring. In heaviness of jaw and height of cheek-bone she greatly +resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, +judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and +amiable, while her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In +conversation Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining, and her interest in young +writers is a trait which immediately takes captive all persons of this +class. We shall not forget with what kindness and earnestness she addressed +a young girl who had just begun to handle a pen, how frankly she related +her own literary experience, and how gently she _suggested_ advice. True +genius is always allied to humility; and in seeing Mrs. Lewes do the work +of a good Samaritan so unobtrusively, we learned to respect the woman as +much as we had ever admired the writer. 'For years,' said she to us, 'I +wrote reviews because I knew too little of humanity.'" + +These sketches by persons who only met her casually have an interest in the +illustration of her character; and they may be added to by still another +account, written by Mrs. Annie Downs, also an American, in 1879, and +describing a visit to George Eliot two years before her death. "Tall, +slender, with a grace most un-English, her face, instead of beauty, +possessed a sweet benignity, and at times flashed into absolute brilliancy. +She was older than I had imagined, for her hair, once fair, was gray, and +unmistakable lines of care and thought were on the low, broad brow. But +although a pang pierced my heart as I recognized that most of her life was +behind her, so intensely did I feel her personality that in a moment I lost +sight of her age; it was like standing soul to soul, and beyond the reach +of time. Dressed in black velvet, with point lace on her hair, and repeated +at throat and wrists, she made me think at once of Romola and Dorothea +Brooke. She talked of Agassiz, of his museum at Cambridge, of the great +natural-history collections at Naples, of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures, +and with enthusiasm of Mr. Furnival's Shakspere and Chaucer classes at the +Working Men's College... She had quaint etchings of some of the monkeys at +the zoological gardens, and told me she was more interested in them than +any of the other animals, they exhibit traits so distinctly human. She +declared, while her husband and friends laughingly teased her for the +assertion, that she had seen a sick monkey, parched with fever, absolutely +refuse the water he longed for, until the keeper had handed it to a friend +who was suffering more than he. As an illustration of their quickness, she +told me, in a very dramatic manner, of a nurse who shook two of her little +charges for some childish misdemeanor while in the monkey house. No one +noticed the monkeys looking at her, but pretty soon every old monkey in the +house began shaking her children, and kept up the process until the little +monkeys had to be removed for fear their heads would be shaken off. I felt +no incongruity between her conversation and her books. She talked as she +wrote; in descriptive passages, with the same sort of humor, and the same +manner of linking events by analogy and inference. The walls were covered +with pictures. I remember Guido's Aurora, Michael Angelo's prophets, +Raphael's sibyls, while all about were sketches, landscapes and crayon +drawings, gifts from the most famous living painters, many of whom are +friends of the house. A grand piano, opened and covered with music, +indicated recent and continual use." + +One of her intimate friends says that "in every line of her face there was +powder, and about her jaw and mouth a prodigious massiveness, which might +well have inspired awe had it not been tempered by the most gracious smile +which ever lighted up human features, and was ever ready to convert what +otherwise might have been terror into fascination!" We are told that "an +extraordinary delicacy pervaded her whole being. She seemed to live upon +air, and the rest of her body was as light and fragile as her countenance +and intellect were massive." One of the results of this large brain and +fragile body was, that she was never vigorous in health. Only her quiet, +simple life, and avoidance of all excitement in regular work, enabled her +to accomplish so much as she did. Her conversation was rich and attractive. +She talked much as she wrote, was a good listener, never obtruded her +opinions, and always had a noble moral purpose in her words. + +An American lady has given an interesting account of her home and of her +conversation. "No one," says Mrs. Field, "who had ever seen her could +mistake the large head (her brain must be heavier than most men's) covered +with a mass of rich auburn hair. At first I thought her tall; for one could +not think that such a head could rest on an ordinary woman's shoulders. +But, as she rose up, her figure appeared of but medium height. She received +us very kindly. In seeing, for the first time, one to whom we owed so many +happy hours, it was impossible to feel towards her as a stranger. All +distance was removed by her courtesy. Her manners are very sweet, because +very simple and free from affectation. To me her welcome was the more +grateful as that of one woman to another. There is a sort of free-masonry +among women, by which they understand at once those with whom they have any +intellectual sympathy. A few words, and all reserve was gone. 'Come, sit by +me on this sofa,' she said; and instantly, seated side by side, we were +deep in conversation. It is in such intimacy one feels the magnetism of a +large mind informed by a true woman's heart; then, as the soul shines +through the face, one perceives its intellectual beauty. No portrait can +give the full expression of the eye any more than of the voice. Looking +into that clear, calm eye, one sees a transparent nature, a soul of +goodness and truth, an impression which is deepened as you listen to her +soft and gentle tones. A low voice is said to be an excellent thing in a +woman. It is a special charm of the most finely cultured English ladies. +But never did a sweeter voice fascinate a listener,--so soft and low that +one must almost bend to hear. You can imagine what it was thus to sit for +an hour beside this gifted woman and hear talk of questions interesting to +the women of England and America. But I should do her great injustice if I +gave the impression that there was in her conversation any attempt at +display. There is no wish to shine. She is above that affectation of +brilliancy which is often mere flippancy. Nor does she seek to attract +homage and admiration. On the contrary, she is very averse to speak of +herself, or even to hear the heartfelt praise of others. She does not +engross the conversation, but is more eager to listen than to talk. She has +that delicate tact--which is one of the fine arts among women--to make +others talk, suggesting topics the most rich and fruitful, and by a word +drawing the conversation into a channel where it may flow with broad, free +current. Thus she makes you forget the celebrated author, and think only of +the refined and highly cultivated woman. You do not feel awed by her +genius, but only quickened by it, as something that calls out all that is +better and truer. While there is no attempt to impress you with her +intellectual superiority, you naturally feel elevated into a higher sphere. +The conversation of itself floats upward into a region above the +commonplace. The small-talk of ordinary society would seem an impertinence. +There is a singular earnestness about her, as if those mild eyes looked +deep into the great, sad, awful truths of existence. To her, life is a +serious reality, and the gift of genius a grave responsibility." + +Mrs. Lewes was in the habit for many years of receiving her friends on +Sunday afternoons from two to six o'clock. These gatherings came to be +among the most memorable features of London literary life. A large number +of persons, both men and women, attended her receptions, and among them +many who were well known to the scientific or literary world. Especially +were young men of aspiring minds drawn hither and given a larger +comprehension of life. She had no political or fashionable connections, +says Mr. F.W.H. Myers, "but nearly all who were most eminent in art, +science, literature, philanthropy, might be met from time to time at her +Sunday-afternoon receptions. There were many women, too, drawn often from +among very different traditions of thought and belief, by the unfeigned +goodness which they recognized in Mrs. Lewes's look and speech, and +sometimes illumining with some fair young face a _salon_ whose grave talk +needed the grace which they could bestow. And there was sure to be a +considerable admixture of men not as yet famous,--probably never to be +so,--but whom some indication of studies earnestly pursued, of sincere +effort for the good of their fellow-men, had recommended to 'that +hopeful interest which'--to quote a letter of her own--'the elder mind, +dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to those +younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.' +It was Mr. Lewes who on these occasions contributed the cheerful +_bonhomie_, the observant readiness, which are necessary for the facing of +any social group. Mrs. Lewes's manner had a grave simplicity, which rose in +closer converse into an almost pathetic anxiety to give of her best--to +establish a genuine human relation between herself and her interlocutor--to +utter words which should remain as an active influence for good in the +hearts of those who heard them. To some of her literary admirers, this +serious tone was distasteful; they were inclined to resent the prominence +given to moral ideas in a quarter from which they preferred to look merely +for intellectual refreshment. Mrs. Lewes's humor, though fed from a deep +perception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, except in intimate +moments, any buoyant or contagious quality, and in all her talk--full of +matter and wisdom, and exquisitely worded as it was--there was the same +pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was more welcome to those +whose object was distinctively to _learn_ from her, than to those who +merely wished to pass an idle and brilliant hour. To her, these mixed +receptions were a great effort. Her mind did not move easily from one +individuality to another, and when she afterward thought that she had +failed to understand some difficulty which had been laid before her,--had +spoken the wrong word to some expectant heart,--she would suffer from +almost morbid accesses of self-reproach." A further idea of these +conversations may be gathered from Mr. Kegan Paul's account. "When London +was full," he says, "the little drawing-room in St. John's Wood was now and +then crowded to overflowing with those who were glad to give their best of +conversation, of information, and sometimes of music, always to listen with +eager attention to whatever their hostess might say, when all that she said +was worth hearing. Without a trace of pedantry, she led the conversation to +some great and lofty strain. Of herself and her works she never spoke; of +the works and thoughts of others she spoke with reverence, and sometimes +even too great tolerance. But these afternoons had the highest pleasure +when London was empty, or the day was wet, and only a few friends were +present, so that her conversation assumed a more sustained tone than was +possible when the rooms were full of shifting groups. It was then that, +without any premeditation, her sentences fell as fully formed, as wise, as +weighty, as epigrammatic, as any to be found in her books. Always ready, +but never rapid, her talk was not only good in itself, but it encouraged +the same in others, since she was an excellent listener, and eager to +hear." + +At these gatherings the most noted of the English disciples of Comte were +to be found, and among them Frederic Harrison, Prof. E.S. Beesley, Dr. +Congrove, the director of the London Church of Humanity, and Prof. W.K. +Clifford. The English positivists were represented by Herbert Spencer, +Prof. T.H. Huxley and Moncure D. Conway. The realistic school of poets and +artists came in the persons of its most representative men. Dante Rosetti +and Millais, Tourguénief and Burne Jones, DuMaurier and Dr. Hueffner +illustrated most of its phases. The great world of general literature sent +Sir Arthur Helps, Sir Theodore Martin, Anthony Trollope, C.G. Leland, +Justin McCarthy, Frederic Myers, Prof. Mark Pattison and many another. The +rarer guests included Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. It was no +inconsiderable influence which could draw together such a company and hold +it together for many years. Of the part played in these gatherings by the +hosts, Miss Mathilde Blind has given an account. Lewes acted "as a social +cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the fascination of his manners, +diffused that general sense of ease and _abandon_ so requisite to foster an +harmonious flow of conversation. He was inimitable as a _raconteur_, and +Thackeray, Trollope and Arthur Helps were fond of quoting some of the +stories which he would dramatize in the telling. One of the images which, +on these occasions, recurs oftenest to George Eliot's friends is that of +the frail-looking woman who would sit with her chair drawn close to the +fire, and whose winning womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one +who had the privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with +its strongly marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life +than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves +more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of +expression, especially softening the too prominent under lip and massive +jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with gray, whose smooth bands made a kind +of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with lappets of +rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her gray-blue +eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute sensitiveness as +her long, thin, beautifully shaped hands. She had a pleasant laugh and +smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely sympathetic in quality; +it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang or played before more than +one or two friends. Though her conversation was perfectly easy, each +sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed, as the style of her +published works." + +Among the persons who gathered at The Priory on Sunday afternoons there +came to be a considerable number of those who were Mrs. Lewes's devoted +disciples. They hung upon her words, they accepted her views of life, her +philosophy became theirs. That she would have admitted such discipleship +existed there is no reason to believe, and it is certain she did not +attempt to bring it about or even desire it. So great, however, was her +power of intellect, so noble her personal influence, it was impossible that +ardent young natures could refrain from devotion to such genius and speedy +acceptance of its teachings. The richness of her moral and intellectual +nature aided largely in this heroine worship, but she impressed herself on +other minds because she was so much an individual, because her personality +was of a kind to command reverence and devotion. It was not merely young +and impulsive natures who were thus attracted and inspired, for Edith +Simcox says that "men and women, old friends and new, persons of her own +age and of another generation, the married and the single, impulsive +lovers and hard-headed philosophers, nay, even some who elsewhere might +have passed for cynics, all classes alike yielded to the attractive force +of this rare character, in which tenderness and strength were blended +together, and as it were transfused with something that was all her +own--the genius of sweet goodness." Perhaps her influence was so great on +those it reached because it demanded high and noble life and thought of her +disciples. Her moral ideal was a high one, and she had literary and +artistic standards that demanded all the effort of both genius and talent, +while her culture was such as to be exacting in its requirements. So we +find Miss Simcox saying that Mrs. Lewes, in her friendships, "had the +unconscious exactingness of a full nature. She was intolerant of a vacuum +in the mind or character, and she was indifferent to admiration that did +not seem to have its root in fundamental agreement with those principles +she held to be most 'necessary to salvation.' Where this sympathy existed, +her generous affection was given to a fellow-believer, a fellow-laborer, +with singularly little reference to the fact that such full sympathy was +never unattended with profound love and reverence for herself as a living +witness to the truth and power of the principles thus shared. To love her +was a strenuous pleasure; for in spite of the tenderness for all human +weakness that was natural to her, and the scrupulous charity of her overt +judgments, the fact remained that her natural standard was ruthlessly out +of reach, and it was a painful discipline for her friends to feel that she +was compelled to lower it to suit their infirmities. The intense humility +of her self-appreciation, and the unfeigned readiness with which she would +even herself with any sinner who sought her counsel, had the same effect +upon those who would compare what she condemned in herself with what she +tolerated in them. And at the same time, no doubt, this total absence of +self-sufficiency had something to do with the passionate tenderness with +which commonplace people dared to cherish their immortal friend." + +As has already been suggested, her womanliness is a more prominent +characteristic of Mrs. Lewes's mind than its great intellectual power. Her +sympathy was keen and most sensitive, her modesty and humility were almost +excessive, and her tenderness of nature was a woman's own. She gave her +sympathy readily and freely to the humble and unfavored. She had no taint +of intellectual aristocracy, says one of her friends. Faithful, devoted +love; the sacredness of simple duties and plain work; earnest help of other +souls,--these were among the daily lessons of her life and teaching. "How +strong was the current of her sympathy in the direction of all humble +effort," exclaims one of her friends, "how reluctantly she checked +presumption! The most ordinary and uninteresting of her friends must feel +that had they known nothing of her but her rapid insight into and quick +response to their inmost feelings she would still have been a memorable +personality to them. This sympathy was extended to the sorrows most unlike +anything she could ever by any possibility have known--the failures of life +obtained as large a share of her compassion as its sorrows. The wish to +console and cheer was indeed rooted in the most vital part of her nature." +Another of her friends has said that "she possessed to a marvellous degree +the divine gifts of charity, and of attracting moral outcasts to herself, +whose devils she cast out, if I may be permitted the expression, by +shutting her eyes to their existence. In her presence you felt wrapped +round by an all-embracing atmosphere of sympathy and readiness to make the +least of all your short comings, and the most of any good which might be in +you. But great as was her personality, she shrank with horror from +intruding it upon you, and, in general society, her exquisitely melodious +voice was, unhappily for the outside circles, too seldom raised beyond the +pitch of something not much above a whisper. Of the rich vein of humor +which runs through George Eliot's works there was comparatively little +trace in her conversation, which seldom descended from the grave to the +gay. But although she rarely indulged in conversational levity herself, she +was most tolerant of it, and even encouraged its ebullition, in others, +joining heartily in any mirth which might be going on." + +She made her younger admirers feel the deeper influence of her great +personality by inspiring them with the largest moral purposes. To awaken +and to arouse the moral nature seems always to have been her purpose, and +to lead it to the highest attainable results. Earnest young minds never +"failed to feel in her presence that they were for the time, at all events, +raised into a higher moral level, and none ever left her without feeling +inspired with a stronger sense of duty, and positively under the obligation +of striving to live up to a higher standard of life." Hence her personal +influence was considerable, though she led the close life of a student, and +did not go into general society at all. This high moral earnestness made +her a prophet to her friends, as in her books it made her a great moral +teacher to the world at large. Those who had the privilege of an intimate +acquaintance with Mrs. Lewes have pronounced the woman greater than her +books. She was not only a great writer but a great woman. Human nature in +its largest capacities was represented in her, for she rose above the +limitations of sex; and she is thought of less as a great woman than as a +large human personality. Hers was a massive nature, emphatic, individual, +many-sided. Genius of a very high order, though not the highest, was hers, +while she was possessed of a broad culture and great learning. Seldom does +genius carry with it talents so varied and well-trained or a culture so +full and thorough. And her culture was of that kind which entered into +every fibre of her nature and became a part of her own personality. It was +thoroughly digested and absorbed into good healthy red blood, and became a +quickened, sustained motive to the largest efforts. How vital this love of +culture was, may be seen when we are told that "she possessed in an eminent +degree that power which has led to success in so many directions, of +keeping her mind unceasingly at the stretch without conscious fatigue. She +would cease to ponder or to read when other duties called her, but never +because she herself felt tired. Even in so complex an effort as a visit to +a picture gallery implies, she could continue for hours at the same pitch +of earnest interest, and outweary strong men. Nor was this a mere habit of +passive reception. In the intervals between her successive compositions her +mind was always fusing and combining its fresh stores." + +She had culture, moral power and earnestness in a high degree, warmth of +sympathy and sensitiveness to all beauty, but she had no saintliness. +Profound as was her reverence for moral purity, and lofty as was her moral +purpose, she was not a saint, and holiness was not a characteristic of her +nature. This clear and high sense of moral truth everywhere appears in her +life and thought. "For the lessons most imperatively needed by the mass of +men, the lessons of deliberate kindness, of careful truth, of unwavering +endeavor,--for these plain themes one could not ask a more convincing +teacher than she. Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with +the bent of her soul. The deeply lined face, the too marked and massive +features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way +was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed entirely from within. +Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external +harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined +themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to +speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave +appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence +of a wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice which best revealed her, a +voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her +uttered words with the mystery of a world that must remain untold. And then +again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion +would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in +unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not +one to be soon forgotten. It has not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls +to whose childlike confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was +the look of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks are laid, +and which finds in their accomplishment its only imagination of joy." + +Another side of her influence on persons is expressed by the representative +of that publishing house which gave her books to the world. "In addition to +the spell which bound the world to her by her genius, she had a personal +power of drawing to herself, in ties of sympathy and kindly feeling, all +who came under her influence. She never oppressed any one by her talents; +she never allowed any one to be sensible of the depth and variety of her +scholarship; she knew, as few know, how to draw forth the views and +feelings of her visitors, and to make their sympathies her own. There was a +charm in her personal character which of itself was sufficient to +conciliate deep and lasting regard. Every one who entered her society left +it impressed with the conviction that they had been under the influence of +a sympathy and tenderness not less remarkable than the force of her mental +power.... Her deep and catholic love for humanity in its broadest and best +sense, which was in itself the strongest quickening motive of her genius, +will maintain her influence in the future as in the present." + +Hers was a somewhat sensitive, shrinking nature, with no self-assumption, +and without the taint of egotism. She had a modest estimate of her own +great literary creations, and shrank from all mention of them and from the +homage paid to her as an author. After the publication of _Romola_ she was +one day reading French to a girl companion in the garden of a Swiss hotel, +when a lady drew near to listen to the silvery tones of her voice. Noticing +this, she said, "Do you understand?" The lady answered, "I do not care for +the matter; I only came to listen to your voice." "Do you like it?" was +then inquired. When the lady expressed the pleasure it gave her, Mrs. Lewes +took her hand and warmly said, "I thank you. I would rather you would +compliment my voice than my _Romola_." [Footnote: This story is not +authenticated; it may be taken for what it is worth, though it appears to +be characteristic.] + +It has been truly said of her that above all novelists, with the exception +of Goethe, she was supreme in culture. She had a passion for knowledge, and +zeal in the pursuit of learning. She was a lover of books, but not a +scholar in the technical and exact sense. Delighting in literature, art, +music, and all that appeals to the imagination, rather than in mere +information, yet she was a thinker of original powers, with a keen +appreciation of philosophy, and ability to tread its most difficult paths +with firm step. She had an intimate acquaintance with the literatures of +Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and she was well read in the classics of +Greece and Rome. She was "competently acquainted" with the different +systems of philosophy, and she had mastered their problems while thinking +out her own conclusions. Having no professional knowledge of the sciences, +she was a diligent reader of scientific books, and was familiar with all +the bearings of science on philosophy and religion. Her books show an +intimate knowledge of modern thought in many of its phases, as it bears +upon physical, economic, historical and intellectual science. With all her +learning, however, she retained a woman's sympathy with life, beauty and +poetry. Her knowledge was never dry and technical, but warm and imaginative +with genius and poetry. [Footnote: Her scholarly habits, and her realistic +tendencies, usually made George Eliot very painstaking and accurate, but an +occasional slip of pen or memory is to be noted in her books. In +Theophrastus Such she credited to the Apologia of Plato what is really +contained in the Phaedo. The motto to chapter seventeen of Daniel Deronda +was quoted, in the first edition, as from In Memoriam instead of Locksley +Hall. In an early chapter of Felix Holt she made the parson preach from the +words, "Break up the fallow ground of your hearts." The words of scripture +are, "Break up your fallow ground." In Adam Bede a clergyman is made to +take the words of the Prayer Book, "In the midst of life we are in death," +for his text.] + +Her culture may be compared with Mrs. Browning's, who was also an extensive +reader and widely informed. The poet as well as the novelist acquired her +learning because of her thirst for knowledge, and mainly by her own +efforts; but she preferred the classics to science, and literature to +philosophy. Mrs. Browning was the wiser, George Eliot the more learned. The +writings of Mrs. Browning are less affected by her information than George +Eliot's; and this is true because she was of a more poetical temperament, +because her imagination was more brilliant and creative. + +Mrs. Lewes was an enthusiastic lover of art, and especially of music. She +never tired in her interest in beholding fine paintings, and music was the +continual delight of her life. She was a tireless frequenter of picture +galleries, and every fine musical entertainment in London was sure to find +her, in company with Mr. Lewes, an enthusiastic listener. Good acting also +claimed not a little of her interest, and she carefully studied even the +details of the dramatic art, so that she was able to give a critical +appreciation to the acting she enjoyed. Indeed, she had given to her mind +that rounded fulness of attainment, and developed all her faculties +with that due proportion, which Fichte so earnestly preached as the +characteristic of true culture. "Her character," says Edith Simcox, "seemed +to include every possibility of action and emotion; no human passion was +wanting in her nature, there were no blanks or negations; and the +marvellous thing was to see how, in this wealth of impulses and desires, +there was no crash of internal discord, no painful collisions with other +human interests outside; how, in all her life, passions of volcanic +strength were harnessed in the service of those nearest her, and so +inspired by the permanent instinct of devotion to her kind, that it seemed +as if it were by her own choice they spent themselves there only where +their force was welcome. Her very being was a protest against the opposing +and yet cognate heresies that half the normal human passions must be +strangled in the quest of virtue, and that the attainment of virtue is a +dull and undesirable end, seeing that it implies the sacrifice of most that +makes life interesting." She had her own temptations and her imperfections. +With these she struggled bravely, and set herself to the hard task of +correction and discipline. Her culture was not merely one of books, but it +was also one of moral discipline and of strenuous spiritual subjection. It +was one of stern moral requirements and duties, as well as one of large +sympathy with all that is natural and beautiful. + +It was a quiet life of continuous study and authorship which Mrs. Lewes led +in The Priory, and it was varied from year to year only by her visits to +the continent and by her summer residence in Surrey. One of her summer +retreats, at the village of Shotter Mill, has been described, as well as +her life there. The most picturesque house in the place is known as +Brookbank, and here she spent a summer, that of 1871. It is described as +"an old two-storied cottage, the front of the house being half-covered with +trailing rose-trees. The rooms are low but pleasant, and furnished in a +simple, comfortable manner. We have often endeavored," says the writer of +this account, "to glean some information regarding George Eliot's life at +Shotter Mill, but she and Mr. Lewes lived in such seclusion that there was +very little to be told. They seldom crossed their threshold during the day, +but wandered over the commons and hills after sundown. They were very +anxious to lodge at the picturesque old farm, ten minutes' walk beyond +Brookbank, but all available room was then occupied. However, George Eliot +would often visit the farmer's wife, and, sitting on a grassy bank just +beside the kitchen door, would discuss the growth of fruit and the quality +of butter in a manner so quiet and simple the good country folks were +astonished, expecting very different conversation from the great novelist. +The farmer was employed to drive them two or three times a week. They +occasionally visited Tennyson, whose home is only three miles distant, +though a rather tedious drive, since it is up hill nearly all the way. +George Eliot did not enjoy the ride much, for the farmer told us that, +'withal her being such a mighty clever body,--she were very nervous in a +carriage--allays wanted to go on a smooth road, and seemed dreadful feared +of being thrown out.' George Eliot was writing _Middlemarch_ during her +summer at Brookbank, and the term for which they had the cottage expired +before they wished to return to London. The Squire was away at the time, so +they procured permission to use his house during the remainder of the +visit. In speaking of them he said, 'I visited Mr. and Mrs. Lewes several +times before they went back to town, and found the authoress a very +agreeable woman, both in manner and appearance; but her mind was evidently +completely absorbed in her work; she seemed to have no time for anything +but writing from morning till night. Her hand could hardly convey her +thoughts to paper fast enough. It was an exceptionally hot summer, and yet +through it all Mrs. Lewes would have artificial heat placed at her feet to +keep up the circulation. Why, one broiling day I came home worn out, +longing for a gray sky and a cool breeze, and on going into the garden I +found her sitting there, her head just shaded by a deodara on the lawn, +writing away as usual. I expostulated with her for letting the midday sun +pour down on her like that. 'Oh,' she replied, 'I like it. To-day is the +first time I have felt warm this summer.' So I said no more, and went my +way.' And thus nearly all we could learn about George Eliot was that she +loved to bask in the sun and liked green peas. She visited some of the +cottagers, but only those living in secluded places, who knew nothing of +her. Just such people as these she used in her graphic and realistic +sketches of peasant life. With regard to the surrounding country, George +Eliot said that it pleased her more than any she knew of in England." + +In these summer retreats she continued steadily at her work, and she +greatly delighted in the quiet and rest. Other summers were spent at +Witley, in the same county, where the fine scenery, lovely drives and +wide-reaching views from the hill-tops were to her a perpetual delight. +At this place a house was bought, and there was a project of giving up the +London residence and of visiting the city only for occasional relaxation. +This project was not carried out, for soon after their return from Witley +in the autumn of 1878, Mr. Lewes was taken ill, and died in November. His +death was a great blow to Mrs. Lewes, and he was deeply mourned, so much so +as to seriously impair her health. The state of her mind at this trying +period is well indicated in a letter written to Prof. David Kaufmann. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, +April 17, '79. + +MY DEAR SIR,--Your kind letter has touched me very deeply. I confess that +my mind has more than once gone out to you as one from whom I should like +to have some sign of sympathy with my loss. But you were rightly inspired +in waiting till now, for during many weeks I was unable even to listen to +the letters which my generous friends were continually sending me. Now, at +last, I am eagerly interested in every communication that springs out of an +acquaintance with my husband and taskworks. + +I thank you for telling me about the Hungarian translation of his History +of Philosophy, but what would I not have given if the volumes could have +come a few days before his death; for his mind was perfectly clear, and he +would have felt some joy in that sign of his work being effective. I do not +know whether you enter into the comfort I feel that he never knew he was +dying, and fell gently asleep after ten days of illness in which the +suffering was comparatively mild..... + +One of the last things he did at his desk was to despatch a manuscript of +mine to the publishers. The book (not a story and not bulky) is to appear +near the end of May, and as it contains some words I wanted to say about +the Jews, I will order a copy to be sent to you. + +I hope that your labors have gone on uninterruptedly for the benefit of +others, in spite of public troubles. The aspect of affairs with us is +grevious--industry languishing, and the best part of our nation indignant +at our having been betrayed into an unjustifiable war (in South Africa). + +I have been occupied in editing my husband's MSS., so far as they are left +in sufficient completeness to be prepared for publication without the +obtrusion of another mind instead of his. A brief volume on _The Study of +Psychology_ will appear immediately, and a further volume of psychological +studies will follow in the autumn. But his work was cut short while he +still thought of it as the happy occupation of far-stretching months. Once +more let me thank you for remembering me in my sorrow, and believe me + +Yours with high regard, +M.E. LEWES. + +Writing to a friend soon after Lewes's death, who had also lost her +husband, she said,-- + + There is but one refuge--the having much to do. Nothing can make the + burden to be patiently borne, except the gradual adaptation of your + soul to the new conditions. + +The much to do she partly found in editing the uncompleted _Problems +of Life and Mind_, and in establishing a studentship for original +investigation in physiology, known as "The George Henry Lewes Studentship." +Its value is about two hundred pounds, and it is open to both sexes. These +labors enabled her to do honor to one she had trusted through many years, +whose name and fame she greatly revered, and to recover the even poise of +her life. She carefully managed the business affairs he had left in her +hands, and she provided for his children. + +A year and a half after the death of Lewes, May 6, 1880, she was married at +the church of St. George's, Hanover Square, to John Walter Cross, the +senior partner in a London banking firm, whom she had first met in 1867, +and who had been a greatly valued friend both to herself and Lewes. Though +much younger than herself, he had many qualities to recommend him to her +regard. A visit to the continent after this ceremony lasted for several +months, a considerable portion of the time being spent in Venice. On their +return to London in the autumn after spending a happy summer in Surrey, +they went to live in the house of Mr. Cross at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The +old habits of her life were taken up, her studies were resumed, a new novel +was begun, her friends came as usual on Sunday afternoons, and many years +of work seemed before her, for her health had greatly improved. On Friday, +December 17, 1880, she attended the presentation of the _Agamemnon_ of +Aeschylus, in the original Greek, with the accompaniments of the ancient +theatre, by the undergraduates of Balliol College, Oxford. She was very +enthusiastic about this revival of ancient art, and planned to read anew +all the Greek dramatists with her husband. The next day she attended a +popular concert at St. James Hall, and listened with her usual intense +interest. Sitting in a draught, she caught cold, but that evening she +played through much of the music she had heard in the afternoon. The next +day she was not so well as usual, yet she met her friends in the afternoon. +On Monday her larynx was slightly affected, and a physician was called, but +no danger was apprehended. Yet her malady gained rapidly. On Tuesday night +she was in a dangerous condition, and on Wednesday the pericardium was +found to be seriously diseased. Towards midnight of that day, December 22, +after a period of unconsciousness, she quietly passed away. She was buried +on the 29th, in the unconsecrated portion of Highgate Cemetery, by the side +of George Henry Lewes. The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Dr. +Sadler, a radical Unitarian minister, who spoke of her great genius, and +quoted her own words about a future life in the life of humanity. His +address contained many references to her personal characteristics, such as +could only come from an intimate friend. He said,-- + +"To those who are present it is given to think of the gentleness, and +delicate womanly grace and charm, which were combined with 'that breadth of +culture and universality of power which,' as one has expressed it, 'have +made her known to all the world.' To those who are present it is given to +know the diffidence and self-distrust which, notwithstanding all her public +fame, needed individual sympathy and encouragement to prevent her from +feeling too keenly how far the results of her labors fell below the +standard she had set before her. To those who are present too it may be +given--though there is so large a number to whom it is not given--to +understand how a nature may be profoundly devout, and yet unable to accept +a great deal of what is usually held as religious belief. No intellectual +difficulties or uncertainties, no sense of mental incapacity to climb the +heights of infinitude, could take from her the piety of the affections or +'the beliefs which were the mother-tongue of her soul.' I cannot doubt that +she spoke out of the fulness of her own heart when she put into the lips of +another the words, 'May not a man silence his awe or his love and take to +finding reasons which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than any +reasons to be found!' How patiently she toiled to render her work in all +its details as little imperfect as might be! How green she kept the +remembrance of all those companions to whom she felt that she owed a +moulding and elevating influence, especially in her old home, and of him +who was its head, her father! How her heart glowed with a desire to help to +make a heaven on earth, to be a 'cup of strength' to others, and when her +own days on earth should have closed, to have a place among those + + "'Immortal dead who still live on + In minds made better by their presence; live + In pulses stirred to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn + For miserable aims that end with sell; + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues.' + +"How she thus yearned 'to join the choir invisible, whose music is the +gladness of the world!' All this is known to those who had the privilege of +being near her." + +The address was preceded by a simple burial service, and was followed by a +prayer, all being given in the chapel of the cemetery. The coffin, covered +with the finest floral tributes, was then borne to the grave, where the +burial service was completed, and was followed by a prayer and the +benediction. Although the day was a disagreeable one and rain was falling, +the chapel was crowded, and many not being able to gain admittance stood +about the open grave. Beside her personal friends and her family there were +present many persons noted for their literary or scientific attainments, On +the lid of the coffin was this inscription: + + MARY ANN CROSS. + ("George Eliot") + Born 22d Nov., 1819; died 22d Dec., 1880. + + Quilla fonte + Che spande di parlay si largo flume. + +[Footnote: From Dante, and has been rendered into English thus: + + That fountain + Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech.] + + +The novel which had been begun was left a mere fragment, and in accordance +with what it was thought would have been her wish, was destroyed by her +family. Perhaps it was better that her dislike of unfinished work should be +so respected. + + + + +VI. + + +LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES. + +George Eliot was a painstaking, laborious writer. She did not proceed +rapidly, so carefully did she elaborate her pages. Her subjects were +thoroughly studied before the pen was taken in hand, patiently thought out, +planned with much care, and all available helps secured that could be had. +She threw her whole life into her work, became a part of the scenes she was +depicting; her life was absorbed until the work of writing became a painful +process both to body and mind. "Her beautifully written manuscript," says +her publisher, "free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately +and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the +inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any +of her facts or impressions from second hand; and thus, in spite of the +number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in +her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the +work's sake which she makes prominent characteristics of Adam Bede and +Stradivarius." + +When a book was completed, so intense had been her application and the +absorption of her life in her work, a period of despondency followed. When +a correspondent praised _Middlemarch_, and expressed a hope that even a +greater work might follow, she replied, "As to the 'great novel' which +remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future +books." Again, she wrote of the depression which succeeded the completion +of each of her works,-- + + Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I + can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The + responsibility of writing grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as + the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is + difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into + imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really + needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to + one's self to do it. + +Owing probably somewhat to this tendency to take a despondent view +concerning her own work, and to distrust of the leadings of her own +genius, was her habit of never reading the criticisms made on her books. +She adopted this rule, she tells one correspondent, "as a necessary +preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying her +power of writing." To another, who had written her in appreciation of her +books, she wrote this note, in which she alludes to the same habit of +shunning criticism: + + +MY DEAR MISS WELLINGTON,--The signs of your sympathy sent to me across the +wide water have touched me with the more effect because you imply that you +are young. I care supremely that my writing should be some help and +stimulus to those who have probably a long life before them. + +Mr. Lewes does not let me read criticisms on my writings. He always reads +them himself, and gives me occasional quotations, when be thinks that they +show a spirit and mode of appreciation which will win my gratitude. He has +carefully read through the articles which were accompanied by your kind +letter, and he has a high opinion of the feeling and discernment exhibited +in them. Some concluding passages which he read aloud to me are such as I +register among the grounds of any encouragement in looking backward on what +I have written, if not in looking forward to my future writing. + +Thank you, my dear young friend, whom I shall probably never know otherwise +than in this spiritual way. And certainly, apart from those relations in +life which bring daily duties and opportunities of lovingness, the most +satisfactory of all ties is this effective invisible intercourse of an +elder mind with a younger. + +The quotation in your letter from Hawthorne's book offers an excellent type +both for men and women in the value it assigns to that order of work which +is called subordinate but becomes ennobling by being finely done. +[Footnote: A reference to Hilda's ceasing to consider herself an original +artist in the presence of the great masters. "Beholding the miracles of +beauty which the old masters had achieved, the world seemed already rich +enough in original designs and nothing more was so desirable as to diffuse +these selfsame beauties more widely among mankind.'--So Hilda became a +copyist."] Yours, with sincere obligations, + +M.E. LEWES. + +By the way, Mr. Lewes tells me that you ascribe to me a hatred of blue +eyes--which is amusing, since my own eyes are blue-gray. I am not in any +sense one of the "good haters;" on the contrary, my weaknesses all verge +toward an excessive tolerance and a tendency to melt off the outlines of +things. + +THE PRIORY, +21 North Bank, Regent's Park, Jan. 16, '73. + +[Footnote: From The Critic of December 31, 1881. This letter was addressed +to Miss Alice Wellington, now Mrs. Rollins.] + +Her sensitiveness was great, and contact with an unappreciative and +unsympathetic public depressing to a large degree. It was a part of that +shrinking away from the world which kept her out of society, and away from +all but a select few whose tastes and sympathies were largely in accordance +with her own. Besides, she distrusted that common form of criticism which +presumes to tell an author how he ought to have written, and assumes to +itself an insight and knowledge greater than that possessed by genius +itself. Concerning the value of such criticism she wrote these pertinent +words: + + I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing + is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have + so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under + in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification + coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in + attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining + circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the + treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest. + +To the same correspondent she used even stronger words concerning her +dislike of ordinary criticism. + + Do not expect "criticism" from me. I hate "sitting in the seat of + judgment," and I would rather try to impress the public generally with + the sense that they may get the best result from a book without + necessarily forming an "opinion" about it, than I would rush into + stating opinions of my own. The floods of nonsense printed in the form + of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of our times--a chief + obstacle to true culture. + +It is not to be forgotten, however, that George Eliot had done much +critical work before she became a novelist, and that much of it was of a +keen and cutting nature. Severely as she was handled by the critics, no one +of them was more vigorous than was her treatment of Young and Cumming. Even +in later years, when she took up the critical pen, the effect was felt. Mr. +Lecky did not pass gently through her hands when she reviewed his +_Rationalism in Europe_. Her criticisms in _Theophrastus Such_ were +penetrating and severe. + +For the same reason, she read few works of contemporary fiction, that her +mind might not be biassed and that she might not be discouraged in her own +work. Always busy with some special subject which absorbed all her time and +strength, she could give little attention to contemporary literature. To +one correspondent she wrote,-- + + My constant groan is, that I must leave so much of the greatest writing + which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time. + +The style adopted by George Eliot is for the most part fresh, vital and +energetic. It is pure in form, rich in illustrations, strong and expressive +in manner. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, and she is +sometimes turgid and dry, again gaudy and verbose. Sententious in her +didactic passages, she is pure and noble in her sentiment, poetical and +impressive in her descriptions of nature. Her diction is choice, her range +of expression large, and she admirably suits her words to the thought she +would present. There is a rich, teeming fulness of life in her books, the +canvas is crowded, there is movement and action. An abundance of passion, +delicate feeling and fine sensibility is expressed. + +The critics have almost universally condemned the plots of George Eliot's +novels for their want of unity. They tell us that the flow of events is +often not orderly, while improbable scenes are introduced, superfluous +incidents are common, the number of characters is too great, and the +analysis of character impedes the unity of events. These objections are not +always vital, and sometimes they are mere objections rather than genuine +criticisms. Instances of failure to follow the best methods may be cited in +abundance, one of which is seen in the first two chapters in _Daniel +Deronda_ being placed out of their natural order. The opening scenes in +_The Spanish Gypsy_ seem quite unnecessary to the development of the plot, +while the last two scenes of the second book are so fragmentary and +unconnected with the remainder of the story as to help it but little. In +the middle of _Adam Bede_ are several chapters devoted to the birthday +party, which are quite unnecessary to the development of the action. +_Daniel Deronda_ contains two narratives which are in many respects almost +entirely distinct from each other, and the reader is made to alternate +between two worlds that have little in common. There is much of the +improbable in the account of the Transome estate in _Felix Holt_, while the +closing scenes in the life of Tito Melema in _Romola_ are more tragical +than natural. Yet these defects are incidental to her method and art rather +than actual blemishes on her work. For the most part, her work is +thoroughly unitary, cause leads naturally into effect, and there is a moral +development of character such as is found in life itself. Her plots are +strongly constructed, in simple outlines, are easily comprehended and kept +in mind, and the leading motive holds steadily through to the end. Her +analytical method often makes an apparent interruption of the narrative, +and the unity of purpose is frequently developed through the philosophic +purport of the novel rather than in its literary form. Direct narrative is +often hindered, it is true, by her habit of studying the remote causes and +effects of character, but she never wanders far enough to forget the real +purpose had in view. She holds the many elements of her story well under +command, she concentrates them upon some one aim, and she gives to her +story a tragic unity of great moral splendor and effect. Even the diverse +elements, the minute side-studies and the profuse comments, are all woven +into the organic structure, and are essential to the unfoldment of the +plot. They seem to be quite irrelevant interruptions until we look back +upon the completed whole and study the perfected intent of the story. Then +we see how essential they are to the epic finish of the novel, and to that +total effect which a work of genius creates. Then it is seen that a +dramatic unity and well-studied intent hold together every part and make a +completed structure of great beauty. + +Her dramatic skill is great, and her dialogues thoroughly good. Her +characters are full of power and life, and stand out as distinct +personalities. The conversation is sprightly, strong and wise. Probably no +novelist has created so many clearly cut, positive, intensely personal +characters as George Eliot, and this individualism is depicted as acting +within social and hereditary limits; hence dramatic action is constantly +arising. Shakspere and Browning only surpass her in dramatic power, as in +the creation of character. Yet her method of producing character differs +essentially from that of Shakspere, Homer and all the great creators. She +describes character, while they present it. Homer gives no description of +Helen; but of her beauty and her person we learn all the more because we +are left to find them out from the influence they produce. We know Hamlet +because he lives before us, and impresses his personality upon every +feature of the great drama in which he appears. George Eliot's manner is to +describe, to minutely portray, and to dissect to the last muscle and nerve. + +She has also a rich and racy humor, sensitive and sober, refined and +delicate. She does not caricature folly with Dickens, or laugh at weakness +with Thackeray; but she shows us the limitations of life in such a manner +as to produce the finest humor. She is never repulsive, grotesque or +vulgar; but wise, laughter-loving and sympathetic. Her humor is pure and +homely as it is delicate and exquisite; and it is invariably human and +noble. She has an intense love and a wonderful appreciation of the +ludicrous, sees whatever is incongruous In life, and makes her laughter +genial and joyous. Her humor is the very quintessence of human experience, +strikes deadly blows at what is unjust and untrue. It is both intellectual +and moral, as Professor Dowden suggests. "The grotesque in human character +is reclaimed from the province of the humorous by her affections, when that +is possible, and is shown to be a pathetic form of beauty. Her humor +usually belongs to her entire conception of character, and cannot be +separated from it." She laughs at all, but sneers at no one,--for she has +keen sympathy with all. + +George Eliot is not so good a satirist as she is humorist. Her humor is as +fresh and delightful as a morning in May, but her satire is nearly always +labored. She is too much in sympathy with human nature to laugh at its +follies and its weaknesses. Its joys, its bubbling humor and delight she +can appreciate, as well as all the pain and sorrow that come to men and +women; and she can fully enter into the life of her characters of every +kind, and portray their inmost motives and impulses; but the foibles of the +world she cannot treat in the vein of the satirist. In her earlier books +she is said to have been under the influence of Thackeray, but her satire +is heavy, and lacks his light touch and his tender undertone of compassion. +Here is a good specimen of her earlier attempts to be satirical: + + When a man is happy enough to win the affections of a sweet girl, who + can soothe his cares with crochet, and respond to all his most + cherished ideas with beaded urn-rugs and chair-covers in German wool, + he has, at least, a guarantee of domestic comfort, whatever trials may + await him out of doors. What a resource it is under fatigue and + irritation to have your drawing-room well supplied with small mats, + which would always be ready if you ever wanted to set anything on them! + And what styptic for a bleeding heart can equal copious squares of + crochet-work, which are useful for slipping down the moment you touch + them? [Footnote: Janet's Repentance, chapter III.] + +Similar to this is the account of Mrs. Pullett's grief. + + It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity + Introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization--the + sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow + of a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with + several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate + ribbon-strings--what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened + child of civilization the abandonment characteristic of grief is + checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an + interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and + eyes half-blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too + devious step through a door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves, + too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility produces a + composition of forces by which she takes a line that just clears the + door-post. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her + strings and throws them languidly backward--a touching gesture, + indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry + moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm. As the tears + subside a little, and with her head leaning backward at an angle that + will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when + grief, which has made all things else a weariness, has itself become + weary; she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and adjusts their + clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying to + her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state. [Footnote: + Mill on the Floss, chapter VII.] + +In her later books the strained efforts at satire are partially avoided, +and though the satirical spirit is not withdrawn in any measure, yet it is +more delicately managed. It is less open, less blunt, but hardly more +subtle and penetrative. It is still a strained effort, and it is quite too +hard and bare in statement. We are told in _Middlemarch_ that + + Mrs. Bulstrode's _naïve_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the + nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the + consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a + sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable + seriousness. + +Such a turning of sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, +and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton +justly calls it, which is found in all of George Eliot's books:-- + + Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the + things whence its subtile interlacings are swung--are scarcely + perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from + blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and + lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs + and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life toward another, visions of + completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web + from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience + supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure--in spite, too, of + medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes + presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of + scientific inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic + love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose. + [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XXXVI.] + +This introduction of a scientific illustration will serve to bring another +tendency of George Eliot's to our attention. She makes a frequent use of +her large learning and culture in her novels. In the earlier ones a Greek +quotation is to be found here and there, while in the later, German seems +to have the preference. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she describes Bob +Jakin's thumb as "a singularly broad specimen of that difference between +the man and the monkey." Such references to recent scientific speculations +are not unfrequent. If they serve to show the tendencies of her mind +towards knowledge and large thought, they also indicate a too ready +willingness to imbibe, and to use in a popular manner, what is not +thoroughly assimilated truth. The force of such an illustration as the +following must be lost on most novel-readers:-- + + Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings toward + women than toward grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife + in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the + chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive + races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to + speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage tie. + [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter VI.] + +It is doubtful whether any reader will quite catch the meaning of this +sentence: + + Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of + prematrimonial acquaintanceship? [Footnote: Ibid, chapter II.] + +Many of her critics have asserted that this use of the language of science, +and the adoption of the speculative ideas of the time, had largely +increased upon George Eliot in her later books; but this is not true. In +her _Westminster Review_ essays both tendencies are strongly developed. In +one of them she says, "The very chyme and chyle of a rector are conscious +of the gown and band." Again, she says,-- + + The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of + ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy required + for spontaneous activity; the voltaic pile is not strong enough to + produce crystallization. + +It is not just to George Eliot, however, to refer to such mere casual +blemishes, without insisting on the largeness of thought, the wealth of +knowledge, and the comprehensive understanding of human experience with +which her books abound. She often turns aside to discuss the problems +suggested by the experiences of her characters, to point out how the effect +of their own thoughts and deeds re-act upon them, and to inculcate the +highest ethical lessons. In one of her "asides" she seems to reject this +method, in referring to Fielding. + + A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the + happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his + place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is + observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions + as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial + chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to + bring his arm-chair to the proscenium, and chat with us in all the + lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were + longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer + afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter + evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and + if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as + if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house. I, at least, have so + much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were + woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be + concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that + tempting range of relevancies called the universe. [Footnote: + Middlemarch, chapter XV.] + +She does not ramble away from her subject, it is true; but she likes to +pause often to discuss the doings of her personages, and to pour forth some +tender or noble thought. To many of her readers these bits of wisdom and of +sentiment are among the most valuable portions of her books, when taken in +their true environment in her pages. She has a purpose larger than that of +telling a story or of describing the loves of a few men and women. She +seeks to penetrate into the motives of life, and to reveal the hidden +springs of action; to show how people affect each other; how ideas mould +the destinies of the individual. To do all this in that large, artistic +spirit she has followed, requires that there shall be something more +than narration and conversation. That she has now and then commented +unnecessarily, and in a too-learned manner, is a very small detraction from +the interest of her books. + +In _Adam Bede_ she turns aside for a whole chapter to defend her method of +depicting accurately, minutely, in the simplest detail, the feelings, +motives, actions and surroundings of very commonplace and uninteresting +people. Her reasons for this method in novel-writing apply to all her +works, and are worthy of the author of _Adam Bede_ and _Silas Marner_. + + I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could + create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the + morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a + harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields--on + the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your + indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and + helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your + outspoken, brave justice. + + So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things + seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, + which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. + Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a + delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and the + larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility, which we + mistook for genius, is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real + unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that, + even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to + say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much + harder than to say something fine about them which is _not_ the exact + truth. + + It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in + many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a + source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous + homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my + fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic + suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn without shrinking, from + cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls and heroic warriors, to an + old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, + while the noonday light, softened, perhaps, by a screen of leaves, + falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel + and her stone jug, and all those cheap, common things which are the + precious necessaries of life to her: or I turn to that village wedding, + kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the + dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and + middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and + probably with quart pots in their hands, but with expression of + unmistakable contentment and good-will. "Foh!" says my idealistic + friend, "what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these + pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low + phase of life! what clumsy, ugly people!" + + But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, + I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have + not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, + squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions, are not + startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love among + us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the + Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; + yet, to my certain knowledge, tender hearts have beaten for them, and + their miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in + secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron who could + never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of + yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered + kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of + young heroes of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite + sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, + and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a + wife who waddles. Yes! thank God; human feeling is like the mighty + rivers that bless the earth; it does not wait for beauty--it flows with + resistless force, and brings beauty with it. + + All honor and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate + it to the utmost in men, women and children--in our gardens and in our + houses; but let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret + of proportion, but in the secret of deep sympathy. Paint us an angel, + if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the + celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face + upward, and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not + impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the regions of + Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those + heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house--those rounded-backs + and stupid, weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done + the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their + brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this + world there are so many of these common, coarse people, who have no + picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should + remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of + our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a + world of extremes. Therefore let Art always remind us of them; + therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a + life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see + beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly + the light of heaven falls on them. + + There are few prophets in the world--few sublimely beautiful women--few + heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such + rarities; I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day + fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great + multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to + make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or + romantic criminals half so frequent as your common laborer, who gets + his own bread, and eats it vulgarly, but creditably, with his own + pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy + connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a + vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal + in red scarf and green feathers; more needful that my heart should + swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the + faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman + of my own parish, who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent, and in other + respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes + whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract + of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. + [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XVII.] + +In all her earlier novels George Eliot has shown the artistic possibilities +of the humblest lives and situations. In the most ordinary lives, as in the +case of the persons described in _Silas Marner_, and in the least +picturesque incidents of human existence, there is an interest for us +which, when properly brought out, will be sure to absorb our attention. She +has abundantly proved that dramatic situations, historic surroundings and +heroic attitudes are not necessary for the highest purposes of the +novelist. Hers are heart tragedies and spiritual histories; for life has +its tragic, pathetic and humorous elements of the keenest interest under +every social condition. Her realism is relieved, as in actual life, by +love, helpfulness and pathos; by deep sorrow, sufferings patiently borne, +and tender sympathy for others' woes. And if she sometimes sketches with +too free a hand the coarse and repulsive features of life, this fault is +relieved by her tender sympathy with the sorrows and weaknesses of her +characters. She asks her readers not to grudge Amos Barton his lovely wife, +that "large, fair, gentle Madonna," with an imposing mildness and the +unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood. He was a man of very middling +qualities and a quite stupid sort of person, but he loved his wife and made +the most he could of such talents as he had. She pleads in his behalf by +saying,-- + + I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are + nobody's pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a + pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest + Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair. + +Much the larger number of characters in these novels are of the same +unpromising quality. Most of them are ignorant, uncouth and simple-minded; +yet George Eliot gives them a warm place in our hearts, and we rejoice to +have known them all. This ignorant rusticity is discovered to have charms +and attractions of its own. Especially does the reader learn that what is +most human and what is most lovely in personal character may be found +within these rough exteriors and amid these unpromising circumstances. + +Even so fine a character as Adam Bede, one of the best in all her books, +was a workman of limited education and little knowledge of the outside +world. The author does "not pretend that his was an ordinary character +among workmen." Yet such men as he are found among his class, and the noble +qualities he possessed are not out of place among workingmen. Her warm +sympathy with this class, the class in which she was born and reared, and +her earnest desire to do it justice, is seen in what she says of Adam. + + He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared here and there + in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an inheritance of + affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common + industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful, + courageous labor; they make their way upward, rarely as geniuses, most + commonly as painstaking, honest men, with the skill and conscience to + do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible + echo beyond the neighborhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure + to find there some good piece of road, some building, some application + of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform + of parish abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two + generations after them. Their employers were richer for them, the work + of their hands has worn well, and the work of their brains has guided + well the hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel + or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with lime and + red paint; in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honor at + church and at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and + daughters seated round the bright hearth on winter evenings, how + pleased they were when they first earned their twopence a day. Others + there are who die poor, and never put off the workman's coat on + week-days; they have not had the art of getting rich; but they are men + of trust, and when they die before the work is all out of them, it is + as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the master who + employed them says, "Where shall I find their like?" [Footnote: + Chapter XIX.] + +In _Amos Barton_ she states her reasons for portraying characters of so +little outward interest. Amos had none of the more manly and sturdy +qualities of Adam Bede, and yet to George Eliot it was enough that he was +human, that trouble and heartache could come to him, and that he must carry +his share of the burdens and weaknesses of the world. + + The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate, + was, you perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character; and + perhaps I am doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a + man who was so very far from remarkable,--a man whose virtues were not + heroic, and who had no undetected crime within his breast; who had not + the slightest mystery hanging about him, but was palpably and + unmistakably commonplace; who was not even in love, but had had that + complaint many years ago. "An utterly uninteresting character!" I think + I hear a lady reader exclaim,--Mrs. Farthingale, for example, who + prefers the ideal in fiction; to whom tragedy means ermine tippets, + adultery and murder; and comedy, the adventures of some personage who + is quite a "character." + + But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your + fellow-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp. At least + eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in + the last census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily + wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and + liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they + have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their + brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have + not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They + are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is + more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people--many of + them--bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the + painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows, and their sacred joys; + their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they + have mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in + their very insignificance,--in our comparison of their dim and narrow + existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which + they share? + + Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me + to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, + lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull + gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones. In that + case, I should have no fear of your not caring to know what further + befell the Rev. Amos Barton, or of your thinking the homely details I + have to tell at all beneath your attention. + +In her hands the novel becomes the means of recording the history of those +whom no history takes note of, and of bringing before the world its unnamed +and unnoted heroes. Professor Dowden says her sympathy spreads with a +powerful and even flow in every direction. In this effort she has been +eminently successful; and her loving sympathy with all that is human; her +warm-hearted faith in the weak and unfortunate; the graciousness of her +love for the common souls who are faithful and true in their way and in +their places, will excuse much greater literary faults than any into which +she has fallen. The sincere and loving humanity of her books gives them a +great charm, and an influence wide-reaching and noble. + +No one of her imitators and successors has gained anything of like power +which is given to her novels by her intense sympathy with her characters. +Others have described ignorant and coarse phases of life as something to +look at and study, but not to bring into the heart and love. George Eliot +loves her characters, has an intense affection for them, pours out her +motherliness upon them. Not so Daudet or James or Howells, who study +crude life on the surface, and because it is the fashion. There is no +heart-nearness in their work, little of passionate human desire to do +justice to phases of life hitherto neglected. She has in this regard the +genius of Scott and Hugo, who live in and with their characters, and so +make them living and real. She identifies herself with the life she +describes, and never looks at it from without, with curious and cold and +critical gaze, simply for the sake of making a novel. + +She is more at home among villagers than in the drawing-room. A profound +intuition has led her to the very heart of English life among the happier +and worthier classes of working-people. There is no squalor in her books, +no general misery, but always conscience, respectability and home-comforts. +There is something of coarseness in some of her scenes, and a realism too +bare and bald; but for the most part she has come far short of what might +have been done in picturing the repulsive and sensual side of life. In all +her books there is abundant evidence of her painstaking, and of her anxious +desire to be truthful. She has studied life on the spot, and gives to it +the local coloring. In writing _Romola_, she searched into every corner of +Florentine history, custom and thought. She is true to every touch of local +incident and manner. In _Daniel Deronda_, she made herself familiar with +Jewish life, and has given the race aroma to her portraits and scenes. She +is thoroughly a realist, but a realist with a wide and attractive sympathy, +a profound insight into motives and impulses, and a strong imagination. She +is too great a genius to believe that the novelist can describe life as the +geologist describes the strata of the earth. She feels with her characters; +she has that form of insight or imagination which enables her to apprehend +a mind totally unlike her own. This is what saves the history of Hetty from +coarseness and repulsiveness. It is Hetty's own account of her life-woes. +Its infinite pathos, and the tenderness and pity it awakens, destroys our +concern for the other features of the narrative. + +Psychologic analysis seems out of place in a novel, but with George Eliot +it is a chief purpose of her writing. She lays bare the soul, opens its +inmost secrets, and its anatomy is minutely studied. She devotes more space +to the inner life and character of her personalities than to her narratives +and conversations. She traces some of her characters through a long process +of development, and shows how they are affected by the experiences of life. +Her more important characters grow up under her pen, develop under the +influence of thought or sorrow. Novelists usually carry their characters +through their pages on the same level of mind and life; and George Eliot +not only does this with her uncultured characters, but she also shows the +soul in the process of unfolding or expanding. None of her leading +characters are at the end what they were in the beginning; with the most +subtle power she traces the growth of Tito Melema's mind through its +perilous descent into selfish corruption, and with equal or even greater +skill she unfolds the history of Daniel Deronda's development under the +impulse to find for himself a life-mission. In this direction George Eliot +is always great. Her skill is remarkable, albeit she has not sounded either +the highest or the lowest ranges of human capacity. The range within which +her studies are made is a wide one, however, and within it she has shown +herself the master of human motives and a consummate artist in portraying +the soul. She devotes the utmost care to describing some plain person who +appears in her pages for but a moment, and is as much concerned that he +shall be truly presented as if he were of the utmost consequence. More than +one otherwise very ordinary character acquires under this treatment of hers +the warmest interest for the reader. And she describes such persons, +because their influence is subtle or momentous as it affects the lives of +others. Personages and incidents play a part in her books not for the sake +of the plot or to secure dramatic unity, but for the sake of manifesting +the soul, in order that the unfoldment of psychologic analysis may go on. +The unity she aims at is that of showing the development of the soul under +influence of some one or more decisive impulses or as affected by given +surroundings. The lesser characters, while given a nature quite their own, +help in the process of unfolding the personality which gives central +purpose to each of her novels. The influence of opposite natures on each +other, the moulding power of circumstances, and especially the bearings of +hereditary impulses, all play a prominent part in this process of +psychologic analysis. + +Through page after page and chapter after chapter she traces the feelings +and thoughts of her characters. How each decisive event appears to them is +explained at length. Moreover, the most trivial trait of character, the +most incidental impulse, is described in all its particularity. Through +many pages Hetty's conduct in her own bedroom is laid before the reader, +and in no other way could her nature have been so brought to our knowledge. +Her shallow lightness of heart and her vanity could not be realized by +ordinary intercourse with one so pretty and so bright; but George Eliot +describes Hetty's taking out the earrings given her by Arthur, and we see +what she is. The author seeks to open before us the inner life of that +childish soul, and we see into its nature and realize all its capacities +for good and evil. + + Oh, the delight of taking out that little box and looking at the + earrings! Do not reason about it, my philosophical reader, and say that + Hetty, being very pretty, must have known that it did not signify + whether she had any ornaments or not; and that, moreover, to look at + earrings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could + hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to + the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's + natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest + yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were + studying the psychology of a canary-bird, and only watch the movements + of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an + unconscious smile at the earrings nestled in the little box. Ah! you + think, it is for the sake of the person who has given them to her, and + her thoughts are gone back now to the moment when they were put into + her hands. No; else why should she have cared to have earrings rather + than anything else? and I know that she had longed for earrings from + among all the ornaments she could imagine. + +This faculty of soul interpretation may be illustrated by innumerable +passages and from characters the most diverse in nature and capacity. As an +instance of her ability to interpret uncommon minds, those affected in some +peculiar manner, reference may be made to Baldassarre, in _Romola_. The +descriptions of this man's sufferings, the giving way of his mind under +them, and the purpose of revenge which took complete possession of him, +form a study in character unsurpassed. For subtle insight into the action +of a morbid mind, and for a majestic conception of human passion, the +passage wherein Baldassarre finds he can again read his Greek book is most +worthy of attention. + +Her ability to delineate a growing mind, and a mind at work under the +influence of new and rare experiences, is shown in the case of Daniel +Deronda. His quiet love of ease as a boy is described as he sits one day +watching the falling rain, and meditates on the possibility which has been +suggested to him, that his is not to be the life of a gentleman. + + He knew a great deal of what it was to be a gentleman by inheritance, + and without thinking much about himself--for he was a boy of active + perceptions, and easily forgot his own existence in that of Robert + Bruce--he had never supposed that he could be shut out from such a lot, + or have a very different part in the world from that of the uncle who + petted him... But Daniel's tastes were altogether in keeping with his + nurture: his disposition was one in which every-day scenes and habits + beget not _ennui_ or rebellion but delight, affection, aptitudes; + and now the lad had been stung to the quick by the idea that his + uncle--perhaps his father--thought of a career for him which was + totally unlike his own, and which he knew very well was not thought of + among possible destinations for the sons of English gentlemen. + +The mind of this lad expands; ideal desires awake in him; there is a +yearning for a life of noble knight-errantry in some heroic cause. The +reader is permitted to watch from step to step the growth of this longing, +and to behold each new deed by which it is expressed. He craves for a +broader life, but he is surrounded by such a social atmosphere as to make +his longing futile. As a young man who is seeking to know what there is in +the world for him to do, and who is eager for some task that is to end in a +larger life for man, he is again described. + + It happened that the very vividness of his impressions had often made + him the more enigmatic to his friends, and had contributed to an + apparent indefiniteness in his sentiments. His early wakened + sensibility and reflectiveness, had developed into a many-sided + sympathy, which threatened to hinder any persistent course of action: + as soon as he took up any antagonism, though only in thought, he seemed + to himself like the Sabine warriors in the memorable story--with + nothing to meet his spear but flesh of his flesh, and objects that he + loved. His imagination had so wrought itself to the habit of seeing + things as they probably appeared to others, that a strong partisanship, + unless it were against an immediate oppression, had become an + insincerity for him. His plenteous, flexible sympathy had ended by + falling into one current with that reflective analysis which tends to + neutralize sympathy. Few men were able to keep themselves clearer of + vices than he; yet he hated vices mildly, being used to think of them + less in the abstract than as a part of mixed human natures having an + individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to trace with + understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he was fervidly + democratic in his feeling for the multitude, and yet, through his + affections and imagination, intensely conservative; voracious of + speculations on government and religion, yet loath to part with + long-sanctioned forms which, for him, were quick with memories and + sentiments that no argument could lay dead... He was ceasing to care + for knowledge--he had no ambition for practice--unless they could both + be gathered up into one current with his emotions; and he dreaded, as + if it were a dwelling-place of lost souls, that dead anatomy of culture + which turns the universe into a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and + knows, not everything, but everything else about everything--as if one + should be ignorant of nothing concerning the scent of violets except + the scent itself, for which one had no nostril. But how and whence was + the needed event to come?--the influence that would justify partiality, + and make him what he longed to be, yet was unable to make himself--an + organic part of social life, instead of roaming in it like a yearning + disembodied spirit, stirred with a vague, social passion, but without + fixed local habitation to render fellowship real? To make a little + difference for the better was what he was not contented to live + without; but how make it? It is one thing to see your road, another to + cut it. + +He rescues Mirah and sets out in search of her brother. He finds Mordecai, +and gradually a way is opened to him along which his yearning is satisfied. +Step by step the reader is permitted to trace the expansion of his mind. A +window is opened into his soul, and we see its every movement as Daniel is +led on to find the mission which was to be his. When that task is fully +accepted he says to Mordecai,-- + + Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some + ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a + multitude--some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty, + and not to be striven for as a personal prize. + +In her strong tendency to psychologic analysis George Eliot much resembles +Robert Browning. It is the life of passion and ideas which both alike +delight to describe. They greatly differ, however, in their methods of +dissecting the inner life. Browning lays bare the soul in some startling +experience, George Eliot by the slow development of the mind through all +the stages of growth. He is impersonal, but she is always present to make +comments and to expound the causes of growth. Yet her characters are as +clear-cut, as individual, as his. His analysis is the more rapid, subtle +and complete in immediate expression; hers is the more penetrating, +vigorous and interesting. His lightning flash sees the soul through and +through in the present moment; her calmer and intenser gaze penetrates the +long succession of hidden causes by which the soul is shaped to its earthly +destiny. + +Any account of George Eliot which dwells only on her humor and sarcasm, her +realism and her powers of analysis, does her grave injustice. She has also +in rare degree the power of artistic constructiveness, a strong and +brilliant imagination and genius of almost the highest range. She can +create character as well as analyze it, and with that brilliant command of +resources which indicates a high order of genius. She had culture almost +equal to Goethe's, and quite equal to Mrs. Browning's; and she had that +wide sympathy with life which was his, with an equal capacity for their +expression in an artistic reconstruction of human experience. While Mr. R. +H. Hutton is justified in saying that "few minds at once so speculative and +so creative have ever put their mark on literature," yet the critic needs +to beware lest he give the speculative tendency in her mind a place too +prominent compared with that assigned to her creative genius. The poet and +the novelist are so seldom speculative, so seldom put into their creations +the constant burden of great thoughts, that when one appears who does this, +it is likely to be dwelt upon too largely by the critics. George Eliot +speculates about life and its experiences, and it is evident she had a +philosophy of life at her command; but it is quite as true that she soars +on pinions free into the heavens of genius, and brings back the song which +no other has sung, and which is a true song. She has created characters, +she has described the histories of souls, in a manner which will cause some +of her books to endure for all time. If she has allied her genius to +current culture and speculation, it has in that way been given continuity +of purpose and definiteness of aim. The genius is there and cannot be +hidden or obscured; and those who love what is great and noble will be +profoundly attracted by her books. If a great thinker, she is still more +truly a great literary artist; and such is the largeness and gracious power +of her genius that those who do not love her speculations will be drawn to +her in spite of all objections. Her genius is generous, expansive, +illuminative, profound. Her creativeness is an elemental power; new births +are to be found in her books; life has grown under her moulding touch. + + + + +VII. + + +THEORY OF THE NOVEL. + +Before George Eliot began her career as a novelist she had already turned +her attention to what is good and bad in fiction-writing, and had given +expression to her own theory of the novel. What she wrote on this subject +is excellent in itself, but it now has an additional interest in view of +her success as a novelist, and as throwing light on her conception of the +purposes to be followed in the writing of fiction. In what she wrote on +this subject two ideas stand out distinctly, that women are to find in +novel-writing a literary field peculiarly adapted to their capacities, and +that the novel should be a true portraiture of life. + +She was a zealous advocate of woman's capacity to excel as a novelist, and +she saw in this form of literature a field especially adapted to her +greater powers of emotion and sympathy. Very generous and appreciative are +her references to the lady novelists whom she defends, the excellence of +whose work she maintains entitles them to the highest places as literary +artists. In the article on "Lady Novelists" she has drawn attention both to +those qualities in which woman may excel and to those in which she may +fail. In writing later of "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" she criticised +unsparingly those women who write novels without comprehending life or any +of its problems, and who write in a merely artificial manner. The width of +her own culture, the vigor of her critical talent, the largeness of her +conception of life and its interests, are well expressed in these essays. +Only a large mind could have so truly conceived the real nature of woman's +relations to literature, and expressed them in a spirit so intelligent and +comprehensive. She would have the whole of life portrayed, and she believes +only a woman can truly speak for women. But her faith in woman seems not to +have been of the revolutionary character. She rather preferred that women +should achieve a higher social condition by deeds than by words. A great +intellectual career like her own, which places a woman in the front rank of +literary creators, does more to elevate the position of women than any +amount of agitation in favor of suffrage. That she sought for the highest +intellectual achievement, and that she labored to attain the widest results +of scholarship, is greatly to her credit; but more to her credit is it, +that she made no claim upon the public as a woman, but only as a literary +artist. She asked that her work should be judged on its literary merits, as +the product of intellect, and not with reference to her sex. While +believing that woman can do her work best by being true to the instincts, +sympathies and capacities of her sex, yet she would have the same standard +of literary judgment applied to women as to men. Its truthfulness, its +reality, its power to widen our sympathies and enlarge our culture, its +measure of genius and moral power, is the true test to be applied to any +literary work. Such being her conception of the manner in which women +should be judged when becoming literary creators, she had no excuses to +offer for those who make use of prejudices and a false culture in their own +behalf. She says that + + The most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form, + because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the solid + education of women. + +That she believed in the solid education of women is apparent in her own +efforts towards obtaining it for herself, and her conception of what is to +be done with it was large and generous. Mere learning she did not hold to +be an adornment in a woman. The culture must be transmuted into life-power, +and be poured forth, not as oracular wisdom in silly novels, but as +sympathy and enlarged comprehension of the daily duties of life. When +educated women "mistake vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and +affectation for originality," she is not surprised that men regard +rhodomontade as the native accent of woman's intellect, or that they come +to the conclusion that "the average nature of women is too shallow and +feeble a soil to bear much tillage." + + It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very + superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in + the world; but we have not now to contest their opinion--we are only + pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have + volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We + do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by + associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her + knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cultured woman, + like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive + for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in + something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from + which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and + things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right + estimate of herself.... She does not write books to confound + philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight + them, in conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she + understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you _can't_ + understand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw + material of culture,--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest + essence. + +After this estimate of the value of culture to women, it is interesting to +turn to George Eliot's words concerning the legitimate work which women can +perform in literature. What she says on this subject shows that she not +only had culture, but also the wisdom which is its highest result. She saw +that while a woman is to ask for no leniency towards her work because she +is a woman, yet that she is not to imitate men or to ignore her sex. She is +to portray life as a woman sees it, with a woman's sympathies and +experiences. To interpret the feminine side of life is her legitimate +province as a literary artist. + + If we regard literature as the expression of the emotions, the whims, + the caprices, the enthusiasms, the fluctuating idealisms which move + each epoch, we shall not be far wrong; and inasmuch as women + necessarily take part in these things, they ought to give them _their_ + expression. And this leads us to the heart of the question, what does + the literature of women mean? It means this: while it is impossible for + men to express life otherwise than as they know it--and they can only + know it profoundly according to their own experience--the advent of + female literature promises woman's view of life, woman's experience; in + other words, a new element. Make what distinctions you please in the + social world, it still remains true that men and women have different + organizations, consequently different experiences. To know life you + must have both sides depicted. Let him paint what he knows. And if you + limit woman's sphere to the domestic circle, you must still recognize + the concurrent necessity of domestic life finding its homeliest and + truest expression in the woman who lives it. + + Keeping to the abstract heights we have chosen, too abstract and + general to be affected by exceptions, we may further say that the + masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect, + and the feminine by the predominance of the emotions. According to this + rough division, the regions of philosophy would be assigned to men, + those of literature to women. We need scarcely warn the reader against + too rigorous an interpretation of this statement, which is purposely + exaggerated the better to serve as a signpost. It is quite true that no + such absolute distinction will be found in authorship. There is no man + whose mind is shrivelled up into pure intellect; there is no woman + whose intellect is completely absorbed by her emotions. But in most men + the intellect does not move in such inseparable alliance with the + emotions as in most women, and hence, although often not so great as in + women, yet the intellect is more commonly dominant. In poets, artists, + and men of letters, _par excellence_, we observe this feminine trait, + that their intellect habitually moves in alliance with their emotions; + and one of the best descriptions of poetry was that given by Professor + Wilson, as the "intellect colored by the feelings." + + Woman, by her greater affectionateness, her greater range and depth + of emotional experience, is well fitted to give expression to + the emotional facts of life, and demands a place in literature + corresponding to that she occupies in society; and that literature + must be greatly benefited thereby, follows from the definition we have + given of literature. + + But hitherto, in spite of illustrations, the literature of woman has + fallen short of its function, owing to a very natural and a very + explicable weakness--it has been too much a literature of imitation. To + write as men write, is the aim and besetting sin of women; to write as + women, is the real office they have to perform. Our definition of + literature includes this necessity. If writers are bound to express + what they have really known, felt and suffered, that very obligation + imperiously declares they shall not quit their own point of view for + the point of view of others. To imitate is to abdicate. We are in no + need of more male writers; we are in need of genuine female experience. + The prejudices, notions, passions and conventionalisms of men are amply + illustrated; let us have the same fulness with respect to women. + Unhappily the literature of women may be compared with that of Rome: no + amount of graceful talent can disguise the internal defect. Virgil, + Ovid and Catullus were assuredly gifted with delicate and poetic + sensibility; but their light is, after all, the light of moons + reflected from the Grecian suns, and such as brings little life with + its rays, To speak in Greek, to think in Greek, was the ambition of all + cultivated Romans, who could not see that it would be a grander thing + to utter their pure Roman natures in sincere originality. So of women. + The throne of intellect has so long been occupied by men, that women + naturally deem themselves bound to attend the court. Greece domineered + over Rome; its intellectual supremacy was recognized, and the only way + of rivalling it seemed to be imitation. Yet not so did Rome vanquish + Pyrrhus and his elephants; not by employing elephants to match his, but + by Roman valor. + + Of all departments of literature, fiction is the one to which, by + nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women + will of course be found competent to the highest success in other + departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The + domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an + appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for + that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the + feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms the story + of a woman's life." The joys and sorrows of affection, the incidents of + domestic life, the aspirations and fluctuations of emotional life, + assume typical forms in the novel. Hence we may be prepared to find + women succeeding better in _finesse_ of detail, in pathos and + sentiment, while men generally succeed better in the construction of + plots and the delineation of character. Such a novel as _Tom Jones_ or + _Vanity Fair_ we shall not get from a woman, nor such an effort of + imaginative history as _Ivanhoe_ or _Old Mortality_; but Fielding, + Thackeray and Scott are equally excluded from such perfection in its + kind as _Pride and Prejudice_, _Indiana_ or _Jane Eyre_. As an artist + Jane Austen surpasses all the male novelists that ever lived; and for + eloquence and depth of feeling no man approaches George Sand. + + We are here led to another curious point in our subject, viz., the + influence of sorrow upon female literature. It may be said without + exaggeration that almost all literature has some remote connection with + suffering. "Speculation," said Novalis, "is disease." It certainly + springs from a vague disquiet. Poetry is analogous to the pearl which + the oyster secretes in its malady. + + "Most wretched men + Are cradled into poetry by wrong, + They learn in suffering what they teach in song." + + What Shelley says of poets, applies with greater force to women. If + they turn their thoughts to literature, it is--when not purely an + imitative act--always to solace by some intellectual activity the + sorrow that in silence wastes their lives, and by a withdrawal of the + intellect from the contemplation of their pain, or by a transmutation + of their secret anxieties into types, they escape from the pressure of + that burden. If the accidents of her position make her solitary and + inactive, or if her thwarted affections shut her somewhat from that + sweet domestic and maternal sphere to which her whole being + spontaneously moves, she turns to literature as to another sphere. We + do not here simply refer to those notorious cases where literature was + taken up with the avowed and conscious purpose of withdrawing thoughts + from painful subjects; but to the unconscious, unavowed influence of + domestic disquiet and unfulfilled expectations, in determining the + sufferer to intellectual activity. The happy wife and busy mother are + only forced into literature by some hereditary organic tendency, + stronger even than the domestic; and hence it is that the cleverest + women are not those who have written books. + +In the later essay on "Silly Novels" her powers of sarcasm were fully +displayed. It showed keen critical powers, and a clear insight into the +defects inherent in most novel-writing. She spared no faults, had no mercy +for presumption, and condemned unsparingly the pretence of culture. +She described four kinds of silly novels, classing them as being of the +_mind-and-millinery_, the _oracular, the _white-neck-cloth_, and the +_modern-antique_ varieties. All her powers of analysis and insight shown +in her novels appeared in this article. + +Severe as her criticism is, it is always just. It aims at the presentation +of a truer conception of the purpose of novel-writing, and women are +judged simply as literary workers. This criticism is based on the clearest +apprehension of why it is that women fail as novel-writers; that it is not +because they are women, but because they are false to nature and to the +simplest conditions of literary art. These women write poor novels because +they aim at fine writing, and believe they must be learned and +grandiloquent. They ignore what they see about them every day, and which, +if they were to describe it in simple language, would give them real power. +It is this falsity in thought, method and purpose which is so severely +condemned. And it is the very justness of the criticism which makes it +severe, which gives to a true description of these novels the nature of a +stinging sarcasm. That these women are praised by the critics she justly +regards as a sure indication of their incapacity, or a sign of man's +chivalry towards the other sex, which does not permit him to speak the +truth about what he knows to be so false and immature. She also sees that +what women need is to be told the truth, and to be compelled to accept the +just consequences of their work, + + The standing apology for women who become writers without any special + qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres of + occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for + the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to + bad poetry. But society, like "matter" and her Majesty's Government, + and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as + well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes from + necessity, we believe there are three who write from vanity; and + besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact + of working for one's bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind + of literature is not likely to have been produced under such + circumstances. "In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly + novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness. + + Happily we are not dependent on argument to prove that fiction is a + department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully + equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our + memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but + among the very finest;--novels, too, that have a precious specialty, + lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No + educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of + fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid + requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form and yet + be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements--genuine + observation, humor and passion. But it is precisely this absence + of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of + novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very + grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here + certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and + incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute + _technique_ is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of + mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers + for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a + writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have + again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose + to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, + aussi, je joue de la flute;"--a fable which we commend, at parting, to + the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to + the number of "silly novels by lady novelists." + +Her praise of the great novelists is as enthusiastic as her condemnation of +the silly ones is severe. It is interesting to note that in the first of +these papers she selects Jane Austen and George Sand as the chiefest among +women novelists, and that she praises them for the truthfulness of their +portraitures of life, nor is she any the less aware of the defects of these +masters than of the deficiencies of silly women who write novels. She finds +that Jane Austen never penetrates into the deeper spiritual experiences of +life, and that George Sand lacks in that moral poise and purity which is so +necessary to the finest literary effort. Her sketches of these women are as +truthful as they are interesting. + + First and foremost let Jane Austen be named, the greatest artist that + has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery + over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in human nature + Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of + passionate existence into which she has never set foot; but although + this is obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she has + risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not + seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a + perfect orb and vital. Life, as it appears to an English gentlewoman + peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in + her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest + for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual experience of + life; you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel + something of personal affection towards them. The marvellous reality + and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led + Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspere. If the whole force of the + distinction which lies in that epithet _prose_ be fairly appreciated, + no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspere it + would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely + demarcated within the limits of their kind. We do not find such + profound psychological insight as may be found in George Sand (not to + mention male writers), but taking the type to which the characters + belong, we see the most intimate and accurate knowledge in all Miss + Austen's creations. + + Only cultivated minds fairly appreciate the exquisite art of Miss + Austen. Those who demand the stimulus of effects, those who can only + see by strong lights and shadows, will find her tame and uninteresting. + We may illustrate this by one detail. Lucy Steele's bad English, so + delicately and truthfully indicated, would in the hands of another have + been more obvious, more "effective" in its exaggeration, but the loss + of this comic effect is more than replaced to the cultivated reader by + his relish of the nice discrimination visible in its truthfulness. And + so of the rest. _Strong_ lights are unnecessary, _true_ lights being + at command. The incidents, the characters, the dialogue--all are of + every-day life, and so truthfully presented that to appreciate the art + we must try to imitate it, or carefully compare it with that of others. + + We are but echoing an universal note of praise in speaking thus highly + of her works, and it is from no desire of simply swelling that chorus + of praise that we name her here, but to call attention to the peculiar + excellence, at once womanly and literary, which has earned this + reputation. Of all imaginative writers she is the most _real_. Never + does she transcend her own actual experience, never does her pen trace + a line that does not touch the experience of others. Herein we + recognize the first quality of literature. We recognize the second and + more special quality of womanliness in the tone and point of view; they + are novels written by a woman, an Englishwoman, a gentlewoman; no + signature could disguise that fact; and because she has so faithfully + (although unconsciously) kept to her own womanly point of view, her + works are durable. There is nothing of the _doctrinaire_ in Jane + Austen; not a trace of woman's "mission;" but as the most truthful, + charming, humorous, pure-minded, quick-witted and unexaggerated of + writers, female literature has reason to be proud of her. + +And this is her suggestive portrait of the other, drawn with that skill +which is only displayed when one genius interprets another through +community of feeling and purpose. + + Of greater genius, and incomparably deeper experience, George Sand + represents woman's literature more illustriously and more obviously. In + her, quite apart from the magnificent gifts of nature, we see the + influence of sorrow as a determining impulse to write, and the abiding + consciousness of the womanly point of view as the subject matter of her + writings. In vain has she chosen the mask of a man: the features of a + woman are everywhere visible. Since Goethe no one has been able to say + with so much truth, "My writings are my confessions." Her biography + lies there, presented, indeed, in a fragmentary shape and under wayward + disguises, but nevertheless giving to the motley groups the strong and + uumistakable charm of reality. Her grandmother, by whom she was brought + up, disgusted at her not being a boy, resolved to remedy the misfortune + as far as possible by educating her like a boy. We may say of this, as + of all the other irregularities of her strange and exceptional life, + that whatever unhappiness and error may be traceable thereto, its + influence on her writings has been beneficial, by giving a greater + range to her experience. It may be selfish to rejoice over the malady + which secretes a pearl, but the possessor of the pearl may at least + congratulate himself that at any rate the pearl has been produced; and + so of the unhappiness of genius. Certainly few women have had such + profound and varied experience as George Sand; none have turned it to + more account. Her writings contain many passages that her warmest + admirers would wish unwritten; but although severe criticism may detect + the weak places, the severest criticism must conclude with the + admission of her standing among the highest minds of literature. In the + matter of eloquence, she surpasses everything France has yet produced. + There has been no style at once so large, so harmonious, so expressive, + and so unaffected: like a light shining through an alabaster vase, the + ideas shine through her diction; while as regards rhythmic melody of + phrase, it is a style such as Beethoven might have written had he + uttered in words the melodious passion that was in him. But deeper than + all eloquence, grander than all grandeur of phrase, is that forlorn + splendor of a life of passionate experience painted in her works. There + is no man so wise but he may learn from them, for they are the + utterances of a soul in pain, a soul that has been tried. No man could + have written her books, for no man could have had her experience, even + with a genius equal to her own. The philosopher may smile sometimes at + her philosophy, for _that_ is only the reflex of some man whose ideas + she has adopted; the critic may smile sometimes--at her failure in + delineating men; but both philosopher and critic must perceive that + those writings of hers are _original_ and genuine, are transcripts of + experience, and as such fulfil the primary condition of all literature. + +This clear, intellectual apprehension of what woman can effect in +literature, had much to do with George Eliot's own success. Yet it is +doubtful if she was so true, in some directions, to the instincts of her +sex as was George Sand, Mrs. Browning or Charlotte Brontë. Hers was in +large measure an intellect without sex; and though she was a woman in all +the instincts of her heart, yet intellectually she occupied the human +rather than the woman's point of view. With a marvellous insight into the +heart of woman, and great skill in portraying womanly natures, she had a +man's way, the logical and impersonal manner, of viewing, the greater +problems of human existence. Charlotte Brontë more truly represents the +woman's way of viewing life; the trustful way of one educated in the +conventional views of religion. She has given a corrector interpretation of +the meaning of love to woman than George Eliot has been able to present, +and simply because she thought and lived more nearly as other women think +and live. Hers was the genius of spontaneous insight and emotion, that +vibrated to every experience and was moved by every sentiment. Life played +upon her heart like the wind upon an Aescolian harp, and she reflected its +every movement of joy and sorrow. George Eliot studied life, probed into +it, cut it in pieces, constructed a theory of it, and then told us what it +means. In this she was unlike other women who have made a deep impression +on literature. Mrs. Browning had nearly as much culture, was as thoughtful +as she, but more genuinely feminine at the heart-core. Love she painted in +a purer and happier fashion than that adopted by George Eliot, and she had +the warmer impulses of a woman's tenderness. Her account of life is the +truer, because it is the more ideal; and this may be said for Charlotte +Brontë also. George Eliot had the larger intellect, the keener mind, was a +profounder thinker; but her realism held her back from that instinctive +conception of life which realizes its larger ideal meanings. It is not +enough to see what is; man desires to know what ought to be. The poet is +the seer, the one who apprehends, who has that finer eye for facts by which +he is able to behold what the facts give promise of. This ideal vision Mrs. +Browning had, and in so far she was the superior of George Eliot. The same +may be said for George Sand, who, with all her wildness and impurity, was a +woman through and through. She was all heart, all impulse, lived in her +instincts and emotions. She had the abandon, enthusiasm and spontaneity +which George Eliot lacked. If the one represents the head, the other +expresses the heart of woman. George Eliot, as a woman, thought, reasoned, +philosophized; George Sand felt, gave every emotion reign, lived out all +her impulses. What the one lacks the other had; where one was weak the +other was strong. With somewhat of George Sand's idealism and emotional +zeal for wider and freer life, George Eliot would have been a greater +writer. Could she have moulded Dorothea with what is best in Consuelo, she +would have been the rival of the greatest literary artists among men. Yet, +with her limitations, it must be said that George Eliot is the superior of +all other women in her literary accomplishments. If others are her +superiors in some directions, in the totality of her powers she surpasses +all. Even as an interpreter of woman's nature and the feminine side of +life, she does not fail to keep well ahead of the best of feminine writers. +She is more thoroughly the master of her powers, is more self-centred, +looks out upon human experience more calmly and with a more penetrating +gaze. Foremost of the half-dozen women who during the present century have +sought to interpret the feminine side of life, she has done much for her +sex. Daring more than others, she has given a greater promise than any +other of what woman is to accomplish when her nature blossoms out into all +its possibilities. + +The chief rule for novel-writing laid down by George Eliot in these essays +is, that the novel shall be the result of experience and true to nature. +She emphasizes the importance of this condition, and says that the novelist +is bound to use actual experience as his material, and that alone, or else +keep silent. Weak and silly novels are the result of an effort to break +away from this rule; but the writer who ventures to disregard it never can +be other than silly or weak. Novelists, she says, may either portray +experience outwardly through observation, or inwardly through sentiment, or +through a combination of both. + + Observation without sentiment usually leads to humor or satire; + sentiment without observation to rhetoric and long-drawn lachrymosity. + The extreme fault of the one is flippant superficiality, that of the + other is what is called sickly sentimentality. + +All true literature, she says, is based on fact, describes life as it is +lived by men and women, touches and is fragrant with reality. This cardinal +principle of literary art she has defined and illustrated in her own strong +and expressive manner in this _Review_ article. + + All poetry, all fiction, all comedy, all _belles-lettres_, even to the + playful caprices of fancy, are but the expression of experiences and + emotions; and these expressions are the avenues through which we reach + the sacred _adytum_ of humanity, and learn better to understand our + fellows and ourselves. In proportion as these expressions are the forms + of universal truths, of facts common to all nations or appreciable by + all intellects, the literature which sets them forth is permanently good + and true. Hence the universality and immortality of Homer, Shakspere, + Cervantes, Moliere. But in proportion as these expressions are the forms + of individual, peculiar truths, such as fleeting fashions or + idiosyncrasies, the literature is ephemeral. Hence tragedy never grows + old, for it arises from elemental experience; but comedy soon ages, for + it arises from peculiarities. Nevertheless, even idiosyncrasies are + valuable as side glances; they are aberrations that bring the natural + orbit into more prominent distinctness. + + It follows from what has been said, that literature, being essentially + the expression of experience and emotion--of what we have seen, felt + and thought--that only _that_ literature is effective, and to be prized + accordingly, which has _reality for its basis_ (needless to say that + emotion is as real as the three-per-cents), _and effective in + proportion to the depth and breadth of that basis_. + +In writing? of the authors of _Jane Eyre_ and _Mary Barton_, she shows how +important to her mind it is that the novel should have its basis in actual +experience, and that it should be an expression of reality. + + They have both given imaginative expression to actual experience--they + have not invented, but reproduced; they have preferred the truth, such + as their own experience testified, to the vague, false, conventional + notions current in circulating libraries. Whatever of weakness may be + pointed out in their works will, we are positive, be mostly in those + parts where experience is deserted, and the supposed requirements of + fiction have been listened to; whatever has really affected the public + mind is, we are equally, certain, the transcript of some actual + incident, character or emotion. Note, moreover, that beyond this basis + of actuality these writers have the further advantage of deep feeling + united to keen observation. + +Especially severe is her condemnation of the tendency to introduce only +fashionable or learned people into novels. She says the silly novelists +rarely make us acquainted with "any other than very lofty and fashionable +society," and very often the authors know nothing of such society except +from the reading of other such novels. + + It is true that we are constantly struck with the want of + verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which + they seem to live; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with + any other form of life. If their peers and peeresses are improbable, + their literary men, tradespeople and cottagers are impossible; and + their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing + both what they _have_ seen and heard, and what they have _not_ seen + and heard, with equal faithfulness. + +What is simple, natural, unaffected, she pleads for as the true material of +fiction. How she would apply this idea may be seen in her condemnation of a +novelist who devoted her pages to a defence of Evangelicalism. This writer +is "tame and feeble" because she attempts to depict a form of society with +which she is not familiar. That the common phases of religious life are +capable of affording the richest material for the novelist, George Eliot +has abundantly shown, and what she says of their value in this discussion +of "Silly Novelists" is of great interest in view of her own success in +this kind of portraiture. What she suggested as a fine field for the +novelist was to be the one she herself was so well to occupy. Her success +proved how clearly she comprehended the nature of novel-writing, and how +well she understood the character of the material with which the best +results can be attained. + + It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist than any other, + gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and carriages. The real + drama of Evangelicalism--and it has abundance of fine drama for any one + who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it--lies among the + middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood + to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather + than in the mighty? Why, then, cannot our Evangelical novelists show + us the operation of their religious views among people (there really + are many such in the world) who keep no carriage, "not so much as a + brass-bound gig," who even manage to eat their dinner without a silver + fork, and in whose mouths the authoress's questionable English would be + strictly consistent? Why can we not have pictures of religious life + among the industrial classes in England as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's + pictures of religious life among the negroes? + +Was this question a prophecy? It indicates that the writer's attention +had already been directed to the richness of this material for the purposes +of the novelist. After reading these words we see why she took up the +common life of the English village as she had herself been familiar with +it from childhood. In order to be true to her own conception of the novel, +there was no other field she could occupy. That she understood the +picturesqueness of this form of life no reader of her novels will doubt, +or that she saw and understood its capacities for artistic delineation. +The opening paragraphs of her _Westminster Review_ article on the "Natural +History of German Life" afford further evidence of her insight and +wisdom on this subject. They also afford evidence of her hatred of the +conventional and the artificial in art, literature and life. The spirit of +imitation and mannerism common to the eighteenth century was in every way +repugnant to her. She could have had only contempt for the literary art of +a Pope or a Boileau. The nature of her realism, and the conception she had +of its importance, may be understood from these paragraphs, for in them she +has unfolded her theory more clearly than in anything else she has written, +and with that genius for sympathetic description which is so marked in her +novels. + + How little the real characteristics of the working-classes are known to + those who are outside them, how little their natural history has been + studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our art as well as by our + political and social theories. Where, in our picture exhibitions, shall + we find a group of true peasantry? What English artist even attempts to + rival in truthfulness such studies of popular life as the pictures of + Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo? Even one of the greatest + painters of the pre-eminently realistic school, while in his picture of + "The Hireling Shepherd" he gave us a landscape of marvellous + truthfulness, placed a pair of peasants in the foreground who were not + much more real than the idyllic swains and damsels of our chimney + ornaments. Only a total absence of acquaintance and sympathy with our + peasantry could give a moment's popularity to such a picture as "Cross + Purposes," where we have a peasant girl who looks as if she knew + L.E.L.'s poems by heart, and English rustics whose costumes seem to + indicate that they are meant for ploughmen with exotic features that + remind us of a handsome _primo tenore_. Rather than such cockney + sentimentality as this as an education for the taste and sympathies, we + prefer the most crapulous group of boors that Teniers ever painted. But + even those among our painters who aim at giving the rustic type of + features, who are far above the effeminate feebleness of the "Keepsake" + style, treat their subjects under the influence of traditions and + prepossessions rather than of direct observation. The notion that + peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a + smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound + teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village children + necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from + the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature instead + of life. The painter is still under the influence of idyllic + literature, which has always expressed the imagination of the + cultivated and town-bred, rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic + ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic + shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers + dance in the chequered shade, and refresh themselves, not immoderately, + with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual + ploughmen thinks them jocund; no one who is well acquainted with the + English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no + sense of beauty beams, no humor twinkles,-the slow utterance and the + heavy slouching walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal, the + camel, than of the sturdy countryman with striped stockings, red waist + coat and hat aside, who represents the traditional English peasant. + Observe a company of haymakers, when you see them at a distance, + tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon + creeps--slowly with its increasing burthen over the meadow, and the + bright green space which tells of work done gets larger and larger, you + pronounce the scene "smiling," and you think that these companions in + labor must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give + animation. Approach nearer, and you will certainly find that haymaking + time is a time of joking, especially it there are women among the + laborers; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and + expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your idyllic + conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence of the + mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the northern peasant, + except tipsy revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for the + English clown exists at the bottom of the third quart-pot. + + The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket books and + never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty + has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake that an + unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that + slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true + that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical + cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn + in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging + letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into + filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not + subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least + established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make + men moral, something more is requisite than to turn them out to grass. + + Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin's indignation, are + surely too frank an idealization to be misleading; and since popular + chorus is one of the most effective elements of the opera, we can + hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant laced bodices and picturesque + motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of colliers in + their pit costume, or a ballet of charwomen and stocking-weavers. But + our social novels profess to represent the people as they are, and the + unreality of their representations is a grave evil. The greatest + benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is + the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations + and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already + in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can + give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention + to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material + of moral sentiment. When Scott takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's + cottage, or tells the story of The Two Drovers,--when Wordsworth + sings to us the reverie of Poor Susan,--when Kingsley shows us Alton + Locke gazing yearningly over the gate which leads from the highway + into the first wood he ever saw,--when Harnung paints a group of + chimney-sweepers,--more is done towards linking the higher classes + with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, + than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the + nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and + extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our + personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he + undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsification here is far + more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not + so very serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent + fashions--about the manners and conversation of beaux and duchesses; + but it _is_ serious that our sympathy with the perennial joys and + struggles, the toil, the tragedy and the humor in the life of our more + heavily laden fellow-men,--should be perverted, and turned towards a + false object instead of the true one. + + This perversion is not the less fatal because the misrepresentation + which gives rise to it has what the artist considers a moral end. The + thing for mankind to know is, not what are the motives and influences + which the moralist thinks _ought_ to act on the laborer or the artisan, + but what are the motives and influences which do act on him. We want to + be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental + peasant, but for the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan + in all his suspicious selfishness. + + We have one great novelist who is gifted with the utmost power of + rendering the external traits of our town population; and if he could + give us their psychological character--their conceptions of life, and + their emotions--with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his + books would be the greatest contribution art has ever made to the + awakening of social sympathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Plornish's + colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while + there is the same startling inspiration in his description of the + gestures and phrases of "Boots," as in the speeches of Shakspere's mobs + or numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from the humorous and external to + the emotional and tragic, without becoming as transcendent in his + unreality as he was a moment before in his artistic truthfulness. But + for the precious salt of his humor, which compels him to reproduce + external traits that serve, in some degree, as a corrective to his + frequently false psychology, his preternaturally virtuous poor children + and artisans, his melodramatic bootmen and courtesans, would be as + noxious as Eugene Sue's idealized proletaires in encouraging the + miserable fallacy that high morality and refined sentiment can grow + out of harsh social relations, ignorance and want; or that the + working-classes are in a condition to enter at once into a millennial + state of _altruism_, wherein every one is caring for every one else, + and no one for himself. + + If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our + sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and + direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid + conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social + questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of + men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations,--the + dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which + appeals principally to their moral sensibilities,--the aristocratic + dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" by a sort + of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity and veneration as + we grow prize turnips, by an artificial system of culture,--none of + these diverging mistakes can co-exist with a real knowledge of the + people, with a thorough study of their habits, their ideas, their + motives. The landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the mining + agent, have each an opportunity for making precious observations on + different sections of the working-class, but unfortunately their + experience is too often not registered at all, or its results are too + scattered to be available as a source of information and stimulus to + the public mind generally. If any man of sufficient moral and + intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be vitiated by a + foregone conclusion, or by a professional point of view, would devote + himself to studying the natural history of our social classes, + especially of the small shop-keepers, artisans and peasantry,--the + degree in which they are influenced by local conditions, their maxims + and habits, the points of view from which they regard their religious + teachers, and the degree in which they are influenced by religious + doctrines, the interaction of the various classes on each other, and + what are the tendencies in their position towards disintegration or + towards development,--and if, after all this study, he would give us + the result of his observations in a book well nourished with specific + facts, his work would be a valuable aid to the social and political + reformer. + +The estimates given in these essays of the writings of Jane Austen, George +Sand, Charlotte Brontë and Thackeray, show the soundness of George Eliot's +critical judgment. She fully appreciated Jane Austen's artistic skill, as +she did George Sand's impassioned love of liberty and naturalness. She also +saw how tame are Miss Austen's scenes, how humanly imperfect are +Thackeray's characters. Her own work is wanting in Jane Austen's artistic +skill and finish, but there is far more of originality and character in her +books, more of thought and purpose. Miss Austen tells her story wonderfully +well, but her books are all on the same level of social mediocrity and +flatness. No fresh, strong, natural, aspiring life is to be found in one of +them. George Eliot has not Jane Austen's artistic skill, but she has +thought, depth of purpose, originality of expression and conception, and a +marvellous creative insight into character. She is less passionate and bold +than George Sand, not the same daring innovator, more rational and +sensible. She is not so much a poet, has little of George Sand's power of +improvisation, much less of eloquence and abandon. She has more literary +skill than Charlotte Brontë, less originality, but none of her crudeness. +She has not so much of the subtle element of genius, but more of solidity +and thought. + +Her theories concerning the novel place George Eliot fully in sympathy with +what may very properly be called the British school of fiction. The natural +history of man is the subject matter used by this school; and to describe +accurately, minutely, some portion of the human race, some social +community, is its main object. Richardson, Fielding, Miss Austen and +Thackeray are the masters in this school, who have given direction to its +aims and methods. They have sought to accomplish in novel-writing somewhat +the same results as those aimed at by Wordsworth and Browning in poetry, to +follow the natural, to make much of the common, to describe things as they +are. They are realists both in method and philosophy, though differing +widely from the minuteness and coarseness of Tourguénief and Zola, in that +they show a large element of the ideal interfused with the real. This +school is seldom coarse, vulgar or sensuous, does not mistake the depraved +and beastly for the natural. Its members delight in simple scenes, plain +life, common joys; the scenes, life and joys which are open to every +Englishman. They have made use of the facts lying immediately about them, +those with which they were the most familiar. They have broken away from +the traditional theories of life, the manners of books of etiquette and the +rules of fashionable society, for the life which is natural and instinct +with impulses of its own. The life of the professions is described, local +dialects and provincialisms appear, places and scenery are carefully +painted, and the disagreeable and painful become elements in these novels, +because common to humanity. + +To this special theory of the novel, as it had been worked out by the +English masters of prose-poetry, George Eliot added nothing essential. +Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Austen, Miss Mitford, Fielding and Richardson +had preceded her along the way she was to follow. Their methods became +hers, she accepted their influence, and her work was done in the spirit +they had so ably illustrated. In one direction, however, she far surpassed +any one of her masters, and gave to the novel a richness of power and +fulness of aim it had not attained to with any of her predecessors. George +Eliot combined other methods with that of naturalism, not adhering rigidly +to the purpose of painting life as it appears on the surface. Not only from +the pre-Raphaelites, but from such romanticists as Scott, did she learn +much. Past scenes became natural, and history was discovered to be a vast +element in the thought of the present. Scott's power of reviving the past +in all its romantic and picturesque features, which gave him such capacity +for re-creating the life that had once passed away, was not possessed by +George Eliot. Still, if not a romancist, she realized how mighty is the +shaping power of the past over the present. For this reason, she endeavored +to recast old scenes, to revive in living shapes the times that had gone +by. The living movements of the present, its efforts at reform, its cries +for liberty, its searchings after a freer and purer life, also became a +prominent element in her novels. If in this tendency she somewhat enlarged +upon the methods of her masters, yet she was quite in sympathy with many +who came just before her, and with many more who were her contemporaries. +In another direction she kept along the way followed by many of her +co-workers, and brought philosophy and socialistic speculation to the aid +of the naturalistic method. Indeed, she so far departed from that method, +and from the soundest theories of art, as to become to some extent a +_doctrinaire_. + +Her novels, like much of the poetry of the same period, are eclectic in +spirit, combining with the naturalistic methods those of the historic, +socialistic, culture and speculative schools. Art and culture for their own +sake combined in her novels with the purpose to use history and social life +obedient to a distinct conception of their meanings. To describe life +accurately there must be a clear conception of what life means. Genius +never works aimlessly; and in seeing life as it is, always sees that it has +a tendency and direction. A mind so thoughtful as George Eliot's, with so +strong a love of speculative interest in it, was likely to give to +novel-writing done by her a large philosophic element. Yet her philosophy +is nearly always subject to her imagination and to her naturalism. Her love +of nature, her intimate interest in life and its elemental problems, her +passionate sympathy with all human passions and experiences, saves her from +becoming a mere _doctrinaire_, and gives to her speculations a pathetic, +living interest. The poetic elements of her novels are so many as to +subordinate the philosophic to the true purposes of art. + +In one direction George Eliot departed from the methods of her +predecessors, and to so great an extent as to be herself the originator of +a new school of fiction. She followed the bent of her time for analysis and +psychologic interpretation. It is here more than anywhere else she differs +from Charlotte Brontë and George Sand. These two great novelists create +character by direct representation, by making their persons live and act. +George Eliot shows her characters to the reader by analyzing their motives +and by giving the history of their development. The disadvantages of the +analytic method are apparent when George Eliot is compared with Scott. +Unique, personal and human are his creations, instinct with all human +emotions, and profoundly real. It is only the poetic side of life which he +sees, not its philosophic. George Eliot wanted to know the meanings of +things, and this very desire brings a largeness into her books which is not +found in Scott's. She was much the more thoughtful of the two, the one who +tried to realize to the intellect what life means. Yet her method of doing +this is not always the best one for the poet or the novelist. Scott was no +realist, and yet George Eliot has not been more accurate than he. Indeed, +he is far more truly accurate in so far as he paints the soul as well as +the body of life. The sad endings of her novels grew out of a false theory, +and from her inability to see anything of spiritual reality beyond the +little round of man's earthly destiny. She did not accept the doctrine that +art is to be cultivated only for art's sake, for art was always to her the +vehicle of moral or philosophic teaching. The limitations of her art +largely lay in the direction of her agnosticism. Scott and George Sand gain +for their work a great power and effect by their acceptance of the +spiritual as real. There is a light, a subtle aroma, a width of vision, a +sense of reality, in their work from this source, which is wanting in +George Eliot's. The illimitable mystery beyond the region of the real is +the greatest fact man has presented to him, and that region is a reality in +all the effects it works on humanity. No poet can ignore it or try to limit +it to humanity without a loss to his work. It is this subtle, penetrative, +aromatic and mystic power of the ideal which is most to be felt as lacking +in the works of George Eliot. Much as we may praise her, we can but feel +this limitation. Great as is our admiration, we can but feel that there is +a higher range of poetic and artistic creation than any she reached. + +The quotations presented from her early writings prove that George Eliot +began her career as a novelist with a fully elaborated conception of the +purposes of the novel and of the methods to be followed in its production. +She had thoroughly studied the subject, had read many of the best works of +the best writers, and had formed a carefully digested theory of the novel. +That she could do this is rather an indication of critical than of creative +power. Her novels everywhere betray the greatness of her reasoning powers, +that she was a thinker, that she had strong powers of intellectual +analysis, and that she had a logical, accurate mind. Had her mind taken no +other direction than this, however, she never could have become a great +novelist. These essays indicated something beside powers of reasoning and +psychological analysis. They also indicated her capacity for imaginative +insight into the motives and impulses of human nature, and an intuitive +comprehension of what is most natural to human thought and action. They +showed appreciation of sympathy and feeling, and delicate perception of the +finer cravings and tendencies of even the commonest souls. They gave +promise of so much creative power, her friends saw that in novel-writing +she was to find the true expression of her large qualities of mind and +heart. The person who could so skilfully point out the faults in the poor +novels rapidly issuing from the press, and realize the true indications of +a master's power in the creations of the literary artists, might herself +possess the genius necessary to original work of her own. Her early essays +are now chiefly of value for this promise they give of larger powers than +those which could be fully expressed in such work. They prophesied the +future, and made her friends zealous to overcome her own reluctance to +enter upon a larger work. She doubted her own genius, but it was not +destined to remain unfruitful. + + + + +VIII. + + +POETIC METHODS. + +Had George Eliot written nothing else than the poems which bear her name, +she would have been assigned a permanent place among the poets. Having +first attained her rank in the highest order of novelists, however, her +poetry suffers in comparison with her prose. The critics tell us that no +person gifted with supreme excellence in one form of creative expression +has ever been able to attain high rank in another. They forget that Goethe +was great both in prose and poetry; that his _Wilhelm Meister_ is of +scarcely inferior genius to his _Faust_. They also forget that Victor Hugo +holds the first place among the French poets of the present century, at the +same time that he is the greatest of all French novelists. It would be well +for them also to remember that Scott held high rank as a poet before he +began his wonderful career as a novelist. A contemporary of George Eliot's, +to name a single instance of another kind, was equally excellent as poet +and painter. Dante Rossetti made for himself a lasting place in both +directions, and in both he did work of a high order. + +In reality, the novel much resembles the narrative or epic poem; and if a +work of true genius, it is difficult to distinguish it from the poem except +as they differ in external form. The novel has for its main elements those +qualities of imagination, description, high-wrought purpose, which are also +constituents of much of the best poetry. The novel is more expansive than +the poem, one of the chief characteristics of which is condensation; its +theme may take a wider range, and it may embrace those cruder and more +common features of life which are inappropriate to the poem. The novelist +can make a greater use of humor, he can give more detail to description, +and portrayal of character can be carried to a much greater extent, than is +usual with the poet. The poet requires a subject more sublime, inspiring +and naturally beautiful than the novelist, who seeks what is the more +human, nearer the level of daily social existence, and full of the +affecting even if ruder interests and passions of life. The novel is so +similar to the poem, and in so many ways requires such similar qualities of +mind for its production, that there is no inherent reason why the same +person cannot do equally good work in both. The supposition is that the +poet may become a novelist, or the novelist a poet, in all cases except +where there is some outward disqualification. The novelist may not have the +sense of rhythmical form and of metrical expression; and the poet may not +possess that constructive faculty which builds up plots, incidents and +characters. In nearly all respects but these the two forms of creative +genius so nearly assimilate each other, it is to be expected a novelist may +turn poet if he have a large imagination and a stimulating capacity for +metrical expression. + +Novelists of strong imagination and a ready command of expressive words, +barely escape writing poetry when they only purpose to write prose. This is +true of Hugo, Auerbach, Dickens and George Eliot, again and again. The glow +of creation, the high-wrought impulse of imagination, the ideal conception +of life, all move the novelist in the direction of poetry. With much effort +he keeps meter and rhyme out of his prose, but simile and metaphor, +condensed expression, unusual words, poetic compounds, alliteration, +sublime and picturesque expression, will intrude themselves. Dickens even +permits meter and rhyme to conquer him, and weakens his style in +consequence. He grows sentimental, and the real strength of pure prose is +lost. George Eliot is often poetical in expression, touches the very +borders of poetry continually, but she seldom permits herself to lapse from +the strong, energetic and impressive prose which she almost uniformly +writes. Specimens of this noble poetic-prose may be found very often in her +pages. While it would be difficult by any transposition of words to turn it +into poetry, as may often be done in the case of Dickens's prose, yet it +contains most of the elements of a high order of poetry. In the account of +the death of Maggie and Tom is to be found a fine specimen of her style, +the last words being good iambics. + + The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace + never to be parted; living through again, in one supreme moment, the + days when they _had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the + daisied fields together_. + +In the first paragraph of the thirty-third chapter of _Adam Bede_ is a +sentence which makes a successful stanza in iambics by the addition of a +single word. + + The woods behind the chase, + And all the hedgerow trees, + Took on a solemn splendor _then_ + Under the dark low-hanging skies. + +It is very seldom, however, that George Eliot permits anything like meter +in her prose, and she is usually very reticent of rhythm. There is fervor +and enthusiasm, imagination and poetic insight, but all kept within the +limits of robust and manly prose. This capacity of prose to serve most of +the purposes of poetry may be seen in a marked degree in all of George +Eliot's novels. In the account of Adam Bede's love for Hetty this subtle +power of words and ideas to give the charm and impression of poetry without +rhythm or rhyme is exhibited in a characteristic manner. + + I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, + dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came + out of the very strength of his nature, and not out of any inconsistent + weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite + music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings + of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can + penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in + one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the + tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome + years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation + all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your + present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your + past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon + by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the + liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her + lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music; what can one say + more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's + soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than + the thought that prompted them; it is more than a woman's love that + moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off, mighty love + that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the + rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their + prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness + and peace. [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XXXIII.] + +Love, music and beautiful landscapes continually inspire the poetic side of +her nature; and these themes, which are constantly recurring in her +chapters, draw forth her imagination and give fervor and enthusiasm to her +expression. Her love of nature is deep and most appreciative of all its +transformations and beauties. This sensitiveness to the changes of the +outward world is a large element in her mind, and indicates the reality of +her poetic gifts. This may be seen in a passage such as the following:-- + + The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, + lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and + pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty, and to + spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a + particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from + childhood; the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and + trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in + mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope + of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the + huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of + approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering + wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and + valleys, with wondrous modulations of light and shadow, such as we + travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more + beautiful. These are the things that made the gamut of joy in landscape + to midland-bred souls--the things they toddled among, or perhaps + learned by heart, standing between their father's knees while he drove + leisurely. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XII.] + +It is nature as affecting man, and man as transformed into a creature of +feeling and passion by the mysterious conditions of his existence, which +oftenest arouses the poetic fervor in her. The enthusiasm of high resolves, +yearnings after the pure and beautiful, and love's regenerating power, give +to her themes which kindle poetic expression to a glow. The vision of +Mordecai on Blackfriars' bridge affords a fine example of her love of the +ideal in moral purpose, and shows how stimulating it is to her imagination. +It is a poetic picture of the finest quality she has given in this chapter, +one that could easily have been made to find expression in verse of great +beauty; but it is poetry in thought and spirit alone, not in form or +structure. It is true prose in form, strong in its fulness of detail, knit +together with words of the right texture, built up into a true prose image +of beauty in thought. + + Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images that his coherent + trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to + sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments; nay, they + often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage + from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually + thought of the Being answering to his need as one distinctly + approaching or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a + golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai's + habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a + favorite resort of his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some + one of the bridges, especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he + was bending over watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper + room looking out on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his + imagination spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a + far-stretching scene; his thought went on in wide spaces, and whenever + he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky. + Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriars' bridge, and gazing meditatively, + the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half + luminous, the grand dim masses or tall forms of buildings which were + the signs of world-commerce, the on-coming of boats and barges from the + still distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent + themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to + which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our + spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of + Mordecai's longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light + in the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his + imagination toward fuller detail he ceased to see the figure with its + back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became discernible; + the words youth, beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity, + turned into hardly individual but typical form and color: gathered from + his memory of faces seen among the Jews of Holland and Bohemia, and + from the paintings which revived that memory. Reverently let it be said + of this mature spiritual need that it was akin to the boy's and girl's + picturing of the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire + are feeble compared with the passionate current of an ideal life + straining to embody itself, made intense by resistance to imminent + dissolution. The visionary form became a companion and auditor, keeping + a place not only in the waking imagination, but in those dreams of + lighter slumber of which it is truest to say, "I sleep, but my heart is + awake"--when the disturbing trivial story of yesterday is charged with + the impassioned purpose of years. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chapter + XXXVIII.] + +Many times in her prose George Eliot has recognized the true character of +poetry, and she has even given definitions of it which show how well she +knew its real nature. She makes Will Ladislaw say that-- + + To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of + quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand + playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in + which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling + flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. [Footnote: Middlemarch, + chapter XXII.] + +She thinks poetry and romance are as plentiful in the world as ever they +were, that they exist even amidst the conditions created by invention and +science; and if we do not find them there it is only because poetry and +romance are absent from our own minds. If we have not awe and tenderness, +wonder and enthusiasm, poetry cannot come near us, and we shall not be +thrilled and exalted by it. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chanter XIX.] Yet it +is not difficult to see that George Eliot is not a poet in the fullest +sense, because hers is not thoroughly and always a poetic mind, because she +reasons about things too much. The poet is impressed, moved, thrilled and +exalted, and pours out his song from his feelings and transfused with +emotion. George Eliot was given to speculation, loved exactness of +expression, and kept too close to the real. She had not that lightness of +touch, that deftness and flexibility of expression, and that versatility of +imaging forth her ideas, which the real poet possesses. Her mind moved with +a ponderous tread, which needed a prose style large and stately as its true +medium of expression. While she had poetic ideas in abundance, and an +imaginative discernment of nature and life, she had not the full gift of +poetic speech. She lacked inspiration as well as flexibility of thought, +her imagination was not sufficiently rich, and she had not the full sense +of rhythmic harmony. + +George Eliot first began to write in verse, as was to be expected of one +gifted with an imagination vigorous as hers. Her love of music, her keen +perception of the beauties of nature, her love of form and color, gave +added attraction and impetus in the same direction. That she did not +continue through many years to write poetry seems to have been partly the +result of her intense interest in severer studies. The speculative cast of +her mind predominated the poetical so nearly as to turn her away from the +poetic side of life to find a solution for its graver and more intricate +problems. Her return to the poetic form of expression may be accounted for +partly as the result of a greater confidence in her own powers which came +from success, and partly from a desire for a new and richer medium of +utterance. + +So far as can be judged from the dates of her poems, as appended to many of +them, "How Lisa Loved the King" was the earliest written. This was written +in the year of the publication of _Romola_, and was followed the next year +by the first draft of _The Spanish Gypsy_. The poetical mottoes of _Felix +Holt_, however, were the first to be published; and not until these +appeared did the public know of her poetic gifts. _The Spanish Gypsy_ was +not published until 1868, and "How Lisa Loved the King" appeared the +following year. + +The original mottoes in _Felix Holt_ gave good hint of George Eliot's +poetic gifts. They are solid with thought, pregnant with the ripe wisdom of +daily experience, significant for dramatic expression, or notable for their +humor. They are rather heavy and ponderous in style, though sonorous in +expression. A stately tread, a largeness of expression, an air of weighty +meaning, appear in nearly all these mottoes. As a specimen of the more +philosophic, the following will indicate the truthfulness of this +description:-- + + Truth is the precious harvest of the earth, + But once, when harvest waved upon a land, + The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar, + Locusts, and all the swarming, foul-born broods, + Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws, + And turned the harvest into pestilence, + Until men said, What profits it to sow? + +Her capacity for dramatic expression, in which a rich comprehension of +life is included, may be seen in these lines: + + 1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth + That makes a vice of virtue by excess. + + 2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins + Be loss of virtue? + + 1ST CITIZEN. All things cool with time-- + The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find + A general level, nowhere in excess. + + 2D CITIZEN. 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought, + That future middlingness. + +Wisdom alloyed with humor appears in another motto: + + "It is a good and soothfast saw; + Half-roasted never will be raw; + No dough is dried once more to meal. + No crock new-shapen by the wheel; + You can't turn curds to milk again + Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then; + And having tasted stolen honey, + You can't buy innocence for money." + +Mr. Buxton Forman says, that "in the charming headings to the chapters of +_Felix Holt_ it seemed as though the strong hand which had, up to that +point, exercised masterly control over the restive tendency of high prose +to rear up into verse, had relaxed itself just for the sake of a holiday, +and no more. These headings did not bear the stamp of original poetry upon +them. Forcible as were some, admirable in thought and applicability to the +respective chapters as were all, none bore traces of that clearly defined +individuality of style betrayed by all great and accomplished practitioners +of verse, in even so small a compass as these headings. Some of them +possess the great distinctive technical mark of poetry,--condensation; but +this very condensation is compassed not in an original and individual +method, but in the method of some pre-existent model; and it is hardly +necessary to enforce that power of assimilation or reproduction, however +large, is no infallible index of self-existent poetical faculty." This +critic finds traces of Shakspere, Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning in these +mottoes, and thinks they are all imitative, even when they are best. It is +too easy, however, to dispose of a piece of literary work in this manner, +and such criticism is very apt to have little meaning in it. George Eliot +has proven herself far too original, both in prose and poetry, to make such +a criticism of much value. Even if the charge of imitation is a valid one, +it is far more probable that it was conscious and purposed, than that +George Eliot's poetic gifts could only be exercised when impelled by the +genius of some other. To give the impression of quotation may have been a +part of George Eliot's purpose in writing these mottoes, which are original +enough, and thoughtful enough, to have been attributed to any of the great +poets. The real defects of her poetry lie in quite another direction than +that of a lack of originality. She has enough to say that is fresh and +interesting, she has no need to consult others for what she is to utter; +but she has not the fervor of expression, the impressive touch, which +separates poetry from prose. There is intellectual power enough, thought +even in excess, but she does not soar and sing. She walks steadily, +majestically along on the ground, she has no wings for the clear ether. +Indeed, she is too much a realist to breathe in that upper air of pure +song; it is too fine and delicate for one who loves the solid facts of +earth so well as she. + +If George Eliot often wrote prose which is almost poetry, she also wrote +poetry which is almost prose. The concentrated, image-bearing phrases of +poetry are wanting oftentimes in her verse. There is meter but no other +quality of poetry, and not a few passages could be printed as prose with +scarce a suspicion to the reader that they were intended for poetry. Mr. +Buxton Forman has given a passage from _The Spanish Gypsy_ in this way, +adding only six insignificant words, and restoring _i_ to _is_ in two +instances. He rightly says that the passage printed in prose "would surely +be read by any one who saw it for the first time, without any suspicion +that it merely required the excision of six little words and two letters to +transform it to verse; no single expression betraying the secret that the +passage is from a poem." + + _Do_ you hear the trumpet! There _is_ old Eamon's + blast. No bray but his can shake the air so well. He takes his + trumpeting as solemnly as _an_ angel charged to wake the + dead; thinks war was made for trumpeters, and _that_ their + great art _was_ made solely for themselves who understand + it. His features have all shaped themselves to blowing, and when + his trumpet _is either_ bagged or left at home he seems + _like_ a chattel in a broker's booth, a spoutless + watering-can, a promise to pay no sum particular! + +George Eliot had not full command of poetic expression. This frequently +appears, not only in the fact that many lines are simply prose in thought, +but in the defects of the poetic form. Some lines are too short and others +too long, some having four and some six feet. An instance of the former is +to be found in these words between Don Silva and the Prior, forming one +line: + + Strong reasons, father. + Ay, but good? + +Of the latter: + + And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion. + +Still more suggestive are the expedients she resorts to in order to +complete the line. Lopez is made to say,-- + + Santiago! Juan, thou art hard to please. + I speak not for my own delighting, I. + I can be silent, I. + +Very near this, Lopez is spoken of in this line: + + That was not what he drew his sword at--he! + +Such defects as these are not, certainly, of vital importance, and may +doubtless be found in even the greatest poets; but they are noticeable here +because of one texture with that which limits the quality of her poetic +art. The principal criticism to be made on her poetry is that it was +composed and did not create itself out of a full poetic mind. It was +wrought out, was the result of study and composition, is wanting in +spontaneity and enthusiasm. The most serious defect of her poetry is also +the most marked defect of her prose, and this is a want of the ideal +element. She was a realist by nature, and could not free herself from the +tendency to look at the world on its surface only. + +In her poetry George Eliot is much more a _doctrinaire_ than in her novels. +All her poems, except a few of the shorter ones, are devoted to the +inculcation of some moral or philosophic teaching. The very effort she was +obliged to make to give herself utterance in poetry predisposed her to +intellectual subjects and those of a controversial nature. For this reason +her verse has a special interest for those who are attracted to her +teachings. Her pen was freer, more creative, in her great novels than in +her poems. In fact, her novels, especially _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on the +Floss_, are much more poetical than much she did in verse. In her verse she +tried to present the more spiritual side of life, to make living and +effective her own conceptions of the unseen and eternal. Yet she was +burdened constantly in this effort by the fact that she had a new theory of +the spiritual and ideal side of life to interpret. The poets who win the +homage of mankind, and conquer all hearts to themselves, take the accepted +interpretations of the great spiritual problems of life as the basis of +their work and give those a larger, loftier meaning through their poetic +and ideal insight and capacity of interpretation. They shun theories which +must be expounded and interpretations for which no one is prepared. It is +here George Eliot is seriously at fault as a poet, however much she may be +commended as a teacher and reformer. Perhaps the truest piece of poetic +work she did was _Agatha_, in which, however, there is a greater reliance +than in most of her poems, on the accepted interpretations of spiritual +beliefs. In portraying the trust, childlike and simple, of an old woman, +and in endeavoring to realize the poetic elements of that trust and +simplicity, she was very effective. In such work as this she would have +been much more successful, from the strictly poetic point of view, than she +has been, if she had not attempted to give her theories a clothing in +verse. In her "Brother and Sister" she was also very successful, but +especially so in the "Two Lovers." There is an exquisite charm and power in +some of these minor poems. Where the heart was free, and the intellect was +not dominant and insistent on the importance of its theories, there was +secured a genuine poetic beauty. There is true poetry in these lines: + + Two lovers by a moss-grown spring: + They lean soft cheeks together there, + Mingled the dark and sunny hair, + And heard the wooing thrushes sing. + Oh budding time! + Oh love's blest prime! + + Two wedded from the portal stept: + The bells made happy carrollings, + The air was soft as passing wings, + White petals on the pathway slept. + Oh pure-eyed bride! + Oh tender pride! + +There is a beauty and majesty in the poem on subjective immortality which +is likely to make it, as it has already become, the one popular poem among +all she wrote. There is a stimulus, enthusiasm and abandon about it which +is attained but seldom in her other verses. The love of humanity, its +passionate longing to sacrifice self for the good of all, is acceptable to +much of the thought and purpose of the present time; and its spirit of +sacrifice is one which may commend it to all earnest souls. In the more +extended poems there is genuine accomplishment just in proportion as the +leading purpose was artistic rather than philosophic or moral. + +Difficult as it was for a successful novelist to secure applause as a poet, +George Eliot overcame the distrust of her admirers and gained also a not +unmerited place as a poet. Her verse has been a real addition to her work, +and is likely to command an increasing interest in the future. That it is +not always successful from the merely artistic point of view, that it is +not to be placed by the side of the best poetry of the time, is no reason +why it will not appeal to many minds and enlist its own company of +admirers. Next after the universal poets are those who appeal to a select +circle and charm a particular class of minds. Among these George Eliot will +stand as one of the foremost and one of those most worthy of homage. As the +poet of positivism, she will long delight those in sympathy with her +teachings. It would be extravagant praise to call her a second Lucretius, +and yet that which has given the Roman author his place among poets will +also give George Eliot rank in the same company. With all his merits as a +poet, it has not been his poetic power, or his love of nature, or his worth +as an interpreter of human nature, which has given Lucretius his reputation +as a poet. With real poetic power,--for he would have been a much smaller +man without this,--he combined a philosophic mind and a daring genius for +speculation. The poetry gave charm and ideal grandeur to the speculations, +and the philosophy made the poetry full of meaning and earnest intellectual +purpose. He read life and nature with a keener eye and a more profound +penetration than others of his time; he tried to grasp the secret of the +universe, and because of it he left behind the touch of a strong mind. In +some such way as this, George Eliot's poetry is likely to be read in the +future. As poetry merely, it cannot take high rank; but for the sake of its +philosophy, which is conceived as a poet would conceive it, there is +promise that its future is to be one that is lasting. Even for poetry there +must be thought, and the larger, profounder it is the better for the +poetry, if it is imaginatively conceived and expressed. It is not thought, +or even philosophy, which annuls poetry, but want of ideal and creative +insight. To Goethe, Wordsworth or Browning there was a gain by enlargement +of intellectual materials, but these were suffused in true poetic fire, and +came forth a new creation. In so far as George Eliot has attained this +result is she a poet, and is she sure of the future suffrages of those who +accept her philosophy. At the least, her admirers must rejoice at the +enlarged range of expression she secured by the use of the poetic form. + + + + +IX. + + +PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE. + +George Eliot was pre-eminently a novelist and a poet; but she is also the +truest literary representative the nineteenth century has yet afforded of +its positivist and scientific tendencies. What Comte and Spencer have +taught in the name of philosophy, Tyndall and Haeckel in the name of +science, she has applied to life and its problems. Their aims, spirit and +tendencies have found in her a living embodiment, and re-appear in her +pages as forms of genius, as artistic creations. They have experimented, +speculated, elaborated theories of the universe, drawn out systems of +philosophy; but she has reconstructed the social life of man through her +creative insight. What they mean, whither they lead, is not to be +discovered nearly so plainly in their books as in hers. She is their +interpreter through that wonderful insight, genius and creative power which +enabled her to see what they could not themselves discover,--the effect of +their teachings on man as an individual and as a social being. + +Whoever would know what the agnostic and evolution philosophy of the time +has to teach about man, his social life, his moral responsibilities, his +religious aspirations, should go to the pages of George Eliot in preference +to those of any other. The scientific spirit, the evolution philosophy, +live in her pages, reveal themselves there in all their strength and in all +their weakness. She was a thinker equal to any of those whose names stand +forth as the representatives of the philosophy she accepted, she was as +competent, as they to think out the problems of life and to interpret +social existence in accordance with their theories of man and nature. +Competent to grasp and to interpret the positive philosophy in all its +details and in all its applications, she also had that artistic spirit of +reconstruction which enabled her to apply to life what she held in theory. +Along with the calm philosophic spirit which thinks out "the painful riddle +of the earth," she had the creative spirit of the artist which delights in +portraying life in all its endeavors, complexities and consequences. She +not only accepted the theory of hereditary transmission as science has +recently developed it, and as it has been enlarged by positivism into a +shaping influence of the past upon the present, but she made this law vital +with meaning as she developed its consequences in the lives of her +characters. To her it was not merely a theory, but a principle so pregnant +with meaning as to have its applications in every phase of human +experience. Life could not be explained without it; the thoughts, deeds and +aspirations of men could be understood only with reference to it; much that +enters into human life of weal and woe is to be comprehended only with +reference to this law. In regard to all the other evolution problems and +principles her knowledge was as great, her insight as clear, and her +constructive use of them as original. + +A new theory of life and the universe may be intellectually accepted as +soon as its teachings are comprehended; but the absorption of that theory +into the moral tissues, so that it becomes an active and constant impulse +and motive in feeling and conduct, is a long and difficult process. It +takes generations before it can associate itself with the instinctive +impulses of the mind. It is one thing to accept the theory of universal law +as an intellectual explanation of the sequences of phenomena, but it is +quite another to be guided by that theory in all the most spontaneous +movements of feeling, conscience and thought. A few minds are able to make +such a theory at once their own by virtue of genius of a very instinctive +and subtle order; but for the great majority of mankind this result can +only be reached after generations of instruction. The use made of such +theories by the poets and novelists is a sure test of their popular +acceptance. When the poets accept such a theory, and naturally express +themselves in accordance with its spirit, the people may soon feel and +think according to its meaning. + +The theory of evolution will not easily adjust the human mind to its +conclusions and methods. It is therefore very remarkable that George Eliot, +the contemporary of Comte, Spencer, Darwin, Lewes and Tyndall, should be +able to give a true literary expression to their speculations. She has not +only been able to follow these men, to accept their theories and to +understand them in all their implications and tendencies, but she has so +absorbed these theories into her mind, and so made them a part of all its +processes, that she has painted life thoroughly in accordance with their +spirit. Should the teachings of the evolutionists of to-day be finally +accepted, and after a few generations become the universally received +explanations of life and the universe, it is not likely any poet or +novelist will more genuinely and entirely express their spirit than George +Eliot has done. The evolutionary spirit and ways of looking at life became +instinctive to her; she saw life and read its deepest experiences wholly in +the light shed by this philosophy. For this reason her writings are of +great value to those who would understand the evolution philosophy in its +higher phases. + +George Eliot accepted the intellectual conclusions of evolution, and the +outline thus afforded she filled in with feeling and poetry. She +interpreted the pathos, the tragedy, the aspirations of life in the light +of this philosophy. Accepting with a bold and undismayed intellect the +implications and consequences of evolution, rejecting or abating no least +portion of it, she found in it a place for art, poetry and religion; and +she tried to show how it touches and moulds and uplifts man. She shrank +from nothing which would enable her to reveal how man is to live in such a +universe as she believed in; she saw all its hardness, cruelty, anguish and +mystery, and resolutely endeavored to show how these enter into and help to +form his destiny. In doing this she followed the lead of the positivists in +the acceptance of feeling as the basis and the true expression of man's +inner life. The emotional life is made the essential life; and all its +phases of manifestation in art, poetry and religion are regarded as of +great importance. George Eliot viewed the higher problems of life from this +point of view, giving to the forms in which the emotional side of man's +nature is expressed a supreme importance. Religion, as the response of +feeling to the mystery of existence, occupied a most important place in her +philosophy. That her interpretation of the emotional elements of life is +the true one, that she has discovered their source or their real ideal +significance, may well be doubted; but there is every reason for believing +that she realized their great value, and she certainly tried in an earnest +spirit to make them helpful in the life of ideal beauty and truthfulness. + +All that agnostic science and the evolution philosophy had to teach, George +Eliot accepted, its doctrine of descent, its new psychology, and its +theories of society and human destiny. Its doctrine of experience, its +ethical theories, were equally hers. Yet into her interpretation of +existence went a woman's heart, the widest and tenderest sympathy, and a +quick yearning purpose to do what good she could in the world. She saw with +the lover's eyes, motherhood revealed itself in her soul, the child's trust +was in her heart. The new philosophy she applied to life, revealed its +relations to duty, love, sorrow, trial and death. To her it had a deep +social meaning, a vital connection with the heart, its hopes and its +burdens, and for her it touched the spiritual content of life with reality. +It was in this way she became the truest interpreter of the evolution +philosophy, the best apostle of the ethics taught by agnostic science. She +not only speculated, she also felt and lived. Philosophy was to her more +than an abstract theory of the universe; into it entered a tender sympathy +for all human weakness, a profound sense of the mystery of existence, and a +holy purpose to make life pure and true to all she could reach. This larger +comprehension gives a new significance to her interpretation of evolution. +It makes it impossible that this philosophy should be fully understood +without a study of her books. + +It is because George Eliot was not a mere speculative thinker that her +teachings become so important. The true novelist, who is gifted with +genius, who creates character and situation with a master's hand, must have +some theory of life. He must have some notion of what life means, what the +significance of the pathos and tragedy of human experience, and why it is +that good and evil in conduct do not produce the same results. Such a +theory of life, if firmly grasped and worked out strongly, becomes a +philosophy. Much depends with the novelist on that philosophy, what it +places foremost, what it sees destiny to mean. It will affect his insight, +give shape to his plots, decide his characters, guide his ethical +interpretations, fix his spiritual apprehension. It was because George +Eliot adopted a new and remarkable philosophy, one that teaches much which +the instincts of the race have rejected, and repudiates much which the race +has accepted as necessary to its welfare, that her teachings become so +noteworthy. Genius first of all she had, and the artist's creative power; +but the way she used these, and the limitations she put upon them by her +philosophy, give her books an interest which not even her wonderful genius +could alone produce. That philosophy is in debate; and it is not yet +decided whether it is mainly false because growing out of wrong methods, +or if it be in reality a true explanation of existence. Its revolutionary +character, its negative spirit, its relations to ethics and religion, +make it remarkable, and even startling. Profound thinkers, men of +commanding philosophic apprehension and power of generalization, have +accepted it; physical science has largely lent its aid to the support of +its conclusions. Yet on its side genius, imagination, creative instinct, +artistic apprehension, have not given their aid. Without them it is +defective, and cannot command the ideal sentiments and hopes of the race. +First to fill this gap came George Eliot, and she yet remains its only +great literary ally and coadjutor. Tyndall, Haeckel and DuBois Raymond can +give us science; but this is not enough. Comte, Mill and Spencer can give +us philosophy; but that is inadequate. They have also essayed, one and all, +to say some true word about morals, religion and the social ideals; but +they have one and all failed. They are too speculative, too far away from +the vital movements of life, know too little of human experience as it +throbs out of the heart and sentiments. They can explain their theories +in terms of science, ethics and philosophy; but George Eliot explains them +in terms of life. They have speculated, she has felt; they have made +philosophies, she has created ideal characters and given us poetry; they +have studied nature, she has studied experience and life; they have tried +to resolve the mind into its constituent elements; she has entered into the +heart and read its secrets; they have looked on to see what history meant, +she has lived all heart tragedies and known all spiritual aspirations. + +George Eliot was not a mere disciple of any of the great teachers of +evolution. Though of their school, and largely in accord and sympathy with +them, yet she often departed from the way they went, and took a position +quite in opposition to theirs. Her standpoint in philosophy was arrived at +quite independently of their influence, and in many of its main features +her philosophy was developed before she had any acquaintance either with +them or their books. She wrote concerning John Stuart Mill, [Footnote: +Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' "Last words from George Eliot," is Harper Magazine +for March 1882. The names of Mill and Spencer are not given in this +article, but the words from her letters so plainly refer to them that they +have been quoted here as illustrating her relations to these men.]-- + + I never had any personal acquaintance with him, never saw him to my + knowledge except in the House of Commons; and though I have studied his + books, especially his _Logic_ and _Political Economy_ with much + benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked epoch + in my life. + +Concerning another leading positivist she has said,-- + + Of [Herbert Spencer's] friendship I have had the honor and advantage + for twenty years, but I believe that every main bias of my mind had + been taken before I knew him. Like the rest of his readers, I am, of + course, indebted to him for much enlargement and clarifying of thought. + +Not long previous to her death, in reading Bridges' version of _The General +View of Positivism_, she expressed her dissent more often than her assent, +and once she said,-- + + I cannot submit my intellect or my soul to the guidance of Comte. + +George Eliot did not take up her residence in London until her +thirty-second year, and previous to that time her acquaintance with the +positivist leaders must have been slight. Before that age the opinions of +most persons are formed, and such was the case with George Eliot. It is +likely her opinions underwent many changes after this date, but only in the +direction of those already established and in modification of the +philosophy already accepted. She became an evolutionist without the aid of +those men who are supposed to be the originators of this theory. Every new +idea or new way of interpreting nature and life grows into form gradually, +and under the influence of many different minds. The evolution philosophy +was long accepted before it became a doctrine or was formulated into a +philosophy. The same influences worked in many quarters to produce the same +conclusions. It was given to George Eliot to come under a set of influences +which led her to accept all the leading ideas of evolution before she had +any opportunity to know that philosophy as it has been elaborated by the +men whose names are most often connected with it. A brief account of the +successive philosophic influences which most directly and personally +touched her mind will largely help towards the comprehension of her +teachings. + +The most intimate friend of her youth, who gave her a home when trouble +came with her family, and stimulated her mind to active inquiry after +truth, was a philosopher of no mean ability. Charles Bray not only was the +first philosopher she knew, but her opinions of after years were mainly in +the direction he marked out for her. In his _Philosophy of Necessity_, +published in 1841, he maintained that the only reality is the _Great +Unknown_ which we name God, that all natural laws are actions of the first +cause. He taught that the world is created in our own minds, the result of +some unknown cause without us, which we call matter; but it is thus God +mirrors himself to us. "All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we +call laws of nature are but attributes of Deity." Matter is known to us +only as the cause of sensations, while the soul is the principle of +sensation, dependent upon the nervous system; the nervous system depending +upon life, and life upon organization. All knowledge comes to man through +the action of the external world upon the senses; all truth, all progress, +come to us out of experience. "Reason is dependent for its exercise upon +experience, and experience is nothing more than the knowledge of the +invariable order of nature, of the relations of cause and effect." All acts +of men are ruled by necessity. Pain produces our ideas of right and wrong, +and happiness is the test of all moral action. There are no such things +as sin and evil, only pains and pleasures. Evil is the natural and +necessary limitation of our faculties, and our consequent liability to +error; and pain, which we call evil, is its corrective. Nothing, under the +circumstances, could have happened but that which did happen; and the +actions of men, under precisely the same circumstances, must always issue +in precisely the same results. Death, treated of in a separate chapter, is +shown to be good, and a necessary aid to progress. Society is regarded as +an organism, and man is to find his highest life in the life of others. +"The great body of humanity (considered as an individual), with its soul, +the principle of sensation, is ever fresh and vigorous and increasing in +enjoyment. Death and birth, the means of renewal and succession, bear +the same relation to this body of society as the system of waste and +reproduction do to the human body; the old and useless and decayed material +is carried out, and fresh substituted, and thus the frame is renovated +and rendered capable of ever-increasing happiness.... The minds, that is +to say, the ideas and feelings of which they were composed, of Socrates, +Plato, Epicurus, Galileo, Bacon, Locke, Newton, are thus forever in +existence, and the immortality of the soul is preserved, not in +individuals, but in the great body of humanity.... To the race, though +not to individuals, all beautiful things are preserved forever; all that +is really good and profitable is immortal." + +Nearly every idea here presented was accepted by George Eliot and +re-appears in her writings. In Bray's later books much also is to be found +which she embraced. He therein says that all outside of us is a delusion of +the senses. [Footnote: This summary of Bray's philosophy is condensed from +an article in the Westminster Review for April, 1879.] The senses conspire +with the intellect to impose upon us. The constitution of our faculties +forces us to believe in an external world, but it has no more reality than +our dreams. Each creature is the creator of its own separate, different +world. The unity of outward things is imposed on them by the faculty of +individuality, and is a mere fiction of the mind. Matter is a creature of +the imagination, and is a pure assumption. It is the centre of force, as +immaterial as spirit, as ethereal and unsubstantial. As centres of force +imply locality, and locality space, so space must have an extension of its +own. Not so; it is a pure creation of the mind. The same holds true of +time. The world of mind, the moral world as well, are our own creations. +Man has no power over himself; nothing could have been otherwise than as +it is. Repentance and remorse are foolish regrets over what could not have +been otherwise. All actions and motives are indifferent; only in their +consequences can any distinction be observed between them. Such as minister +to man's pleasure he calls good; such as produce pain he calls evil. + Thereis no good but pleasure, and no evil but pain. Hence there is no +distinction between moral and physical evil. Morality is the chemistry of +the mind, its attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes. God is an +illusion, as are all moral conclusions based on his existence, Nor has +man any reality; he is the greatest illusion and delusion of all. The +faculty of individuality gives us all our ideas and feelings, and creates +for us what we call our minds. A mind is an aggregate of a stream of +consciousness. Ideas, feelings, states of consciousness, do not inhere in +anything; each is a distinct entity. "Thinking is," is what we should say, +not "I think." Here we are at the ground fact of what constitutes being, on +solid footing; consciousness cannot deceive us. Thinking is, even if mind +and matter, self and not-self, are illusory. It is, even if we deny both +the external and internal causes of consciousness. We know our own +consciousness, that alone. All is inference beside. When we consider what +inferences are most probable, we are led to build up a constructive +philosophy. Consciousness says we have a body, body a brain, and pressure +on the brain stops consciousness; hence a close connection between the +brain and consciousness. The two go together, and in the brain we must lay +the foundation of our philosophy. The mental faculties create the world of +individual consciousness, it the outside world. We know only what is +revealed in consciousness. Matter and mind are one. Life and mind are +correlates of physical force; they are the forms assumed by physical force +when subjected to organic conditions. Yet there is no such thing as mere +physical force. Every atom of matter acts intelligently; it has so acted +always. The conscious intelligence of the universe has subsided into +natural law, and acts automatically. This universal agent of life in all +things is God. All consciousness and physical force are but "the varied +God." There is in reality no agent but mind, conscious or unconscious. God +is nature; matter is mind solidified. Matter is force as revealed by the +senses. It is the body, force is the soul. In nature, as in man, body and +soul are one and indivisible. Mind builds up organisms. There is a living +will, conscious or unconscious, in all things. The One and All requires the +resignation of the individual and personal, of all that is selfish, to the +Infinite whole. + +The basis of Bray's philosophy was idealism and pantheism, assuming form +under the influence of modern science. He quoted Emerson frequently, and +the school of thought Emerson represents affected him greatly. On the other +hand, he was then a strong phrenologist, had imbibed much of the teaching +of Combe's _Constitution of Man_, and he eagerly embraced those notions of +the relations of body and mind which have been propagated in the name of +physical science. + +The same double influence is to be seen at work upon the next thinker who +was destined to give direction to George Eliot's philosophy. Feuerbach was +a disciple of Hegel, whose influence is deeply marked through all his +earlier writings. He also was affected by physical science, and he found in +sensationalism an element for his system. To him all thought is the product +of experience; he founded his ideas on materials which can be appropriated +only through the activity of the senses. The external world affects the +senses and generates feeling, feeling produces ideas. Feeling re-acts upon +the external world, interprets it according to its own wants. Feeling is +thus the source of all knowledge; feeling is the basis alike of religion +and philosophy. Feuerbach, as well as Bray, finds that man creates the +outward world in consciousness; all that is out of man which he can know, +is but a reflection of what is in him. This conception of consciousness, +this pure idealism, becomes the source of Feuerbach's philosophy of +religion. He says that religion is based on the differences between man and +the brute; man has consciousness, which is only present in a being to whom +his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought. Man thinks, +converses with himself, is at once I and Thou, can put himself in the place +of another. Religion is identical with self-consciousness, and expresses +man's sense of the infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about +himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to +bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. +Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that +all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of +that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of +God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man +lives mainly in feeling, finds there the sources of all his mental and +moral life, he comes to regard feeling as the divinest part of his nature, +the noblest and most excellent; so it becomes to him the organ of the +divine. When man thinks what is infinite he in reality does nothing more +than to perceive and affirm that to him feeling has an infinite power. +If you feel the infinite, you feel and affirm the infinitude of the power +of feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect objective to itself; +the object of feeling is feeling objective to itself. God is pure, +unlimited, free feeling. In religion, consciousness of the object and +self-consciousness coincide. The object of any subject is nothing else than +the subject's own nature taken objectively. God is like our thoughts and +dispositions; consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God +is self-knowledge. Religion is the unveiling of a man's hidden treasures, +the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love +secrets. It is to the understanding Feuerbach attributes man's capacity for +objectifying himself or of attributing to the outward world those qualities +which really exist only within. Man's consciousness of God is nothing else +than his consciousness of his species. "Man has his highest being, his God, +in himself; not in himself as an individual, but in his essential nature, +his species. No individual is an adequate representative of his species, +but only the human individual is conscious of the distinction between the +species and the individual. In the sense of this distinction lies the root +of religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is nothing +else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, the yearning to +be free from himself, _i.e._, from the limits and defects of his +individuality. Individuality is the self-conditioning, the self-limitation +of the species. Thus man has cognizance of nothing above himself, of +nothing beyond the nature of humanity; but to the individual man this +nature presents itself under the form of an individual man. All feelings +which man experiences towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral +feelings which man has towards man, are of a religious nature. Man feels +nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man." The dogmas of +Christianity are interpreted by Feuerbach from this standpoint of +conceiving religion as a projection of feeling upon the outward world. So +he explains the incarnation as man's love for man, man's yearning to help +his fellows, the renunciation and suffering man undergoes for man. The +passion of Christ represents freely accepted suffering for others in love +of them. The trinity typifies the participated, social life of the species; +it shows the father, mother and son as the symbols of the race. The _logos_ +or son is the nature of the imagination made objective, the satisfaction of +the need for mental images, the reflected splendor of the imagination. +Faith in providence is faith in one's own worth; it indicates the divine +reality and significance of our own being. Prayer is an expression of the +power of feeling, a dialogue of man with his own heart. Faith is confidence +in the reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or laws +of nature and reason. Its specific object is miracle; faith and miracle are +absolutely inseparable. That which is objectively miracle is subjectively +faith. Faith is the miracle of feeling; it is nothing else than belief in +the absolute reality of subjectivity. The power of miracle is the power of +the imagination, for imagination corresponds to personal feeling; it sets +aside all limits, all laws painful to the feelings, and thus makes +objective to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction of his +subjective wishes. The belief in miracle accepts wishes as realities. In +fact, the fundamental dogmas of Christianity are simply realized wishes of +the heart. This is true, because the highest law of feeling is the +immediate unity of will and deed, of wishing and reality. To religion, what +is felt or wished is regarded as real. In the Redeemer this is realized, +wish becomes fact. All things are to be wrought, according to religion, by +belief. Thus the future life is a life where feeling realizes every desire. +Its whole import is that of the abolition of the discordance which exists +between wish and reality. It is the realization of a state which +corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison with himself. The +other world is nothing more than the reality of a known idea, the +satisfaction of a conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish. "The sum of +the future life is happiness, the everlasting bliss of personality, which +is here limited and circumscribed by nature. Faith in the future life is +therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the limits of nature; +it is faith in the eternity and infinitude of personality, and not of +personality viewed in relation to the idea of the species, in which it +forever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of personality as belonging +to already existing individuals; consequently, it is the faith of man in +himself. But faith in the kingdom of heaven is one with faith in God; the +context of both ideas is the same; God is pure absolute subjectivity +released from all natural limits; he is what individuals ought to be and +will be; faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and +truth of his own nature; the Divine Being is the subjective human being in +his absolute freedom and unlimitedness." + +It is not probable that George Eliot confined her philosophic studies to +the writings of Charles Bray and Feuerbach, but it is quite certain that in +their books which she did faithfully study, are to be found some of the +leading principles of her philosophy. What gives greater confirmation to +the supposition that her philosophy was largely shaped under their +influence is the fact that her intimate friend, Sara Hennell, drew from the +same sources for the presentation of theories quite identical with hers. +Sara Hennell's _Thoughts in Aid of Faith_, published in 1860, is an attempt +to show that the religious sentiments may be retained when the doctrines of +theology are intellectually rejected, that a disposition of the heart akin +to Paul's may be present though conviction be extinct. In securing this +result, she too takes Feuerbach as her guide, and his teachings she claims +are fully corroborated by the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Religion she +regards as the result of the tendency of man's mind towards philosophy, the +outgrowth of the activity of his mental faculties seeking satisfaction for +themselves in explaining the world given for his contemplation and study. +"The growth of religion in the human intelligence (thereby distinguished +from mere blind emotion), is coincident with, or rather immediately +consequent upon, the power of forming abstract ideas; that is to say, it is +a generalization effected by the operation of the intellect upon the +sentiments and emotions, when these have attained to so great extent and +distinctness as to become self-conscious." Man early objectifies the +qualities he finds in himself and his fellows, regards them as entities, is +prostrated in awe and worship before them, conceives them to be gods. He +attributes to outward objects his subjective states, and regards them as +like himself, only infinitely more powerful. His emotions he believes are +caused by these objective beings, and he thinks he is inspired, that the +gods are at work within him. Feeling becomes the voice of God, the +revelator of religions and theologies. Christianity Miss Hennell regards as +"the form in which the religious affections, struggling against earthly +limitations, have created for themselves the satisfaction they demand, and, +therefore, in so far, real, just as the affections are real." Feeling, she +says, is real as logic, and must equally have its real foundation. That is, +feeling gives us the truth, actually answers to the realities of things as +man can know them. She is here an ontologist, and she is convinced that +feeling is a direct witness of the deeper knowledge and reality which man +seeks in religion. The permanency and validity of religion she believes in, +and she testifies to its wholesome and ennobling effect upon the race. +"Christianity, having formed an actual portion of the composition both of +our own individual experience and of the world's history, can no more be +annihilated out of them than the sum of what we learned during a certain +number of years of our childhood, from the one, or the effects of any +notable occurrence, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, or the Norman +invasion, from the other;--Christianity on every view, whether of its truth +or falsity, and consequently of its good or bad effect, has undoubtedly +contributed to make us what we are; without it we should have grown into +something incalculably different from our present selves.... And how can it +be otherwise than real to us, this belief that has nourished the souls +of us all, and seems to have moulded actually anew their internal +constitution, as well as stored them up with its infinite variety of +external interests and associations? What other than a very real thing has +it been in the life of the world, sprang out of, and again causing to +spring forth, such volumes of human emotion? making a current, as it were, +of feeling, that has drawn within its own sphere all the moral vitality of +so many ages. In all this reality of influence there is indeed the +testimony of Christianity having truly formed an integral portion of the +organic life of humanity." + +Though Miss Hennell is so earnest a believer in Christianity, yet she +totally rejects the idea of any objective reality corresponding to its +dogmas. This conclusion is based on the philosophic notion, which she +shares with Bray, Feuerbach, George Eliot, Spencer and Lewes, that man has +no real knowledge whatever except that which is given in consciousness. +This philosophy, shared in common by these persons, is called by Lewes +"reasoned realism," and by Spencer "transfigured realism." It accepts the +reality of an outward world, but says that all man knows of it is, that it +produces impressions on his senses which are transmuted into sensations. +Sensations produce feelings, and feelings become ideas. According to +Spencer, the steps of knowledge are three: the co-ordinating of sensations +in a living organism; the registering of impressions within the organism in +such a way as to build up a store of experiences; the transmission of the +organism and its susceptibilities to offspring. Miss Hennell accepts +Spencer's theory that feeling is the source of all our knowledge. Not only, +as she says, does it "constitute the essential and main vitality of our +nature," but when it is stored up in the human organism and inherited, it +becomes the vital source out of which all moral and religious truth is +built up. Experience, transformed into inherited feeling, takes on the form +of those intuitions which "are the only reliable ground of solid belief." +"These sentiments which are born within us, slumbering as it were in our +nature, ready to be awakened into action immediately they are roused by +hint of corresponding circumstances, are drawn out of the whole of previous +human existence. They constitute our treasured inheritance out of all the +life that has been lived before us, to which no age, no human being who has +trod the earth and laid himself to rest with all his mortal burden upon her +maternal bosom, has failed to add his contribution. No generation has had +its engrossing conflict, surely battling out the triumphs of mind over +material force, and through forms of monstrous abortions concurrent with +its birth, too hideous for us now to bear in contemplation, moulding the +early intelligence by every struggle, and winning its gradual powers,--no +single soul has borne itself through its personal trial,--without +bequeathing to us of its fruit. There is not a religious thought that we +take to ourselves for secret comfort in our time of grief, that has not +been distilled out of the multiplicity of the hallowed tears of mankind; +not an animating idea is there for our fainting courage that has not +gathered its inspiration from the bravery of the myriad armies of the +world's heroes. All this best of humanity's hard earnings has been hoarded +with generous care by our _alma natura naturans_; so that at last, in our +rich ages, the _mens naturafa_ opens its gaze with awful wonder upon its +environment of spiritual possessions." + +The intimate sympathy of George Eliot and Miss Hennell indicates that they +followed much the same studies, and it is certain they arrived at very +similar conclusions. That the one was directly influenced or led by the +other there seem to be no reasons for believing. All that is probable is, +that there was a close affinity of thought and purpose between them, and +that they arrived at similar philosophical conclusions. The same is to be +said in regard to George Eliot's relations to George Henry Lewes. Her +theories of life, as has been already clearly indicated, were firmly fixed +before she knew him, and her philosophical opinions were formed. The +similarity of their speculative opinions doubtless had something to do with +bringing them together; and it is certain that the tenor of their thoughts, +their views about life, and their spiritual aspirations, were very much +alike, giving promise of a most thorough sympathy in all their intellectual +and moral pursuits. If she was influenced by him, he was quite as much +influenced by her. Lewes accepted the philosophical side of Comte's +Positive Philosophy, but the religious side of it he rejected and strongly +condemned. In his _History of Philosophy_, he says, "Antagonism to the +method and certain conclusions of the _Politique positive_ led me for many +years to regard that work as a deviation from the Positive Philosophy in +every way unfortunate. My attitude has changed now that I have learned +(from the remark of one very dear to me) to regard it as an Utopia, +presenting hypotheses rather than doctrines, suggestions for inquirers +rather than dogmas for adepts--hypotheses carrying more or less of truth, +and serviceable as a provisional mode of colligating facts, to be confirmed +or contradicted by experience." It is altogether probable, as in this case, +that George Eliot gave Lewes the suggestive aid of her acute mind. If she +was aided by him, it was only as one strong mind aids another, by collision +and suggestion rather than by direct teaching. + +Lewes may have had the effect to deepen and establish firmly the +conclusions already reached by George Eliot, and a consideration of his +philosophy must confirm this conjecture. He, too, makes feeling the basis +of all knowing. From this point, however, he diverges widely from Herbert +Spencer and the other English empiricists. Spencer regards matter and mind +as two phases of an underlying substance, which he presents as the unknown +and unknowable. Lewes at once denies the duality implied in the words +matter and mind, motion and feeling, and declares these are one and the +same thing, objectively or subjectively presented. Feeling is motion, and +motion is feeling; mind is the spiritual aspect of the material organism, +and matter is the objective aspect of feeling. Feeling is not the cause of +motion, as idealism would suggest; and motion does not cause or turn into +feeling, as materialism teaches. The two are absolutely identical; there is +no dualism or antithesis. In the same way, cause and effect are but two +aspects of one phenomenon; there is no separation between them, but one and +the same thing before and after. He applies this idea to the conception of +natural law, and declares it to be only the persistence of phenomena; that +is, the persistence of feeling. He denies that there is any absolute behind +phenomena; the absolute is in the phenomena, which is the only reality. The +phenomenal universe is simply a group of relations, nothing more; and what +seems to be, really exists, because the relations are real. + +It is not necessary here to enter into a full presentation of Lewes's +philosophy, but his theories about the functions of feeling are of +importance, in view of George Eliot's acceptance of them. They have been +summarized into the statement that "all truths are alike feelings, ideally +distinguishable according to the aspects under which they are viewed. There +is no motion apart from feeling, for the motion _is_ the feeling; there is +no force apart from matter which compels it to moves for the force _is_ the +matter, as matter is motion--differently viewed; there is no essence or +substance which determines the properties, for the substance is the whole +group of properties; there are no causes outside of effects, no laws +outside the processes, no reality outside the phenomena, no absolute +outside the relative, which determine things to be as they are and not +otherwise, for all these are but different sides of one and the same +thing." The central thought presented by Lewes is, that "for us there is +nothing but feeling, whose subjective side is sensations, perceptions, +memories, reasonings, the ideal constructions of science and philosophy, +emotions, pleasures, pains; whose objective side is motion, matter, force, +cause, the absolute." The outcome of this theory is, it enables Lewes to +believe that the inner and outer practically agree, that our feelings give +a sufficiently correct picture of the universe. In reality, the two do not +agree, and even "science is in no respect a plain transcript of reality;" +but so intimate are feeling and the outer world, that the inward report is +to be regarded as practically a correct one. + +In many ways Lewes differed from his contemporaries, disagreeing again and +again with Spencer, Bain and Huxley. He often seems much nearer Schelling +than Haeckel. He differs from Schelling in his demand for verification and +the inductive method, and in claiming that all his conclusions are the +result of scientific experiments and deductions. He agrees with Schelling +in his rejection of mechanical processes and in his acceptance of a vital, +organic method in nature and in social development. He differs from many of +the other leaders of speculative science in his rejection of reflex action, +maintaining that the brain is not the only seat of sensation, and that all +cerebral processes are mental processes. With equal vigor he rejects the +theory of animal automatism, and the assertion that animal actions can be +completely expressed and accounted for in terms of nervous matter and +motion. The laws of the mind, he maintained, are not to be deduced from +physiological processes, but with them must be joined the psychical +processes of the individual and the social man. He separates man by an +impassable barrier from the lower animals, this gulf between them being due +to human society and to the social acquisition of language. In the social +factor he finds an important element of psychology, and one that must +always come in to overturn any mechanical theories of mental activity. + +It has been very truly said, that Lewes must be credited with the doctrine +of the dependence of the human mind on the social medium. Others had hit +upon this idea, and it had been very well developed by Spencer and Comte; +but Lewes gave it a wider and profounder interpretation than any other. One +of his critics says that Lewes "has the sort of claim to have originated +this theory that Bacon has to be considered the discoverer of the inductive +method." He not only held with Spencer and other evolutionists, that the +human mind is the product of experience in contact with the outer world, +that experience transmitted by heredity and built up into mental processes +and conclusions; but he maintained that the social medium is a much greater +and more important factor. The past makes the present; the social life +develops the individual. Our language, our thought, as individuals, are the +product of the collective life of the race. "We are to seek in the social +organism for all the main conditions of the higher functions, and in the +social medium of beliefs, opinions, institutions, &c., for the atmosphere +breathed by the intellect. Man is no longer to be considered simply as an +assemblage of organs, but also as an organ in a collective organism. From +the former he derives his sensations, judgments, primary impulses; from the +latter, his conceptions, theories and virtues. This is very clear when we +learn how the intellect draws both its inspiration and its instrument from +the social needs. All the materials of intellect are images and symbols, +all its processes are operations on images and symbols. Language--which is +wholly a social product for a social need--is the chief vehicle of +symbolical operation, and the only means by which abstraction is +affected.... Language is the creator and sustainer of that ideal world in +which the noblest part of human activity finds a theatre, the world of +thought and spiritual insight, of knowledge and duty, loftily elevated +above that of sense and appetite. Into this ideal world man absorbs the +universe as in a transfiguration. It is here that he shapes the programme +of his existence; and to that programme he makes the real world conform. +It is here he forms his highest rules of conduct. It is here he plants +his hopes and joys. It is here he finds his dignity and power. The ideal +world becomes to him the supreme reality." Lewes said that what a man +thinks "is the necessary product of his organism and external conditions." +The "organism itself is the product of its history; it is what it has +become; it is a part of the history of the race." Because man is a creature +of feeling he is susceptible to the influences of the outer world, and +from the influences and experiences thus received the foundations of his +mental life are laid. The structure erected on this foundation, however, is +the product of man's social environment. As a social being, he inherits +mental capacities, and all the instruments of mental, moral and social +development, as these have been produced in the past. The social structure +takes up and preserves the results of individual effort; and social +capacity enlarges mental and moral power quite beyond what mere inheritance +produces. + +Lewes assigned as high a value to introspection as to observation in +psychology, and said that whatever place is assigned to the one in +scientific method must be assigned to the other. He therefore accorded a +high value to imagination and intuition, and to all ideal constructions of +life and its meanings which are based on science. All knowledge grows out +of feeling, and must be expressible again in feeling, if it is to have any +value. Accordingly, man's life is of little value apart from sentiment, and +the emotional nature must always be satisfied. As Lewes begins his +philosophy in feeling, he holds that the final object of philosophy is to +develop feeling into a perfect expression, in accordance with the ideal +wants of man's nature. In other words, the final and supreme object of +philosophy is the expression of religion and the founding of a moral and +spiritual system of life. He believed that religion will continue to +regulate the evolution of humanity, and in "a religion founded on science +and expressing at each stage what is known of the world and of man." As +much as any zealous Christian believer he accepted man's need of spiritual +culture and religious development. At the same time, his philosophy +rejected a substantive absolute, or any other spiritual realities or +existences apart from the universe given in feeling and consciousness. +Accordingly, man must find his ideal satisfactions, his spiritual realities +and moral ideals, within the limits of the universe as known to philosophy, +and in the organic life of the race. + +George Eliot was also largely influenced by the teachings of Auguste Comte. +The place he assigned to positive knowledge and the inductive method, to +feeling, to development and the influence of the past upon the present, +were all accepted by her in an enthusiastic spirit. Altruism commanded her +hearty belief, and to its principles she devoted her life. Comte's +conceptions in regard to sentiment, and the vital importance of religion +and social organization, had her entire assent. She differed from him in +regard to spiritual and social organization, and she could not accept his +arbitrary and artificial methods. One of the leaders of positivism in +England [Footnote: Some Public Aspects of Positivism, the annual address +before the Postivist Society, London, January 1, 1881, by Professor E.G. +Beesley, of University College.] has given this account of her relations to +its organized movements and to its founder: + +"Her powerful intellect had accepted the teaching of Auguste Comte, and she +looked forward to the reorganization of belief on the lines which he had +laid down. Her study of his two great works was diligent and constant. The +last time I saw her--a few days before her death--I found that she had just +been reading over again, with closest attention, that wonderful treatise, +_The General View of Positivism_, a book which always seems full of fresh +wisdom, however often one comes back to it. She had her reservations, no +doubt. There were details in Comte's work which did not satisfy her. But +all who knew her were aware--and I speak from an acquaintance of eighteen +years--that she had not only cast away every shred of theology and +metaphysics, but that she had found refuge from mere negativism in the +system of Comte. She did not write her positivism in broad characters on +her books. Like Shakspere, she was first an artist and then a philosopher; +and I imagine she thought it to be her business as an artist rather to +paint humanity as it is than as she would have it to be. But she could not +conceal her intellectual conviction, and few competent persons read her +books without detecting her standpoint. If any doubt could have existed, it +was set at rest by that noble poem on 'Subjective Immortality,' the +clearest, and at the same time the most beautiful, expression that has yet +been given to one of the most distinctive doctrines of positivism; a +composition of which we can already say with certainty that it will enter +into the positivist liturgies of all countries and through all time. +Towards positivism as an organization, a discipline,--in short, as a +church,--her attitude must be plainly stated. She had much sympathy with +it, as she showed by regularly subscribing to positivist objects, as, for +instance, to the fund of the central organization in Paris presided over by +M. Laffitte. But she sought membership neither in that nor any other +church. Like most of the stronger and thoroughly emancipated minds in this +period of transition and revolutionary disturbance, she looked not beyond +her own conscience for guidance and authority, but judged for herself, +appealing to no external tribunal from the solitary judgment-seat within. I +do not for a moment suppose that she looked on the organization of a church +as unattainable; but she did not regard it as attained." + +Another of her friends [Footnote: W.M.W. Call in the Westminster Review +for July, 1881.] has indicated very clearly the nature and extent of her +dissent from Comte. He remarks that "her apologetic representation of the +_Politique_ as an _Utopia_ evinces that she did not admit the cogency of +its reasoning, or regard the entire social reconstruction of Comte as +demonstrably valid. Her dissatisfaction with some of his speculations, as +expressed to ourselves in the spring of 1880, was very decided.... All +membership with the positivist community she steadily rejected. That a +philosophy originally so catholic as that of Comte should assume a +sectarian character, was a contingency she foreboded and deprecated." In +this last remark we doubtless have the explanation of George Eliot's +dissent from Comte. She believed in an organic, vital development of a +higher social structure, which will be brought about in the gradual +evolution of humanity. Comte's social structure was artificial, the +conception of one mind, and therefore as ill adapted to represent the wants +of mankind as any other system devised by an individual thinker. His +philosophy proper, his system of positive; thought, she accepted with but +few reservations. Her views in this direction, as in many others, were +substantially those presented by Lewes in his many works bearing on +positivism. She was profoundly indebted to Comte, although in her later +years she largely passed beyond his influence to the acceptance of the new +evolution philosophy. In fact, she belonged to that school of English +positivists which has only accepted the positive philosophy of Comte, and +which has rejected his later work in the direction of social and religious +construction. Lewes was the earliest of English thinkers to look at Comte +in this way; but other representative members of the school are John Stuart +Mill, George Eliot, Frederic Harrison and John Morley. Zealously accepting +Comte's position that philosophy must limit itself to positive data and +methods, they look upon the "Religion of Humanity," with Prof. Tyndall, as +Catholicism minus Christianity, and reject it. + +She certainly came nearer to Comte in some directions than to Herbert +Spencer, for the latter has not so fully recognized those elements of the +mental and social life which most attracted her attention. Her theory of +duty is one which he does not accept. He insists in his _Data of Ethics_ +that duty will become less and less _obligatory_ and necessary in the +future, because all action will be in harmony with the impulses of the +inner man and with the conditions of the environment. This conclusion is +entirely opposed to the moral-theory of George Eliot, and is but one +instance of their wide divergence. He insists, in his _Study of Sociology_, +that the religious consciousness will not change its lines of evolution. He +distinctly rejects the conclusion arrived at by George Eliot, that there is +no Infinite Reality knowable to man, and that the substance and reality of +religion is purely subjective. "That the object-matter of religion," he +says, "can be replaced by another object-matter, as supposed by those who +think the 'religion of humanity' will be the religion of the future, is a +belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction. However dominant +may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never +exclude the sentiment alone properly called religious, awakened by that +which is behind humanity and behind all other things." George Eliot was +content with humanity, and believed that all religion arises out of the +subjective elements of human life. At the same time that she made religion +a development from feeling, she limited the moral law to emotional +sanctions. On the contrary, Spencer is much more a rationalist, and insists +on the intellectual basis both of morals and of religion. He makes less of +feeling than she; and in this fact is to be found a wide gulf of separation +between them. She could have been no more content with his philosophy than +she was indebted to it in the construction of her own. As much one as they +are in their philosophic basis and general methods, they are antagonistic +in their conceptions about man and in the place assigned to nature in the +development of religion. To George Eliot, religion is the development of +feeling. To Spencer, it is the result of our "_thought_ of a power of which +humanity is but a small and fugitive product." In these, as in other +directions, they were not in sympathy. Her realism, her psychologic method, +her philosophic theories, her scientific sympathies, she did not derive +from him, diligently as she may have studied his books. + +George Eliot agreed with Comte and all other positivists in setting aside +every inquiry into causes, and limiting philosophy to the search after +laws. The idea of causes is idealistic, and a cause of any kind whatever +is, according to these thinkers, not to be found. "The knowledge of laws," +says Comte, "is henceforth to take the place of the search after causes." +In other words, it is impossible for man to find out _why_ anything is, he +can only know _how_ it is. George Eliot entirely agreed with Comte as to +the universal dominion of law. She also followed him in his teachings about +heredity, which he held to be the cause of social unity, morality, and the +higher or subjective life. His conception of feeling as the highest +expression of human life confirmed the conclusions to which she had already +arrived from the study of Feuerbach. She was an enthusiastic believer in +the Great Being, Humanity; she worshipped at that shrine. More to her than +all other beliefs was her belief that we are to live for others. With Comte +she said, "Altruism alone can enable us to live in the highest and truest +sense." She would have all our doctrines about _rights_ eliminated from +morality and politics. They are as absurd, says Comte, as they are immoral. + +George Eliot had a strong tendency towards philosophical speculations. +While yet a student she expressed an ardent desire that she might live to +reconcile the philosophy of Locke with that of Kant. In positivism, as +developed and modified by Lewes, she found that reconciliation. She went +far towards accepting the boldest speculations of the agnostic science of +the time, but she modified it again and again to meet the needs of her own +broader mind and heart. Yet it is related of her that in parting with one +of the greatest English poets, probably Tennyson, when he said to her, +"Well, good-by, you and your molecules," she replied, "I am quite content +with my molecules." Her speculations led to the rejection of anything like +a positive belief in God, to an entire rejection of faith in a personal +immortality, and to a repudiation of all idealistic conceptions of +knowledge derived from supersensuous sources. Her theories are best +represented by the words environment, experience, heredity, development, +altruism, solidarité, subjective immortality. These speculations confront +the reader in nearly every chapter of her novels, and they gave existence +to all but a very few of her poems. + + + + +X. + + +DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS. + +Science was accepted by George Eliot as furnishing the method and the proof +for her philosophic and religious opinions. She was in hearty sympathy with +Spencer and Darwin in regard to most of their speculations, and the +doctrine of evolution was one which entirely approved itself to her mind. +All her theories were based fundamentally on the hypothesis of universal +law, which she probably interpreted with Lewes, in his _Foundations of a +Creed_, as the uniformities of Infinite Activity. Not only in the physical +world did she see law reigning, but also in every phase of the moral and +spiritual life of man. In reviewing Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_, she +used these suggestive words concerning the uniformity of sequences she +believed to be universal in the fullest sense: + + The supremely important fact that the gradual reduction of all + phenomena within the sphere of established law, which carries as a + consequence the rejection of the miraculous, and has its determining + current in the development of physical science, seems to have engaged + comparatively little of his attention; at least he gives it no + prominence. The great conception of uniform regular sequence, without + partiality and without caprice--the conception which is the most potent + force at work in the modification of our faith, and of the practical + form given to our sentiments--could only grow out of that patient + watching of external fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions, + which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical science. + [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, May, 1865.] + +The uniformities of nature have the effect upon man, through his nervous +organization, of developing a responsive feeling and action. He learns to +respond to that uniformity, to conform his actions to it. The habits thus +acquired are inherited by his children, and moral conduct is developed. +Heredity has as conspicuous a place in the novels of George Eliot as in the +scientific treatises of Charles Darwin. She has attempted to indicate the +moral and social influences of heredity, that it gives us the better part +of our life in all directions. Heredity is but one phase of the uniformity +of nature and the persistence of its forces. That uniformity never changes +for man; his life it entirely ignores. He is crushed by its forces; he is +given pain and sorrow through its unpitying disregard of his tender nature. +Not only the physical world, but the moral world also, is unfailing in the +development of the legitimate sequences of its forces. There is no +cessation of activity, no turning aside of consequences, no delay in the +transformation of causes into necessary effects. + +George Eliot never swerves from this conception of the universe, physical +and moral; everywhere cause is but another name for effect. The unbending +order adopts man into its processes, helps him when he conforms to them, +and gives him pain when he disregards them. The whole secret of man's +existence is to be found in the agreement of his life with the invariable +sequences of nature and moral activity; harmony with them brings true +development, discord brings pain and sorrow. The unbending nature of law, +and man's relations to it, she has portrayed in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," +when describing Tina's sorrows. + + While this poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy + for it, Nature was holding on her calm inexorable way, in unmoved and + terrible beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the + tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was + making brilliant day to busy nations oil the other side of the + expectant earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and + broadening onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships + were laboring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the + fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest, and + sleepless statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. + What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, + rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest + centre of quivering life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as + the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has + fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought food, and has found the + nest torn and empty. + +The effect of the uniformities of nature upon man, as George Eliot regarded +them, is not quite that which would be inferred from these words alone. +While she believed that nature is as unbending and pitiless as is here +indicated, yet that unbending uniformity, which never changes its direction +for man, is a large influence towards the development of his higher life. +It has the effect on man to develop feeling which is the expression of all +that is best and most human in his life. + +George Eliot believed that the better and nobler part of man's life is to +be found in feeling. It is the first expression which he makes as a +sentient being, to have emotions; and his emotions more truly represent him +than the purely intellectual processes of the mind. She would have us +believe that feeling is rather to be trusted than the intellect, that it is +both a safer and a surer guide. In _Middlemarch_ she says that "our good +depends on the quality and breadth of our emotions." Her conception of the +comparative worth of feeling and logic is expressed in _Romola_ with a +characteristic touch. + + After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence + of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong + agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great + world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in + the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and + hope. + +In _Daniel Deronda_, when considering the causes which prevent men from +desecrating their fathers' tombs for material gain, she says, "The only +check to be alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold +that sentiments are the better part of the world's wealth." To the same +effect is her saying in _Theophrastus Such_, that "our civilization, +considered as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril without +the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings." She expresses the +conviction in _Adam Bede_, that "it is possible to have very erroneous +theories and very sublime feelings;" and she does not hesitate through +all her writings to convey the idea, that sublime feelings are much to +be preferred to profound thoughts or the most perfect philosophy. She +makes Adam Bede say that "it isn't notions sets people doing the right +thing--it's feelings," and that "feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Feeling +gives us the only true knowledge we have of our fellow-men, a knowledge +in every way more perfect than that which is to be derived from our +intellectual inquiries into their natures and wants. In _Janet's +Repentance_ this power of feeling to give us true knowledge of others, +to awaken us to the deeper needs of our own souls, when we come in contact +with those who are able to move and inspire us, is eloquently presented. + + Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not + calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, + effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is + quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing + tasselled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes + cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot + make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe + upon us with warm breath; they touch us with soft responsive hands; + they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing + tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, + its faith and its love. Then their presence is a power; then they shake + us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, + as flame is drawn to flame. [Footnote: Chapter XIX.] + +She returns to the same subject when considering the intellectual theories +of happiness and the proportion of crime there is likely to occur in the +world. She shows her entire dissent from such a method of dealing with +human woe, and she pleads for that sympathy and love which will enable us +to feel the pain of others as our own. This fellow-feeling gives us the +most adequate knowledge we can have. + + It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that "there is more joy + in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just + persons that need no repentance." And certain ingenious philosophers + of our own day must surely take offence at a joy so entirely out of + correspondence with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has + been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for the woes of + another--that has "learned pity through suffering"--is likely to find + very imperfect satisfaction in the "balance of happiness," "doctrine of + compensations," and other short and easy methods of obtaining thorough + complacency in the presence of pain; and for such a heart that saying + will not be altogether dark. The emotions I have observed are but + slightly influenced by arithmetical considerations: the mother, when + her sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from her one after + another, and she is hanging over her last dead babe, finds small + consolation in the fact that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a + necessary average, and that a thousand other babes brought into the + world at the same time are doing well, and are likely to live; and if + you stood beside that mother--if you knew her pang and shared it--it is + probable you would be equally unable to see a ground of complacency in + statistics. Doubtless a complacency resting on that basis is highly + rational; but emotion, I fear, is obstinately irrational; it insists on + caring for individuals; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative + view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a + set-off against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on + the side of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of feeling, + and one must be a great philosopher to have got quite clear of all + that, and to have emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in + which it is evident that individuals really exist for no other purpose + than that abstractions maybe drawn from them--abstractions that may + rise from heaps of ruined lives like the sweet savor of a sacrifice in + the nostrils of philosophers, and of a philosophic Deity. And so it + comes to pass that for the man who knows sympathy because he has known + sorrow, that old, old saying about the joy of angels over the repentant + sinner outweighing their joy over the ninety-nine just, has a meaning + which does not jar with the language of his own heart. It only tells + him that for angels too there is a transcendent value in human pain + which refuses to be settled by equations; that the eyes of angels too + are turned away from the serene happiness of the righteous to bend with + yearning pity on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert where no + water is; that for angels too the misery of one casts so tremendous a + shadow as to eclipse the bliss of ninety-nine. [Footnote: Chapter + XXII.] + +Again, she says in the same story,-- + + Surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that + which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the + heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance + and opinion. Our subtlest analogies of schools and sects must miss the + essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms + of human thought and-work the life-and-death struggles of separate + human beings. + +George Eliot would have us believe, that until we can feel with man, +enter sympathetically into his emotions and yearnings, we cannot know +him. It is because we have common emotions, common experiences, common +aspirations, that we are really able to understand man; and not because of +statistics, natural history, sociology or psychology. The objective facts +have their place and value, but the real knowledge we possess of mankind is +subjective, grows out of fellow-feeling. + +The mental life of man, according to George Eliot, is simply an expansion +of the emotional life. At first the mental life is unconscious, it is +instinctive, simply the emotional response of man to the sequences of +nature. This instinctive life of the emotions always remains a better part +of our natures, and is to be trusted rather than the more formal activities +of the intellectual faculties. In the most highly developed intellects +even, there is a subconscious mental activity, an instinctive life of +feeling, which is rather to be trusted than reason itself. This is a +frequently recurring statement, which George Eliot makes in the firmest +conviction of its truthfulness. It appears in such a sentence as this, in +_The Mill on the Floss_: "Watch your own speech, and notice how it is +guided by your less conscious purposes." In _Daniel Deronda_ it finds +expression in the assertion that "there is a great deal of unmapped country +within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of +our gusts and storms." It is more explicitly presented in _Adam Bede_. + + Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulses by the + name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, + we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all + given to us. + +George Eliot puts into the mouth of Mordecai the assertion that love lies +deeper than any reasons which are to be found for its exercise. In the same +way, she would have us believe that feeling is safer than reason. Daniel +Deronda questions Mordecai's visions, and doubts if he is worth listening +to, except for pity's sake. On this the author comments, in defence of the +visions, as against reason. + + Suppose he had introduced himself as one of the strictest reasoners: do + they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and + illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations, too + hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to + hold the universe. Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an + illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions and propositions, + with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking + will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the + matter to be thought about. And since the unemotional intellect may + carry us into a mathematical dream-land where nothing is but what is + not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its + passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be--the more + comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the + sensibility of the artist seizes combinations which science explains + and justifies. At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be + trusted. [Footnote: Chapter XLI.] + +As explicit is a passage in _Theophrastus Such_, wherein imagination is +regarded as a means of knowledge, because it rests on a subconscious +expression of experience. + + It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward + vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy + constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of experience, + which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the + habitual confusion of probable fact with the fictions of fancy and + transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs + every material object, every incidental fact, with far-reaching + memories and stored residues of passion, bringing into new light the + less obvious relations of human existence. [Footnote: Chapter XIII.] + +Imagination, feeling and the whole inward life are being constantly shaped +by our actions. Experience gives new character to the inward life, and at +the same time determines its motives and its inclinations. The muscles +develop as they are used; what has been once done it is easier to do again. +In the same way, our deeds influence our lives, and compel us to repeat our +actions. At least this is George Eliot's opinion, and one she is fond of +re-affirming. After Arthur had wronged Hetty, his life was changed, and of +this change wrought in his character by his conduct, George Eliot says,-- + + Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we + know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with + inward facts which constitute a man's critical actions, it will be + better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a + terrible coercion in our deeds which may at first turn the honest man + into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this + reason--that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of + the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been + seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which + is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterward with the lens of + apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful + and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe + adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_, and so does an individual + character--until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive + retribution. [Footnote: Chapter XXIX.] + +What we have done, determines what we shall do, even in opposition to +our wills. After Tito Melema had done his first act towards denying his +foster-father, we have this observation of the author's: + + Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act + apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds + never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our + consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on + Tito for the first time. + +When Tito had openly denied that father, at an unexpected moment, we hear +the ever-present chorus repeating this great ethical truth: + + Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we + prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or + evil that gradually determines character. + +As a river moves in the channel made for it, as a plant grows towards the +sunlight, so man does again what he has once done. The impression of his +act is left upon his nature, it is taken up into his motives, it leads to +feeling and impulse, it repeats itself in future conduct. His deed lives in +memory, it lives in weakness or strength of impulse, it lives in disease or +in health, it lives in mental listlessness or in mental vigor. What is +done, determines our natures in their character and tendency for the +future. "A man can never separate himself from his past history," says +George Eliot in one of the mottoes of _Felix Holt_. We cannot rid ourselves +of the effects of our actions; they follow us forever. This truth takes +shape in _Romola_ in these words: + + Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life + of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have + once acted greatly, seems a reason why we should always be noble. But + Tito was feeling the effect of an opposite tradition: he had now no + memories of self-conquest and perfect faithfulness from which he could + have a sense of falling. + +A motto in _Daniel Deronda_ reiterates this oft-repeated assertion. + + Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, + And righteous or unrighteous, being done, + Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself + Be laid in stillness, and the universe + Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more. + +Feeling is to be preferred to logic, according to George Eliot, because it +brings us the results of long-accumulating experiences, because it embodies +the inherited experiences of the race. She was an earnest believer in +"far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion," for she was +convinced that the better part of all our knowledge is brought to us by +inheritance. The deeds of the individual make the habits of his life, they +remain in memory, they guide the purposes of the will, and they give +motives to action. Deeds often repeated give impulse and direction to +character, and these appear in the offspring as predispositions of body +and mind. In this way our deeds "throb in after-throbs" of our children; +and in the same manner the deeds of a people live in the life of the race +and become guiding motives in its future deeds. As the deeds of a person +develop into habits, so the deeds of a people develop into national +tendencies and actions. + +George Eliot was a thorough believer in the Darwinian theories of heredity, +and she has in all her books shown the effects of hereditary conditions on +the individual and even upon a people. Family and race are made to play a +very important part in her writings. Other novelists disregard the +conditions and limitations imposed by heredity, and consider the individual +as unrestricted by other laws than those of his own will; but George Eliot +gives conspicuous prominence to the laws of heredity, both individual and +social. Felix Holt never ceases in her pages to be the son of his mother, +however enlarged his ideas may become and broad his culture. Rosamond Vincy +also has a parentage, and so has Mary Garth. Daniel Deronda is a Jew by +birth, the son of a visionary mother and a truth-seeking father. This +parentage expresses itself throughout his life, even in boyhood, in all his +thought and conduct. Heredity shapes the destiny of Tito Melema, Romola, +Fedalma, Maggie Tulliver, Will Ladislaw, Gwendolen Harleth and many another +character in George Eliot's novels. It is even more strongly presented in +her poems. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she describes Fedalma as a genuine +daughter of her father, as inheriting his genius and tendencies, which are +stronger than all the Spanish culture she had received. When Fedalma says +she belongs to him she loves, and that love + + is nature too, + Forming a fresher law than laws of birth,-- + +Zarca replies,-- + + Unmake yourself, then, from a Zincala-- + Unmake yourself from being child of mine! + Take holy water, cross your dark skin white; + Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks; + Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe: + Unmake yourself--doff all the eagle plumes + And be a parrot, chained to a ring that slips + Upon a Spaniard's thumb, at will of his + That you should prattle o'er his words again! + +Fedalma cannot unmake herself; she has already danced in the plaza, and she +is soon convinced that she is a Zincala, that her place is with her father +and his tribe. The Prior had declared,-- + + That maiden's blood + Is as unchristian as the leopard's, + +and it so proves. His statement of reasons for this conviction expresses +the author's own belief. + + What! Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips + Descend through generations, and the soul + That moves within our frame like God in worlds-- + Convulsing, urging, melting, withering-- + Imprint no record, leave no documents, + Of her great history? Shall men bequeath + The fancies of their palates to their sons, + And shall the shudder of restraining awe, + The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, + Faith's prayerful labor, and the food divine + Of fasts ecstatic--shall these pass away + Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly? + Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain, + And god-enshrining symbols leave no trace + Of tremors reverent? + +This larger or social heredity is that which claims much the larger share +of George Eliot's attention, and it is far more clearly and distinctively +presented in her writings. She gives a literary expression here to the +teachings of the evolutionists, shows the application to life of what has +been taught by Spencer, Haeckel and Lewes. In his _Foundations of a Creed_, +Lewes has stated this theory in discussing "the limitations of knowledge." +"It is indisputable," he says, "that every particular man comes into the +world with a heritage of organized forms and definite tendencies, which +will determine his feeling and thinking in certain definite ways, whenever +the suitable conditions are present. And all who believe in evolution +believe that these forms and tendencies represent ancestral experiences and +adaptations; believe that not only is the pointer born with an organized +tendency to point, the setter to set, the beaver to build, and the bird to +fly, but that the man is born with a tendency to think in images and +symbols according to given relations and sequences which constitute logical +laws, that _what_ he thinks is the necessary product of his organism and +the external conditions. This organism itself is a product of its history; +it _is_ what it has _become_; it is a part of the history of the human +race; it is also specially individualized by the particular personal +conditions which have distinguished him from his fellow-men. Thus +resembling all men in general characters, he will in general feel as +they feel, think as they think; and differing from all men in special +characters, he will have personal differences of feeling and shades of +feeling, thought and combinations of thought.... The mind is built up +out of assimilated experiences, its perceptions being shaped by its +pre-perceptions, its conceptions by its pre-conceptions. Like the body, +the mind is shaped through its history." In other words, experience is +inherited and shapes the mental and social life. What some philosophers +have called intuitions, and what Kant called the categories of the mind, +Lewes regarded as the inherited results of human experience. By a slow +process of evolution the mind has been produced and shaped into harmony +with its environment; the results of inherited experience take the form of +feelings, intuitions, laws of thought and social tendencies. Its intuitions +are to be accepted as the highest knowledge, because the transmitted +results of all human experience. + +As the body performs those muscular operations most easily to which it +is most accustomed, so men as social beings perform those acts and think +those thoughts most easily and naturally to which the race has been longest +accustomed. Man lives and thinks as man has lived and thought; he inherits +the past. In his social life he is as much the child of the past as he is +individually the son of his father. If he inherits his father's physiognomy +and habits of thought, so does he socially inherit the characteristics of +his race, its social and moral life. George Eliot was profoundly convinced +of the value of this fact, and she has presented it in her books in all +its phases. In her _Fortnightly Review_ essay on "The Influence of +Rationalism," she says all large minds have long had "a vague sense" "that +tradition is really the basis of our best life." She says, "Our sentiments +may be called organized traditions; and a large part of our actions gather +all their justification, all their attractions and aroma, from the memory +of the life lived, of the actions done, before we were born." Tradition is +the inherited experience of the race, the result of its long efforts, its +many struggles, after a larger life. It lives in the tendencies of our +emotions, in the intuitions and aspirations of our minds, as the wisdom +which our minds hold dear, as the yearnings of our hearts after a wider +social life. These things are not the results of our own reasonings, but +they are the results of the life lived by those who have gone before us, +and who, by their thoughts and deeds, have shaped our lives, our minds, to +what they are. Tradition is the inherited experience, feeling, yearning, +pain, sorrow and wisdom of the ages. It furnishes a great system of +customs, laws, institutions, ideas, motives and feelings into which we are +born, which we naturally adopt, which gives shape and strength to our +growing life, which makes it possible for us to take up life at that stage +it has reached after the experiences of many generations. George Eliot says +in _Middlemarch_ that "a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality +with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition." We come into a world +made ready for us, and find prepared for our immediate use a vast complex +of customs and duties and ideas, the results of the world's experience. +George Eliot believed, with Comte, that with each generation the influence +of the past over the present becomes greater, and that men's lives are more +and more shaped by what has been. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she makes Don +Silva say that + + The only better is a Past that lives + On through an added Present, stretching still + In hope unchecked by shaming memories + To life's last breath. + +This deep conviction of the blessed influence of the past upon us is well +expressed in the little poem on "Self and Life," one of the most fully +autobiographical of all her poems, where she makes Life bid Self remember + + How the solemn, splendid Past + O'er thy early widened earth + Made grandeur, as on sunset cast + Dark elms near take mighty girth. + Hands and feet were tiny still + When we knew the historic thrill, + Breathed deep breath in heroes dead, + Tasted the immortals' bread. + +In expressive sentences, in the development of her characters, and in many +other ways, she affirms this faith in tradition. In one of the mottoes +in _Felix Holt_ she uses a fine sentence, which is repeated in "A Minor +Prophet." + + Our finest hope is finest memory. + +The finest hope of the race is to be found in memory of its great deeds, as +its saddest loss is to be found in forgetfulness of a noble past. In _The +Mill on the Floss_, when describing St. Ogg's, she attributes its sordid +and tedious life to its neglect of the past and its inspiring memories. + + The mind of St. Ogg's did not look extensively before or after. It + inherited a long past without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the + spirits that walk the streets, Since the centuries when St. Ogg with + his boat, and the Virgin Mother at the prow, had been seen on the wide + water, so many memories had been left behind, and had gradually + vanished like the receding hill-tops! And the present time was like the + level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, + thinking to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giant forces that used + to shake the earth are forever laid to sleep. The days were gone when + people could be greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less change + it: the Catholics were formidable because they would lay hold of + government and property, and burn men alive; not because any sane and + honest parishioner of St. Ogg's could be brought to believe in the + Pope. One aged person remembered how a rude multitude had been swayed + when John Wesley preached in the cattle-market; but for a long while it + had not been expected of preachers that they should shake the souls of + men. An occasional burst of fervor in Dissenting pulpits on the subject + of infant baptism was the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober + times when men had done with change. Protestantism sat at ease, + unmindful of schisms, careless of proselytism; Dissent was an + inheritance along with a superior pew and a business connection; and + Churchmanship only wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish + habit that clung greatly to families in the grocery and chandlering + lines, though not incompatible with prosperous wholesale dealing. + [Footnote: Chapter XII.] + +This faith in tradition, as giving the basis of all our best life, is +perhaps nowhere so expressively set forth by George Eliot as in _The +Spanish Gypsy_. It is distinctly taught by all the best characters in the +words they speak, and it is emphatically taught in the whole purpose and +spirit of the poem. Zarca says his tribe has no great life because it has +no great national memories. He calls his people + + Wanderers whom no God took knowledge of + To give them laws, to fight for them, or blight + Another race to make them ampler room; + Who have no whence or whither in their souls, + No dimmest lure of glorious ancestors + To make a common breath for piety. + +As his people are weak because they have no traditional life, he proposes +by his deeds to make them national memories and hopes and aims. + + No lure + Shall draw me to disown them, or forsake + The meagre wandering herd that lows for help-- + And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture + Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. + Because our race has no great memories, + I will so live, it shall remember me + For deeds of such divine beneficence + As rivers have, that teach, men what is good + By blessing them. I have been schooled--have caught + Lore from Hebrew, deftness from the Moor-- + Know the rich heritage, the milder life, + Of nations fathered by a mighty Past. + +The way in which such a past is made is suggested by Zarca, in answer to a +question about the Gypsy's faith; it is made by a common life of faith and +brotherhood, that gives origin to a common inheritance and memories. + + O, it is a faith + Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts + Faith to each other: the fidelity + Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place + Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share + The scanty water: the fidelity + Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, + Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, + The speech that even in lying tells the truth + Of heritage inevitable as birth, + Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel + The mystic stirring of a common life + Which makes the many one: fidelity + To that deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate + Made through our infant breath when we were born + The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, + Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. + Fear thou that oath, my daughter--nay, not fear, + But love it; for the sanctity of oaths + Lies not in lightning that avenges them, + But in the injury wrought by broken bonds + And in the garnered good of human trust. + And you have sworn--even with your infant breath + You too were pledged. + +George Eliot's faith in tradition, as furnishing the basis of our best +life, and the moral purpose and law which is to guide it, she has +concentrated into one question asked by Maggie Tulliver. + + If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should + have no law but the inclination of the moment. + +Although this question is asked in regard to an individual's past, the +answer to it holds quite as good for the race as for the individual. She +repudiates all theories which give the individual authority to follow +inclination, or even to follow some inner or personal guide. The true +wisdom is always social, always grows out of the experiences of the race, +and not out of any personal inspiration or enlightenment. Tradition +furnishes the materials for reason to use, but reason does not penetrate +into new regions, or bring to us wisdom apart from that we obtain through +inherited experiences. George Eliot compares these two with each other in +_The Spanish Gypsy_ in the words of Sephardo. + + I abide + By that wise spirit of listening reverence + Which marks the boldest doctors of our race. + For Truth, to us, is like a living child + Born of two parents: if the parents part + And will divide the child, how shall it live? + Or, I will rather say: Two angels guide + The path of man, both aged and yet young, + As angels are, ripening through endless years. + On one he leans: some call her Memory, + And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet, + With deep mysterious accords: the other, + Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams + A light divine and searching on the earth, + Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, + Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew + Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp + Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked + But for Tradition; we walk evermore + To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp. + +Man leans on tradition, it is the support of his life, by its strength he +is able to move forward. Reason is a lamp which lights the way, gives +direction to tradition; it is a beacon and not a support. Tradition not +only brings us the wisdom of all past experience, but it develops into a +spiritual atmosphere in which we live, move and have our being. This was +Comte's idea, that the spiritual life is developed out of tradition, that +the world's experiences have produced for us intangible hopes, yearnings +and aspirations; awe, reverence and sense of subtle mystery: mystic trust, +faith in invisible memories, joy in the unseen power of thought and love; +and that these create for us a spiritual world most real in its nature, and +most powerful in its influence. On every hand man is touched by the +invisible, mystical influences of the past, spiritual voices call to him +out of the ages, unseen hands point the way he is to go. He breathes this +atmosphere of spiritual memories, he is fed on thoughts other men have made +for his sustenance, he is inspired by the heroisms of ages gone before. In +an article in the _Westminster Review_ in July, 1856, on "The Natural +History of German Life," in review of W.H. Riehl's books on the German +peasant, and on land and climate, she presents the idea that a people can +be understood only when we understand its history. Society, she says, has +developed through many generations, and has built itself up in many +memories and associations. To change it we must change its traditions. +Nothing can be done _de novo_; a fresh beginning cannot be had. The dream +of the French Revolution, that a new nation, a new life, a new morality, +was to be created anew and fresh out of the cogitations of philosophers, is +not in any sense to be realized. Tradition forever asserts itself, the past +is more powerful than all philosophers, and new traditions must be made +before a new life can be had for society. These ideas are well expressed by +George Eliot in her review of Riehl's books. + + He sees in European society _incarnate history_, and any attempt to + disengage it from its historical elements must, he believes, be simply + destruction of social vitality. What has grown up historically can only + die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. The + external conditions which society has inherited from the past are but + the manifestation of inherited internal conditions in the human beings + who compose it; the internal conditions and the external are related to + each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take + place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both. As a + necessary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must obtain + purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of + hereditary affection and antipathy; which is as easy as to get running + streams without springs, or the leafy shade of the forest without the + secular growth of trunk and branch. + + The historical conditions of society may be compared with those of + language. It must be admitted that the language of cultivated nations + is in anything but a rational state; the great sections of the + civilized world are only approximately intelligible to each other, and + even that, only at the cost of long study; one word stands for many + things, and many words for one thing; the subtle shades of meaning, and + still subtler echoes of association, make language an instrument which + scarcely anything short of genius can wield with definiteness and + certainty. Suppose, then, that the effort which has been again and + again made to construct a universal language on a rational basis has + at length succeeded, and that you have a language which has no + uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of + many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms "familiar with forgotten + years,"--a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects + the purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic + signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of expression to science, + but will never express _life_, which is a great deal more than science. + With the anomalies and inconveniences of historical language, you will + have parted with its music and its passion, with its vital qualities + as an expression of individual character, with its subtle capabilities + of wit, with everything that gives it power over the imagination; and + the next step in simplification will be the invention of a talking + watch, which will achieve the utmost facility and despatch in the + communication of ideas by a graduated adjustment of ticks, to be + represented in writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A + "melancholy language of the future!" The sensory and motor nerves that + run in the same sheath are scarcely bound together by a more necessary + and delicate union than that which binds men's affections, imagination, + wit and humor with the subtle ramifications of historical language. + Language must be left to grow in precision, completeness and unity, as + minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness and sympathy. And there is + an analogous relation between the moral tendencies of men and the + social conditions they have inherited. The nature of European men has + its roots intertwined with the past, and can only be developed by + allowing those roots to remain undisturbed while the process of + development is going on, until that perfect ripeness of the seed which + carries with it a life independent of the root.... + + It has not been sufficiently insisted on, that in the various branches + of social science there is an advance from the general to the special, + from the simple to the complex, analogous with that which is found in + the series of the sciences, from mathematics to biology. To the laws of + quantity comprised in mathematics and physics are superadded, in + chemistry, laws of quality; to those again are added, in biology, laws + of life; and lastly, the conditions of life in general branch out into + its special conditions, or natural history, on the one hand, and into + its abnormal conditions, or pathology, on the other. And in this series + or ramification of the sciences, the more general science will not + suffice to solve the problems of the more special. Chemistry embraces + phenomena which are not explicable by physics; biology embraces + phenomena which are not explicable by chemistry; and no biological + generalization will enable us to predict the infinite specialties + produced by the complexity of vital conditions. So social science, + while it has departments which in their fundamental generality + correspond to mathematics and physics, namely, those grand and simple + generalizations which trace out the inevitable march of the human race + as a whole, and, as a ramification of these, the laws of economical + science, has also, in the departments of government and jurisprudence, + which embrace the conditions of social life in all their complexity, + what may be called its biology, carrying us on to innumerable special + phenomena which outlie the sphere of science, and belong to natural + history. And just as the most thorough acquaintance with physics, or + chemistry, or general physiology, will not enable you at once to + establish the balance of life in your private vivarium, so that your + particular society of zoophytes, molluscs and echinoderms may feel + themselves, as the Germans say, at ease in their skins; so the most + complete equipment of theory will not enable a statesman or a political + and social reformer to adjust his measures wisely, in the absence of a + special acquaintance with the section of society for which he + legislates, with the peculiar characteristics of the nation, the + province, the class whose well-being he has to consult. In other words, + a wise social policy must be based not simply on abstract social + science but on the natural history of social bodies. + +Her conception of the corporate life of the nice has been clearly expressed +by George Eliot in the concluding essay in _Theophrastus Such_. In that +essay she writes of the powerful influence wrought upon national life by +"the divine gift of memory which inspires the moments with a past, a +present and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that +raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute." The +nations which lead the world on to a larger civilization are not merely +those with most genius, originality, gift of invention or talent for +scientific observation, but those which have the finest traditions. As a +member of such a nation, the individual can be noble and great. We should +almost be persuaded, reading George Eliot's eloquent rhetoric on this +subject, that personal genius is of little moment in comparison with a rich +inheritance of national memories. It is indeed true that Homer, Virgil, +Dante, Milton and Shakspere have used the traditions of their people for +the materials of their immortal works, but what would those traditions have +been without the genius of the men who deal with the traditions in a +fashion quite their own, giving them new meaning and vitality! The poet, +however, needs materials for his song, and memories to inspire it. The +influence of these George Eliot well understands in calling them "the deep +suckers of healthy sentiment." + + The historian guides us rightly in urging us to dwell on the virtues of + our ancestors with emulation, and to cherish our sense of a common + descent as a bond of obligation. The eminence, the nobleness of a + people, depends on its capability of being stirred by memories, and for + striving for what we call spiritual ends--ends which consist not in an + immediate material possession, but in the satisfaction of a great + feeling that animates the collective body as with one soul. A people + having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when + it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its + national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and + gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such as are still + demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited + may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when + an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great + precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its + institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which + makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest + with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their + blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all + calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and + thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual + man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, + if not in actual existence yet existing in the past--in memory, as a + departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be + restored.... Not only the nobleness of a nation depends on the presence + of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each + individual citizen. Our dignity and rectitude are proportioned to our + sense of relationship with something great, admirable, pregnant with + high possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to + self-repression and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and + more attractive to our generous part than the securing of personal ease + or prosperity. [Footnote: Theophrastus Such, chapter XVIII.] + +Zealous as is George Eliot's faith in tradition, she is broad-minded enough +to see that it is limited in its influence by at least two causes,--by +reason and by the spirit of universal brotherhood. We have already seen +that she makes reason one of man's guides. In _Romola_ the right of the +individual to make a new course for action is distinctly expressed. Romola +had "the inspiring consciousness," we are told, "that her lot was vitally +united with the general lot which exalted even the minor details of +obligation into religion," and so "she was marching with a great army, she +was feeling the stress of a common life." Yet she began to feel that she +must not merely repeat the past; and the influence of Savonarola, in +breaking with Rome for the sake of a pure and holy life, inspired her. + + To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the + soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law + to appeal to, but in face of a law which is not unarmed with divine + lightnings--lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false. + +It is reason's lamp by which "we walk evermore to higher paths;" and by its +aid, new deeds are to be done, new memories created, fresher traditions +woven into feeling and hope. National memories are to be superseded by the +spirit of brotherhood, for, as the race advances, nations are brought +closer to each other, have more in common, and development is made of +world-wide traditions. Theophrastus Such, in the last of his essays, tells +us that "it is impossible to arrest the tendencies of things towards the +quicker or slower fusion of races." + +The environment of her characters George Eliot makes of very great +importance. She dwells upon the natural scenery which they love, but +especially does she magnify the importance of the social environment, and +the perpetual influence it has upon the whole of life. Mr. James Sully has +clearly interpreted her thought on this subject, and pointed out its +engrossing interest for her. + +"A character divorced from its surroundings is an abstraction. A +personality is only a concrete living whole, when we attach it by a network +of organic filaments to its particular environment, physical and social. +Our author evidently chooses her surroundings with strict regard to her +characters. She paints nature less in its own beauty than in its special +aspect and significance for those whom she sets in its midst. 'The bushy +hedgerows,' 'the pool in the corner of the field where the grasses were +dank,' 'the sudden slope of the old marl-pit, making a red background for +the burdock'--these things are touched caressingly and lingered over +because they are so much to the 'midland-bred souls' whose history is here +recorded; so much because of cumulative recollection reaching back to the +time when they 'toddled among' them, or perhaps 'learnt them by heart +standing between their father's knees while he drove leisurely.' And what +applies to the natural environment applies still more to those narrower +surroundings which men construct for themselves, and which form their daily +shelter, their work-shop, their place of social influence. The human +interest which our author sheds about the mill, the carpenter's shop, the +dairy, the village church, and even the stiff, uninviting conventicle, +shows that she looks on these as having a living continuity with the people +whom she sets among them. Their artistic value is but a reflection of all +that they mean to those for whom they have made the nearer and habitually +enclosing world." The larger influence in the environment of any person, +according to George Eliot, is that which arises from tradition. Cut off +from the sustenance given by tradition, the person loses the motives, the +supports of his life. This is well shown in the case of Silas Marner, who +had fled from his early home and all his life held dear. George Eliot +describes the effect of such a change of environment. + + Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes + find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on + their faith in the Invisible--nay, on the sense that their past joys + and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported + to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their + history, and share none of their ideas--where their mother earth shows + another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their + souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old + faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in + which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, + and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. + [Footnote: Chapter II.] + +She delights to return again and again to the influences produced upon us +by the environment of childhood. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she tells us +how dear the earth becomes by such associations. + + We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood + in it,--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again + every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat + lisping to ourselves on the grass--the same hips and haws on the autumn + hedgerows--the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," + because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth + that sweet monotony where everything is known, and _loved_ because it + is known? + + The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown + foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white + star-flowers, and the blue-eyed speedwell, and the ground-ivy at + my feet--what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid + broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate + fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these + well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, + these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given + to it by the capricious hedgerows--such things as these are the mother + tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the + subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood + left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass + to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, + if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, + which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. + [Footnote: Chapter V.] + +In the backward glance of _Theophrastus Such_ this anchorage of the life in +familiar associations is described as a source of our faith in the +spiritual, even when all the childhood thoughts about those associations +cannot be retained. + + The illusions that began for us when we were less acquainted with evil + have not lost their value when we discern them to be illusions. They + feed the ideal better, and in loving them still, we strengthen, the + precious habit of loving something not visibly, tangibly existent, but + a spiritual product of our visible, tangible selves. + +In the evolution philosophy she found the reconciliation between Locke and +Kant which she so earnestly desired to discover in girlhood. The old school +of experimentalists did not satisfy her with their philosophy; she saw +that the dictum that all knowledge is the result of sensation was not +satisfactory, that it was shallow and untrue. On the other hand, the +intellectual intuition of Schelling was not acceptable, nor even Kant's +categories of the mind. She wished to know why the mind instinctively +throws all experiences and thoughts under certain forms, and why it must +think under certain general methods. She found what to her was a perfectly +satisfactory answer to these questions in the theory of evolution as +developed by Darwin and Spencer. Through the aid of these men she found the +reconciliation between Locke and Kant, and discovered that both were wrong +and both right. So familiar has this reconciliation become, and so wide is +its acceptance, that no more than a mere hint of its meaning will be needed +here. This philosophy asserts, with Locke, that all knowledge begins in +sensation and experience; but with Kant, it affirms that knowledge passes +beyond experience and becomes intuitional. It differs from Kant as to the +source of the intuitions, pronouncing them the results of experience built +up into legitimate factors of the mind by heredity. Experience is inherited +and becomes intuitions. The intuitions are affirmed to be reliable, and, to +a certain extent, sure indications of truth. They are the results, to use +the phrase adopted by Lewes, of "organized experience;" experience verified +in the most effective manner in the organism which it creates and modifies. +According to this philosophy, man must trust the results of experience, but +he can by no means be certain that those results correspond with actuality. +They are actual for him, because it is impossible for him to go beyond +their range. Within the little round created by "organized experience," +which is also Lewes's definition of science, man may trust his knowledge, +because it is consistent with itself; but beyond that strict limit he can +obtain no knowledge, and even knows that what is without it does not +correspond with what is within it. In truth, man knows only the relative, +not the absolute; he must rely on experience, not on creative reason. + +George Eliot would have us believe that the sources of life are not inward, +but outward; not dependent on the deep affirmations of individual reason, +or on the soul's inherent capacity to see what is true, but on the effects +of environment and the results of social experience. Man is not related to +an infinite world of reason and spiritual truth, but only to a world of +universal law, hereditary conditions and social traditions. Invariable law, +heredity, feeling, tradition; these words indicate the trend of George +Eliot's mind, and the narrow limitations of her philosophy. Man is not only +the product of nature, but, according to this theory, nature limits his +moral capacity and the range of his mental activity. Environment is +regarded as all-powerful, and the material world as the _source_ of such +truth as we can know. In her powerful presentation of this philosophy of +life George Eliot indicates her great genius and her profound insight. At +the same time, her work is limited, her genius cramped, and her imagination +crippled, by a philosophy so narrow and a creed so inexpansive. + + + + +XI. + + +RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES. + +As a great literary creator, George Eliot holds a singular position in +reference to religious beliefs. To most literary artists religion is a +vital part of life, which enters as a profound element into their teachings +or into their interpretations of character and incident. Religion deeply +affects the writings of Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin; its problems, its +hopes, its elements of mystery and infinity touch all their pages. In an +equal degree, though with a further departure from accredited beliefs, and +with a greater effect from philosophical or humanitarian influences, has it +wrought itself into the genius of Goethe, Carlyle and Hugo. Even the pages +of Voltaire, Shelley and Heine have been touched by its magic influence; +their words glow with its great interests, and bloom into beauty through +its inspiration. None of these is more affected by religion than George +Eliot has been; nor does it form a greater element in their writings than +in hers. + +What is singular about George Eliot's position is, that she both affirms +and denies; she is deeply religious and yet rejects all religious +doctrines. No writer of the century has given religion a more important +relation to human interests or made it a larger element in his creative +work; and yet no other literary artist has so completely rejected all +positive belief in God and immortality. In her books she depicts every +phase of religious belief and life, and with sympathy and appreciation. A +very large proportion of her characters are clergymen or other religious +persons, who are described with accuracy and sympathy. Her own faith, the +theory of religion she accepts, is not given to any of her characters. What +she believes, appears only in her comments, and in the general effect which +life produces on the persons she describes. She believed Christianity is +subjectively true, that it is a fit expression of the inner nature and of +the spiritual wants of the soul. She did not propagate the pantheism of +Spinoza or the theism of Francis Newman, because she did not regard them as +so near the truth as the Christianity of Paul. As intellectual theories +they may have been preferable to her, but from the outlook of feeling which +she ever occupied, Paul was the truer teacher, and especially because his +teachings are linked with the spiritual desires and outpourings of many +generations. The spontaneous movements of the human mind, which have taken +possession of vast numbers of people through long periods of time, have a +depth of meaning which the speculations of no individual theorizer can ever +possess. Especially did she regard Christianity as a pure and noble +expression of the soul's inner wants and aspirations. It is an objective +realization of feeling and sentiment, it gives purpose and meaning to man's +cravings for a diviner life, it links generation to generation in a +continued series of beautiful traditions and noble inspirations. Her +intellectual view of the subject was expressed to a friend in these words: + + Deism seems to me the most incoherent of all systems, but to + Christianity I feel no objection but its want of evidence. + +She also expressed more sympathy with the simple faith of the multitude +than with the intellectual speculations of philosophers and theologians; +and again, she said that she felt more sympathy with than divergence from +the narrowest and least cultivated believer in Christianity. As a vehicle +of the accumulated hopes and traditions of the world's feeling and sorrow +she appreciated Christianity, saw its beauty, felt deeply in sympathy with +its spirit of renunciation, accepted its ideal of a divine life. She +learned from Feuerbach that religion, that Christianity, gives fit +expression to the emotional life and spiritual aspirations of man, and that +what it finds within in no degree corresponds with that which surrounds man +without. + +Barren and lifeless as this view must seem to most persons, it was a source +of great confidence and inspiration to George Eliot. It enabled her to +appreciate the religious experiences of men, to portray most accurately and +sympathetically a great variety of religious believers, and to give this +side of life its place and proportion. At the same time, it was a personal +satisfaction to her to be able to keep in unbroken sympathy with the +religious experiences of her childhood and youth while intellectually +unable to accept the beliefs on which these experiences rested. More than +this, she believed that religion and spirituality of life are necessary +elements of human existence, that man can never cast them off, and that man +will lead a happy and harmonious life only when they have a true and +fitting expression in his culture and civilization. She maintained, with +Sara Hennell, that we may retain the religious sentiments in all their glow +and in all their depth of influence, at the same time that the doctrines of +theology and all those conceptions of nature and man on which they rest are +rejected; that we may have a disposition of the heart akin to that of the +prophets and saints of religion, while we intellectually cast aside all +which gave meaning to their faith and devotion. According to George Eliot, +religion rests upon feeling and the relations of man to humanity, as well +as upon his irreversible relations to the universe. In _The Mill on the +Floss_ she has given a definition of it, in speaking of Maggie's want of + + that knowledge of the irreversible laws within and without her, which, + governing the habits, becomes morality, and developing the feelings of + submission and dependence, becomes religion. [Footnote: Book IV., + chapter III.] + +It is the human side of religion which interests George Eliot, its +influence morally, its sympathetic impulse, its power to comfort and +console. Its supernatural elements seem to have little influence over her +mind, at least only so far as they serve the moral aims of life. It is +humanity which attracts her mind, inspires her ideal hopes, kindles her +enthusiasms. Religion, apart from human encouragement and elevation, the +suppression of human sin and sorrow, and the increase of human sympathy and +joy, has little attraction for her. She takes no ground of opposition to +the beliefs of others, expresses no contempt for any form of belief in God; +but she measures all beliefs by their moral influence and their power to +enkindle the enthusiasm of humanity. + +The pantheistic theism defended by Lewes in his book on Comte, in 1853, +seems to have been also accepted by George Eliot. We are told that her mind +long wavered between the two, though pantheism was less acceptable than +theism, on account of its moral indifference. It was undoubtedly the moral +bearings of the subject which all the time had the greatest weight with +her, and probably Kant's position had not a little effect on her opinions. +She came, at least, to find final satisfaction in agnosticism, to believe +that all intellectual speculations on the subject are in vain. At the same +time, her moral convictions grew stronger, and she believed in the power of +moral activity to work out a solution of life when no other can be found. +At this point she stood with Kant rather than with Comte, in accepting the +moral nature as a true guide. She very zealously believed with Fichte in a +moral order of the world, approving of the truth which underlies the words +of Fichte's English disciple, Matthew Arnold, when he discourses of "the +Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Her positive +convictions and beliefs on the subject lie in this direction, and she +firmly accepted the idea of a moral order and purpose. So much she thought +we can know and rely on; beyond this she believed we can know nothing. Her +later convictions on this subject have been expressed in a graphic manner +by one of her friends. "I remember how," says this person, "at Cambridge, +I walked with her once in the Fellows' Garden, of Trinity, on an evening +of rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her +text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring +trumpet-calls of man,--the words _God, Immortality, Duty_,--pronounced, +with terrible emphasis, how inconceivable was the _first_, how unbelievable +the _second_, and yet how peremptory and absolute the _third_. Never, +perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and +unrecompensed law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic +countenance turned towards me like a sibyl's in the gloom; it was as though +she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and +left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates." [Footnote: +F.W.H. Myers in The Century Magazine for November, 1881.] All her later +writings, at least, confirm this testimony to her assertion of the +inconceivableness of God, and her open denial of faith in theism. She +cannot have gone so far as to assert the non-existence of God, affirming +only that she could not conceive of such a being as actually existing. She +could not believe in a personal God, but Lewes's conception of a dynamic +life was doubtless acceptable. + +With as much emphasis she pronounced immortality unbelievable. She early +accepted the theory of Charles Bray and Sara Hennell, that we live +hereafter only in the life of the race. The moral bearings of the subject +here also were most effective over her mind, for she felt that what we +ought most of all to consider is our relations to our fellow-men, and that +another world can have little real effect upon our present living. In her +_Westminster Review_ article on "Evangelical Teaching" as presented in +Young's _Night Thoughts_, she criticises the following declaration:-- + + "Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, + What'er his boast, has told me he's a knave. + His duty 'tis to love himself alone, + Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles." + +Her comments on these lines of Young's are full of interest, in view of her +subsequent teachings, and they open an insight into her tendencies of mind +very helpful to those who would understand her fully. Her interest in all +that is human, her craving for a more perfect development of human sympathy +and co-operation, are very clearly to be seen. + + We may admit that if the better part of virtue consists, as Young + appears to think, in contempt for mortal joys, in "meditation of our + own decease," and in "applause" of God in the style of a congratulatory + address to Her Majesty--all which has small relation to the well-being + of mankind on this earth--the motive to it must be gathered from + something that lies quite outside the sphere of human sympathy. But, + for certain other elements of virtue, which are of more obvious + importance to untheological minds,--a delicate sense of our neighbor's + rights, an active participation in the joys and sorrows of our + fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for + ourselves when it is the condition of good to others,--in a word, the + extension and intensification of our sympathetic nature,--we think it + of some importance to contend that they have no more direct relation + to the belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in the + lungs has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable + that in some minds the deep pathos lying in the thought of human + mortality--that we are here for a little while and then vanish away, + that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved ones and to + our many suffering fellow-men--lies nearer the fountains of moral + emotion than the conception of extended existence. And surely it ought + to be a welcome fact, if the thought of _mortality_, as well as of + immortality, be favorable to virtue. Do writers of sermons and + religious novels prefer that we should be vicious in order that there + may be a more evident political and social necessity for printed + sermons and clerical fictions? Because learned gentlemen are + theological, are we to have no more simple honesty and good-will? We + can imagine that the proprietors of a patent water-supply have a dread + of common springs; but, for our own part, we think there cannot be too + great security against a lack of fresh water or of pure morality. To us + it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of + healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its + evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as + the evolution of science or art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin + ray, melting into them with undefinable limits. + +The considerations here presented are very effective ones, and quite as +truthful as effective. There are human supports for morality of the most +important and far-reaching character, and such as are outside of any +theological considerations. We ought, as George Eliot so well says, to +rejoice that the reasons for being moral are manifold, that sympathy with +others, as well as the central fires of personality, or the craving to be +in harmony with the Eternal, is able to conduce to a righteous conduct. Her +objections to Young's narrow and selfish defence of immortality are well +presented and powerful, but they do not touch such high considerations as +those offered by Kant. The craving for personal freedom and perfection is +as strong and as helpful to the race as sympathy for others and yearning to +lift up the weak and fallen. When the sense of personality is gone, man +loses much of his character; and personality rests on a deep spiritual +foundation which does not mean egotism merely, but which does mean for the +majority a conviction of a continued existence. The tendency of the present +time is to dwell less upon the theological and more upon the human motives +to conduct; but it is to be doubted if the highest phases of morality can +be retained without belief in God and a future life. The common virtues, +the sympathetic motives to conduct, the spirit of helpfulness, may be +retained intact, and even increased in power and efficiency, by those +motives George Eliot presents; but the loftier virtues of personal heroism +and devotion to truth in the face of martyrdom of one form or another, the +saintly craving for purity and holiness, and the sturdy spirit of liberty +which will suffer no bonds to exist, can be had in their full development +only with belief that God calls us to seek for perfect harmony with +himself. Kant's view that a divine law within, the living word of God, +calls ever to us as personal beings to attain the perfection of our natures +in the perfection of the race, and in conformity to the eternal law of +righteousness, is far nobler and truer than that which George Eliot +accepted. + +She was not a mere unbeliever, however, for she did not thrust aside the +hope of immortality with a contemptuous hand. This problem she left where +she left that concerning God, in the background of thought, among the +questions which cannot be solved. She believed that the power to contribute +to the future good of the race is hope and promise enough. At the same +time, she was very tender of the positive beliefs of others, and especially +of that yearning so many feel after personal recognition and development. +Writing to one who passionately clung to such a hope, she said,-- + + I have no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the + depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help + in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the + absence of what has been called consolatory belief. But all the while I + gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits + or negations in my own moral powers and life experience which may + screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering + human nature. The most melancholy thought surely would be that we in + our own persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual + good. But we know the poor help the poor. + +These words seem to be uttered in quite another tone than that in which she +asserted the unbelievableness of immortality, though they do not indicate +anything more than a tender yearning for human good and a belief that she +could not herself measure all the possibilities of such good. The +consolation of which she writes, comes only of human sympathy and +helpfulness. In writing to a friend suffering under the anguish of a recent +bereavement, she said,-- + + For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort;--whatever goodness may + surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly + the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living + affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn + initiation preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship + with the fullest human lot which, I must think, no one who has tasted + it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to + know what the last parting is, seems needful to give the utmost + sanctity of tenderness to our relations with each other. It is that + above all which gives us new sensibilities to "the web of human things, + birth and the grave, that are not as they were." And by that faith we + come to find for ourselves the truth of the old declaration, that there + is a difference between the ease of pleasure and blessedness, as the + fullest good possible to us wondrously mixed mortals. + +In these words she suggests that sorrow for the dead is a solemn initiation +into that full measure of human sympathy and tenderness which best fits us +to be men. Looking upon all human experience through feeling, she regarded +death as one of the most powerful of all the shaping agents of man's +destiny in this world. She speaks of death, in _Adam Bede, as "the great +reconciler" which unites us to those who have passed away from us. In the +closing scenes of _The Mill on the Floss it is presented as such a +reconciler, and as the only means of restoring Maggie to the affections of +those she had wronged. It is in _The Legend of Jubal, however, that George +Eliot has expressed her thought of what death has been in the individual +and social evolution of mankind. The descendants of Cain + + in glad idlesse throve, + Nor hunted prey, nor with each other strove; + +but all was peace and joy with them. There were no great aspirations, no +noble achievements, no tending toward progress and a higher life. On an +evil day, Lamech, when engaged in athletic sport, accidentally struck and +killed his fairest boy. All was then changed, the old love and peace passed +away; but good rather than evil came, for man began to lead a larger life. + + And a new spirit from that hour came o'er + The race of Cain: soft idlesse was no more, + But even the sunshine had a heart of care, + Smiling with hidden dread--a mother fair + Who folding to her breast a dying child + Beams with feigned joy that but makes sadness mild. + Death was now lord of Life, and at his word + Time, vague as air before, new terrors stirred, + With measured wing now audibly arose + Throbbing through all things to some unknown close. + Now glad Content by clutching Haste was torn, + And Work grew eager, and Devise was born. + It seemed the light was never loved before, + Now each man said, "'Twill go and come no more." + No budding branch, no pebble from the brook, + No form, no shadow, but new dearness took + From the one thought that life must have an end; + And the last parting now began to send + Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss, + Thrilling them into finer tenderness. + Then Memory disclosed her face divine, + That like the calm nocturnal lights doth shine + Within the soul, and shows the sacred graves, + And shows the presence that no sunlight craves, + No space, no warmth, but moves among them all; + Gone and yet here, and coming at each call, + With ready voice and eyes that understand, + And lips that ask a kiss, and dear responsive hand. + Thus to Cain's race death was tear-watered seed + Of various life and action-shaping need. + But chief the sons of Lamech felt the stings + Of new ambition, and the force that springs + In passion beating on the shores of fate. + They said, "There comes a night when all too late + The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand, + The eager thought behind closed portals stand, + And the last wishes to the mute lips press + Buried ere death in silent helplessness. + Then while the soul its way with sound can cleave, + And while the arm is strong to strike and heave, + Let soul and arm give shape that will abide + And rule above our graves, and power divide + With that great god of day, whose rays must bend + As we shall make the moving shadows tend. + Come, let us fashion acts that are to be, + When we shall lie in darkness silently, + As our young brother doth, whom yet we see + Fallen and slain, but reigning in our will + By that one image of him pale and still." + +Death brings discord and sorrow into a world once happy and unaspiring, but +it also brings a spiritual eagerness and a divine craving. Jabal began to +tame the animals and to cultivate the soil, Tubal-Cain began to use fire +and to work metals, while Jubal discovered song and invented musical +instruments. Out of the longing and inner unrest which death brought, came +the great gift of music. It had power to + + Exult and cry, and search the inmost deep + Where the dark sources of new passion sleep. + +Jubal passes to other lands to teach them the gift of song, but at last +returns an old man to share in the affections of his people. He finds them +celebrating with great pomp the invention of music, but they will not +accept him as the Jubal they did honor to and believed dead. Then the voice +of his own past instructs him that he should not expect any praises or +glory in his own person; it is enough to live in the joy of a world +uplifted by music. Thus instructed, his broken life succumbs. + + Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, + The All-creating Presence for his grave. + +In this poem George Eliot regards death as a means of drawing men into a +deeper and truer sympathy with each other. The same thought is more fully +presented when she exultingly sings,-- + + O may I join the choir invisible + Of those immortal dead who live again + In minds made better by their presence: live + In pulses stirred to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn + For miserable aims that end with self. + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues. + +Death teaches us to forget self, to live for others, to pour out unstinted +sympathy and affection for those whose lives are short and difficult. It is +the same thought as that given in reply to Young; mortal sorrows and pains +should move us as hopes of immortality cannot. There accompanies this idea +the larger one, that our future life is to be found in the better life we +make for those who come after us. George Eliot believed with Comte, that we +are to live again in minds made better by what we have done and been, that +an influence goes out from every helpful and good life which makes the +lives of those who come after us fairer and grander. + +She rests this belief on no sentimental or ideal grounds. Its justification +is to be found in science, in the law of hereditary transmission. Darwin +and Spencer base the great world-process of evolution on the two laws of +transmission and variation. The fittest survives, and the world advances. +The survival of every fit and positive form of life in the better forms +which succeed it is in accordance with a process or a law which holds true +up into all the highest and subtlest expressions of man's inner life. +Heredity is as true morally and spiritually as physically, and our moral +and spiritual offspring will partake of our own qualities; and, standing on +the vantage ground of our lives, will rise higher than we. What George +Eliot regards as the positive teaching of science becomes also an inspiring +religious belief to her. + +George Eliot accepted the belief of an immortality in the race with a deep +and earnest conviction. It gave a great impulse to her life, it satisfied +her craving for closer harmony and sympathy with her fellows, it satisfied +her longing for the power to assuage sorrow and to comfort pain. + + So to live is heaven; + To make undying music in the world, + +and to have an influence for good result from our lives far down the +future. Through the beneficent influences we can awake in the world + + All our rarer, better, truer self. + That sobbed religiously in yearning song, + That watched to ease the burthen of the world, + ... shall live till human time + Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky + Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb + Unread forever. + +It was this belief, so satisfying to her and so ardently entertained, which +inspired the best and noblest of her poems. With an almost exultant joy, +with the enthusiasm of an old-time devotee, she sings of that immortality +which consists in renouncing all which is personal. The diffusive good +which sweetens life for others through all time is the real heaven she +sought. + + This is life to come, + Which martyred men have made more glorious + For us who strive to follow. May I reach + That purest heaven, be to other souls + The cup of strength in some great agony, + Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, + Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-- + Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, + And in diffusion ever more intense. + So shall I join the choir invisible + Whose music is the gladness of the world. + +Believing that humanity represents an organic life and development, it was +easy for George Eliot to accept the idea of immortality in the race. She +reverenced the voice of truth + + Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead. + +It was to her a divine voice, full of tenderness, sympathy and strength. +She was fascinated by this thought of the solemn, ever-present and +all-powerful influence of the dead over the living; there was mystery and +inspiration in this belief for her. All phases of religious history, all +religious experiences, were by her interpreted in the light of this +conception. The power of Jesus's life is, that his trancendent beauty of +soul lives in the "everlasting memories" of men, and that the cross of his +shame has become + + The sign + Of death that turned to more diffusive life + +His influence, his memory, has lifted up the world with a great effect, and +made his life, spirit and ideas an inherent part of humanity. He has been +engrafted into the organic life of the race, and lives there a mighty and +an increasing influence. What has happened in his case happens in the case +of all the gifted and great. According to what they were living they enter +into the life of the world for weal or woe. To become an influence for good +in the future, to leave behind an undying impulse of thought and sympathy, +was the ambition of George Eliot; and this was all the immortality she +desired. + +The religious tendencies of George Eliot's mind are rather to be noted in +her conception of renunciation than in her beliefs about God and +immortality. These latter beliefs were of a negative character as she +entertained them, but her doctrine of renunciation was of a very positive +nature. The central motive of that belief was not faith in God, but faith +in man. It gained all its charm and power for her out of her conception of +the organic life of the race. Her thought was, that we should live not for +self, but for humanity. What so many ardent souls have been willing to do +for the glory of God she was willing to do for the uplifting of man. The +spirit of renunciation with her took the old theologic form of expression +to a considerable extent, associated itself in her thought with the lofty +spiritual consecration and self-abnegation of other ages. So ardently did +she entertain this doctrine, so fully did she clothe it with the old forms +of expression, that many have been deceived into believing her a devoted +Christian. A little book was published in 1879 for the express purpose of +showing that "the doctrine of the cross" is the main thought presented +throughout all George Eliot's books. [Footnote: The Ethics of George +Eliot's Works. By the late John Crombie Brown. Edinburgh: William Blackwood +and Sons. 1879.] This book was read by George Eliot with much delight, and +was regarded by her as the only criticism of her works which did full +justice to her purpose in writing them. She is presented in that book as +the writer of fiction who "stands out as the deepest, broadest and most +catholic illustrator of the true ethics of Christianity; the most earnest +and persistent expositor of the true doctrine of the cross, that we are +born and should live to something higher than love of happiness." +"Self-sacrifice as the divine law of life, and its only true fulfilment; +self-sacrifice, not in some ideal sphere sought out for ourselves in the +vain spirit of self-pleasing, but wherever God has placed us, amid homely, +petty anxieties, loves and sorrows; the aiming at the highest attainable +good in our own place, irrespective of all results of joy or sorrow, of +apparent success or failure--such is the lesson" that is conveyed in all +her books. George Eliot is presented as a true teacher of the doctrine +which admonishes us to love not pleasure but God, to forsake all things +else for the sake of obedience and devotion, to shun the world and to +devote ourselves perpetually to God's service. The Christian doctrine of +renunciation has always bidden men put their eyes on God, forget everything +beside, and seek only for that divine life which is spiritual union with +the Eternal. + +That doctrine was not George Eliot's. Christianity bids men renounce the +world for the sake of a perfect union with God; George Eliot desires men to +renounce selfishness for the sake of humanity. The Christian idea includes +the renunciation of all self-seeking, it bids us give ourselves for others, +it even teaches us that others are to be preferred to ourselves. Yet all +this is to be done, not merely for the sake of the present, but in view of +an eternal destiny, and because we can thus only fulfil God's will and +attain to holy oneness with him. George Eliot did, however, throughout her +writings, identify the altruist impulse to live for others with the +Christian doctrine of the cross. To her, the life of devotion to humanity, +which she has so beautifully presented in the poem, "O may I join the Choir +Invisible," was the true interpretation of the Christian doctrine of +self-sacrifice. She accepted this world-old religious belief, consecrated +with all the tears and sacrifices and martyrdoms of the world, as a true +expression of a want of the soul, as the poetic expression of emotions and +aspirations which ever live in man. It is a beautiful symbolism of that +need of his fellows man ever has, of the conviction which is growing +stronger, that man must live for the race and not for himself. The +individual is nothing except as he identifies himself with the corporate +body of humanity; the true fulfilment of life comes only to those who in +some way recognize this fact, and give themselves for the good of the +world. George Eliot even goes so far in her willingness to renounce self +that she says in _Theophrastus Such_, "I am really at the point of finding +that this world would be worth living in without any lot of one's own. Is +it not possible for me to enjoy the scenery of earth without saying to +myself, I have a cabbage-garden in it?" + +The relations of the individual to the past and the present of the race +make duties and burdens and woes for him which he has not created, but +which are given him to bear. The sins of others bring pain and sorrow to +us; we are a part of all the good and evil of the world. The present is +determined by the past; we must accept the lot created for us by those who +have gone before us. "He felt the hard pressure of our common lot, the yoke +of that mighty, resistless destiny laid upon us by the past of other men." +says George Eliot of one of her characters. The past brings us burdens and +sorrows difficult to bear; it also brings us duties. We owe to it many +things; our debt to the race is an immense one. That debt can only be +discharged by a life of devotion and loyalty, by doing what we can to make +humanity better. The Christian idea of a debt owed to God, which we can +only repay by perfect loyalty and self-abnegation, becomes to George Eliot +a debt owed to humanity, which we can only repay in the purest altruistic +spirit. + +The doctrine of renunciation has been presented again and again by George +Eliot; her books are full of it. It is undoubtedly the central theme of all +her teaching. In the conversation between Romola and Savonarola when she is +escaping from her home and is met by him, it is vividly expressed. +Savonarola speaks as a Christian, as a Catholic, as a monk; but the words +he uses quite as well serve to express George Eliot's convictions. The +Christian symbolism laid aside, and all was true to her; yet her feelings, +her sense of corporate unity with the past, would not even suffer her to +lay aside the symbolism in presenting her thoughts on this subject. Romola +pleads that she would not have left Florence as long as she could fulfil a +duty to her father: but Savonarola reminds her that there are other duties, +other ties, other burdens. + + "If your own people are wearing a yoke, will you slip from under it, + instead of struggling with them to lighten it? There is hunger and + misery in our streets, yet you say, 'I care not; I have my own sorrows; + I will go away, if peradventure I can ease them.' The servants of God + are struggling after a law of justice, peace and charity, that the + hundred thousand citizens among whom you were born may be governed + righteously; but you think no more of that than if you were a bird, + that may spread its wings and fly whither it will in search of food to + its liking. And yet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my + daughter. As if you, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind + choice, were not below the humblest Florentine woman who stretches + forth her hands with her own people, and craves a blessing for them; + and feels a close sisterhood with the neighbor who kneels beside her, + and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the mighty purpose that God + has for Florence; and waits and endures because the promised work is + great, and she feels herself little." + +She then asserts her purpose not to go away to a life of ease and +self-indulgence, but rather to one of hardship; but that plea is not +suffered to pass. + + "You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some good + other than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you find good? + It is not a thing of choice: it is a river that flows from the foot of + the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again, + man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties, + and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. But you will go forth; + and what will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty--bitter herbs, + and no bread with them." + +Savonarola bids her draw the crucifix from her bosom, which she secretly +carries, and appeals to her by that symbol of devotion and self-sacrifice +to remain true to her duties, to accept willingly the burdens given her to +bear, not to think of self, but only of others. He condemns the pagan +teaching she had received, of individual self-seeking, and the spirit of +culture, refinement and ease which accompanied that teaching. She looks on +the image of a suffering life, a life offered willingly as a sacrifice for +others' good, and he says,-- + + "Conform your life to that image, my daughter; make your sorrow an + offering; and when the fire of divine charity burns within you, and you + behold the need of your fellow-men by the light of that flame, you will + not call your offering great. You have carried yourself proudly, as one + who held herself not of common blood or of common thoughts; but you + have been as one unborn to the true life of man. What! you say your + love for your father no longer tells you to stay in Florence? Then, + since that tie is snapped, you are without a law, without religion; you + are no better than a beast of the field when she is robbed of her + young. If the yearning of a fleshly love is gone, you are without love, + without obligation. See, then, my daughter, how you are below the life + of the believer who worships that image of the Supreme Offering, and + feels the glow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that + offering was made, and beholds the history of the world as the history + of a great redemption, in which he is himself a fellow-worker, in his + own place and among his own people! If you held that faith, my beloved + daughter, you would not be a wanderer flying from suffering, and + blindly seeking the good of a freedom which is lawlessness. You would + feel that Florence was the home of your soul as well as your + birthplace, because you would see the work that was given you to do + there. If you forsake your place, who will fill it? You ought to be in + your place now, helping in the great work by which God will purify + Florence and raise it to be the guide of the nations. What! the earth + is full of iniquity--full of groans--the light is still struggling with + a mighty darkness, and you say, 'I cannot bear my bonds; I will burst + them asunder; I will go where no man claims me?' My daughter, every + bond of your life is a debt: the right lies in the payment of that + debt; it can lie nowhere else. In vain will you wander over the earth; + you will be wandering forever away from the right." + +Romola hesitates, she pleads that her brother Dino forsook his home to +become a monk, and that possibly Savonarola may be wrong. He then appeals +to her conscience, and assures her that she has assumed relations and +duties which cannot be broken from on any plea. The human ties are forever +sacred; there can exist no causes capable of annulling them. + + "You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-will and anger, + not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them. The higher + life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own will to bow + before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of + wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before + you. That wisdom is the religion of the cross. And you stand aloof from + it; you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, 'I am as the wise men + who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth was crucified.' And + that is your wisdom! To be as the dead whose eyes are closed, and whose + ear is deaf to the work of God that has been since their time. What has + your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter? It has left you without a + heart for the neighbors among whom you dwell, without care for the + great work by which Florence is to be regenerated and the world made + holy; it has left you without a share in the Divine life which quenches + the sense of suffering self in the ardors of an ever-growing love. And + now, when the sword has pierced your soul, you say, 'I will go away; I + cannot bear my sorrow.' And you think nothing of the sorrow and the + wrong that are within the walls of the city where you dwell; you would + leave your place empty, when it ought to be filled with your pity and + your labor. If there is wickedness in the streets, your steps should + shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my + daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry, should be there to + still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come to teach you a new + worship; the sign of it hangs before you." + +This teaching of renunciation is no less distinctly presented in _The Mill +on the Floss_, the chief ethical aim of which is its inculcation. It is +also there associated with the Catholic form of its expression, through +Maggie's reading of _The Imitation of Christ_, a book which was George +Eliot's constant companion, and was found by her bedside after her death. +It was the spirit of that book which attracted George Eliot, not its +doctrines. Its lofty spirit of submission and renunciation she admired; and +she believed that altruism can be made real only through tradition, only as +associated with past heroisms and strivings and ideals. As an embodiment of +man's craving for perfect union with humanity, for full and joyous +submission to his lot, the old forms of faith are sacred. They carry the +hopes of ages; they are a pictured poem of man's inward strivings. To break +away from these memories is to forsake one's home, is to repudiate one's +mother. We cannot intellectually accept them, we cannot assent to the +dogmas associated with them; but the forms are the spontaneous expressions +of the heart, while the dogmas are an after-thought of the inquiring +intellect. The real meaning of the cross of Christ is self-sacrifice for +humanity's sake; that was its inspiration, that has ever been its true +import. It was this view of the subject which made George Eliot so +continuously associate her new teachings with the old expressions of faith. + +In altruism she believes is to be found the hope of the world, the cure of +every private pain and grief. Altruism means living for and in the race, as +a willing member of the social organic life of humanity, as desiring not +one's own good but the welfare of others. That doctrine she applies to +Maggie's case. This young girl was dissatisfied with her life, out of +harmony with her surroundings, and could not accept the theories of life +given her. + + She wanted some explanation of this hard, real life; the + unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull breakfast-table; the + childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid tasks that filled the + hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless leisure; the + need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel sense that Tom + didn't mind what she thought or felt, and that they were no longer + playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things that had + come to _her_ more than to others--she wanted some key that would + enable her to understand, and in understanding endure, the heavy weight + that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught "real + learning and wisdom, such as great men knew," she thought she should + have held the secrets of life; if she had only books, that she might + learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had never + interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. She know little of saints + and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her teaching, + that they were a temporary provision against the spread of Catholicism, + and had all died at Smithfield. + +Into the darkness of Maggie's life a light suddenly comes in the shape of +the immortal book of Thomas à Kempis. Why that book; why along such a way +should the light come? The answer is, that George Eliot meant to teach +certain ideas. It is this fact which justifies her reader in taking these +scenes of her novels, these words spoken in the interludes, as genuine +reflections and transcripts of her own mind. Maggie turns over a parcel of +books brought her by Bob Jakin, to find little in them-- + + but _Thomas à Kempis_. The name had come across her in her reading, and + she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas + to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the + little old clumsy book with some curiosity; it had the corners turned + down in many places, and some hand, now forever quiet, had made at + certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. + Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed. + "Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the + world.... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to + enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free + from care; for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every + place there will be some that will cross thee.... Both above and below, + which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the + cross; and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou + wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou + desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and + lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that + hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and + earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, + almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which + evil being once overcome and subdued, there will presently ensue great + peace and tranquillity.... It is but little thou sufferest in + comparison of them that have suffered so much, were so strongly + tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. + Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of + others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little adversities. And if + they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause + thereof.... Blessed are those ears that receive the whispers of the + divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed + are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth + outwardly, but unto the Truth which teacheth inwardly." + + A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she + had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of + beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on + from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, + hardly conscious that she was reading--seeming rather to listen while a + low voice said,-- + + "Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy + rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to + be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away, + and thou together with them. Beware thou cleave not unto them lest thou + be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his substance, yet + it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but + little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. + And if he should be of great virtue and very fervent devotion, yet is + there much wanting; to wit, one thing which is most necessary for him. + What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out + of himself, and retain nothing of self-love.... I have often said unto + thee, and now again I say the same. Forsake thyself, resign thyself, + and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace.... Then shall all vain + imaginations, evil perturbations and superfluous cares fly away; then + shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." + + Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see + a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that + would enable her to renounce all other secrets--here was a sublime + height to be reached without the help of outward things--here was + insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within + her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It + flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a + problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing + her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity of + the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of + shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her + own desires, of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own + life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She read on + and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the + invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength; + returning to it after she had been called away, and reading until the + sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination + that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight + forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness, and, in the + ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into + that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had + not perceived--how could she until she had lived longer?--the inmost + truth of the old monk's outpourings, that renunciation remains sorrow, + though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for + happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it. + She knew nothing of doctrines and systems--of mysticism or quietism; + but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct + communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to + Maggie as an unquestioned message. I suppose that is the reason why the + small, old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a + book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into + sweetness, while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave + all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that + waited for the heart's promptings; it is the chronicle of a solitary + hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph,--not written on velvet + cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding + feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of + human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages + ago, felt, and suffered, and renounced,--in the cloister, perhaps, with + serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and + with a fashion of speech different from ours,--but under the same + silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same + strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. [Footnote: The Mill + on the Floss, Book IV., chapter III.] + +Life now has a meaning for Maggie, its secret has been in some measure +opened. Only by bitter experiences does she at last learn the full meaning +of that word; but all her after-life is told for us in order that the depth +and breadth and height of that meaning may be unfolded. Very soon Maggie is +heard saying, + + "Our life is determined for us--and it makes the mind very free when we + give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and + doing what is given us to do." + +It is George Eliot who really speaks these words; hers is the thought which +inspires them. + +Yet Maggie has not learned to give up wishing; and the sorrow, the tragedy +of her life comes in consequence. She is pledged in love to Philip, the son +of the bitter enemy of her family, and is attracted to Stephen, the lover +of her cousin Lucy. A long contest is fought out in her life between +attraction and duty; between individual preferences and moral obligations. +The struggle is hard, as when Stephen avows his love, and she replies,-- + + "Oh, it is difficult--life is very difficult. It seems right to me + sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but, then, such + feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has + made for us--the ties that have made others dependent on us--and would + cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have + been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward + whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, + love would be a sign two people ought to belong to each other. But I + see--I feel that it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in + life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark + to me, but I see one thing quite clearly--that I must not, cannot seek + my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely + pity, and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live + in me still and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted + by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned." + +Against her will she elopes with Stephen, or her departure with him is so +understood; but us soon as she realizes what she has done, her better +nature asserts itself, and she refuses to go on. Stephen pleads that the +natural law which has drawn them together is greater than every other +obligation; but Maggie replies,-- + + "If we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery + and cruelty. We should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can + ever be formed on earth." + +He then asks what is outward faithfulness and constancy without love. +Maggie pleads the better spirit. + + "That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is + not right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing + what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing + whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us--whatever would + cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent + on us. If we--if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have + been so strongly present with me--I should have felt them pressing on + my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my + conscience is awake, that the opposite feeling would never have grown + in me as it has done: it would have been quenched at once. I should + have prayed for help so earnestly--I should have rushed away as we rush + from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself--none. I should never + have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been + weak, selfish and hard--able to think of their pain without a pain to + myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh. what is Lucy + feeling now? She believed in me--she loved me--she was so good to me! + Think of her!" + +She can see no good for herself which is apart from the good of others, no +joy which is the means of pain to those she holds dear. The past has made +ties and; memories which no present love or future joy can take away; she +must be true to past obligations as well as present inclinations. + + "There are memories and affections, and longing after perfect goodness, + that have such a strong hold on me, they would never quit me for long; + they would come back and be pain to me--repentance. I couldn't live in + peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I + have caused sorrow already--I know--I feel it; but I have never + deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They shall suffer + that I may have joy.'" + +And again, she says,-- + + "We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we + can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will + indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce + that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us--for the sake + of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this + belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have + felt that if I let it go forever I should have no light through the + darkness of this life." + +In these remarkable passages from _Romola_ and _The Mill on the Floss_, +George Eliot presented her own theory of life. One of her friends, in +giving an account of her moral influence, speaks of "the impression she +produced, that one of the greatest duties of life was that of resignation. +Nothing was more impressive as exhibiting the power of feelings to survive +the convictions which gave them birth, than the earnestness with which she +dwelt, on this as the great and real remedy for all the ills of life. On +one occasion she appeared to apply it to herself in speaking of the short +space of life that lay before her, and the large amount of achievement +that must be laid aside as impossible to compress into it--and the sad, +gentle tones in which the word _resignation_ was uttered, still vibrate on +the ear." [Footnote: Contemporary Review, February, 1881.] Not only +renunciation but resignation was by her held to be a prime requisite of a +truly moral life. Man must renounce many things for the sake of humanity, +but he must also resign himself to endure many things because the universe +is under the dominion of invariable laws. Much of pain and sorrow must come +to us which can in no way be avoided. A true resignation and renunciation +will enable us to turn pain and sorrow into the means of a higher life. In +_Adam Bede_ she says that "deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called +a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state." She teaches +that man can attain true unity with the race only through renunciation, +and renunciation always means suffering. Self-sacrifice means hardship, +struggle and sorrow; but the true end of life can only be attained when +self is renounced for that higher good which comes through devotion to +humanity. Her noblest characters, Maggie Tulliver, Romola, Jubal, Fedalma, +Armgart, attain peace only when they have found their lives taken up in the +good of others. To her the highest happiness consists in being loyal to +duty, and it "often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it +from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because +our souls see it is good." + +George Eliot's religion is without God, without immortality, without a +transcendent spiritual aim and duty. It consists in a humble submission to +the invariable laws of the universe, a profound love of humanity, a +glorification of feeling and affection, and a renunciation of personal and +selfish desires for an altruistic devotion to the good of the race. Piety +without God, renunciation without immortality, mysticism without the +supernatural, everywhere finds eloquent presentation in her pages. Offering +that which she believes satisfies the spiritual wants of man, she yet +rejects all the legitimate objects of spiritual desire. Even when her +characters hold to the most fervent faith, and use with the greatest +enthusiasm the old expressions of piety, it is the human elements in that +faith which are made to appear most prominently. We are told that no +radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for Romola in her +moment of direst distress and need. Then we are told that many such see no +angels; and we are made to realize that angelic voices are to George Eliot +the voices of her fellows. + + In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or + heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought + confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs + of unfailing wing and piercing vision--men who believed falsities as + well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping + hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and + often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other + choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance + and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness + and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. + +The same thought is expressed in _Silas Marner_, that man is to expect no +help and consolation except from his fellow-man. + + In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led + them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels + now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is + put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and + bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may he a + little child's. + +Even more explicit in its rejection of all sources of help, except the +human, is the motto to "The Lifted Veil." + + Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns + To energy of human fellowship; + No powers beyond the growing heritage + That makes completer manhood. + +The purpose of this story is to show that supernatural knowledge is a curse +to man. The narrator of the story is gifted with the power of divining even +the most secret thoughts of those about him, and of beholding coming +events. This knowledge brings him only evil and sorrow. His spiritual +insight did not save him from folly, and he is led to say,-- + + "There is no short cut, no patent tram-road to wisdom. After all the + centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny + wilderness, which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding + feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time." + +He also discourses of the gain which it is to man that the future is hidden +from his knowledge, + + "So absolute is our soul's need of something hidden and uncertain for + the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which are the breath + of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us beyond + to-day, the interest of all mankind would be bent on the hours that + lie between; we should pant after the uncertainties of our one morning + and our one afternoon; we should rush fiercely to the exchange for + our last possibility of speculation, of success, of disappointment; + we should have a glut of political prophets foretelling a crisis or + a no-crisis within the only twenty-four hours left open to prophecy. + Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever + were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at + the close of a summer's day, but in the mean time might be the subject + of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature + and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition that had + the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their + enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual + activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future + reality than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our + muscles." + +All is hidden from man that does not grow out of human experience, and +it is better so. Such is George Eliot's method of dealing with our craving +for a higher wisdom and a direct revelation. Such wisdom and such +revelation are not to be had, and they would not help man if he had them. +The mystery of existence rouses his curiosity, stimulates his powers, +develops art, religion, sympathy, and all that is best in human life. In +her presentations of the men and women most affected by religious motives +she adheres to this theory, and represents them as impelled, not by the +sense of God's presence, but by purely human considerations. She makes +Dorothea Brooke say,-- + + "I have always been thinking of the different ways in which + Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a + wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean + that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most + people as sharers in it." + +Of the same character is the belief which comforts Dorothea, and takes the +place to her of prayer. + + "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know + what it is and cannot do what we would, we are a part of the divine + power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the + struggle with darkness narrower." + +Mr. Tryan, in _Janet's Repentance_, is a most ardent disciple of +Evangelicalism, and accepts all its doctrines; but George Eliot contrives +to show throughout the book, that all the value of his work and religion +consisted in the humanitarian spirit of renunciation he awakened. + +George Eliot does not entirely avoid the supernatural, but she treats it as +unexplainable. Instances of her use of it are to be found in Adam Bede's +experience while at work on his father's coffin, in the visions of +Savonarola, and in Mordecai's strange faith in a coming successor to his +own faith and work. For Adam Bede's experience there is no explanation +given, nor for that curious power manifest in the "Lifted Veil." On the +other hand, the spiritual power of Savonarola and Mordecai have their +explanation, in George Eliot's philosophy, in that intuition which is +inherited insight. In her treatment of such themes she manifests her +appreciation of the great mystery which surrounds man's existence, but she +shows no faith in a spiritual world which impinges on the material, and +ever manifests itself in gleams and fore-tokenings. + +It is to be noted, however, that many traces of mysticism appear in her +works. This might have been expected from her early love of the +transcendentalists, as well as from her frequent perusal of Thomas à +Kempis. More especially was this to be expected from her conception of +feeling as the source of all that is best in man's life. The mystics always +make feeling the source of truth, prefer emotion to reason. All thinkers +who lay stress on the value of feeling are liable to become mystics, even +if materialists in their philosophy. Here and there in her pages this +tendency towards mysticism, which manifests itself in some of the more +poetic of the scientists of the present time, is to be seen in George +Eliot. Some of her words about love, music and nature partake of this +character. Her sayings about altruism and renunciation touch the border of +the mystical occasionally. Had she been less thoroughly a rationalist she +would doubtless have become a mystic in fact. Her tendency in this +direction hints at the close affinity between the evolutionists of to-day +and the idealists of a century ago. They unite in making matter and mind +identical, and in regarding feeling as a source of truth. These are the two +essential thoughts on which all mysticism rests. As modern science becomes +the basis of speculation about religion, and gives expression to these +doctrines, it will develop mysticism. Indeed, it is difficult to know +wherein much that George Eliot wrote differs from mysticism. Her subjective +immortality derived much of its acceptableness and beauty from those poetic +phases given to it by idealistic pantheism. Her altruism caught the glow of +the older humanitarianism, Her conception of feeling and emotional sympathy +is touched everywhere with that ideal glamour given it by the mystical +teachings of an earlier generation. Had she lived half a century earlier +she might have been one of Fichte's most ardent disciples, and found in his +subjective idealism the incentive to a higher inspiration than that +attained to under the leadership of Comte. Her religion would then have +differed but little from what it did in fact, but there would have been a +new sublimity and a loftier spirit at the heart of it. + +George Eliot retains the traditional life, piety and symbolism of +Christianity, but she undertakes to show they have quite another meaning +than that usually given them. Her peculiarity is that she should wish to +retain the form after the substance is gone. Comte undertook to give a new +outward expression to those needs of the soul which lead to worship and +piety; but George Eliot accepted the traditional symbolisms as far better +than anything which can be invented. If we would do no violence to feeling +and the inner needs of life, we must not break with the past, we must not +destroy the temple of the soul. The traditional worship, piety and +consecration, the poetic expression of feeling and sentiment, must be kept +until new traditions, a new symbolism, have developed themselves out of the +experiences of the race. God is a symbol for the great mystery of the +universe and of being, the eternity and universality of law. Immortality is +a symbol for the transmitted impulse which the person communicates to the +race. The life and death of Christ is a symbol of that altruistic spirit of +renunciation and sorrow willingly borne, by which humanity is being lifted +up and brought towards its true destiny. Feeling demands these symbols, the +heart craves for them. The bare enunciation of principles is not enough; +they must be clothed upon by sentiment and affection. The Christian symbols +answer to this need, they most fitly express this craving of the soul for a +higher and purer life. The spontaneous, creative life of humanity has +developed them as a fit mode of voicing its great spiritual cravings, and +only the same creative genius can replace them. The inquiring intellect +cannot furnish substitutes for them; rationalism utterly fails in all its +attempts to satisfy the spiritual nature. + +Such is George Eliot's religion. It is the "Religion of Humanity" as +interpreted by a woman, a poet and a genius. It differs from Comte's as the +work of a poet differs from that of a philosopher, as that of a woman +differs from that of a man. His _positive religion_ gives the impression of +being invented; it is artificial, unreal. Hers is, at least, living and +beautiful and impressive; it is warm, tender and full of compassion, He +invents a new symbolism, a new hierarchy, and a new worship; that is, he +remodels Catholicism to fit the Religion of Humanity. She is too sensible, +too wise, or rather too poetic and sympathetic, to undertake such a +transformation, or to be satisfied with it when accomplished by another. +She gives a new poetic and spiritual meaning to the old faith and worship; +and in doing this makes no break with tradition, rejects nothing of the old +symbolism. + +It was her conviction that nothing of the real meaning and power of +religion escaped by the transformation she made in its spiritual contents. +She believed that she had dropped only its speculative teachings, while all +that had ever made it of value was retained. That she was entirely mistaken +in this opinion scarcely needs to be said; or that her speculative +interpretation, if generally accepted, would destroy for most persons even +those elements of religion which she accepted. A large rich mind, gifted +with genius and possessed of wide culture, as was hers, could doubtless +find satisfaction in that attenuated substitute for piety and worship which +she accepted. There certainly could be no Mr. Tryan, no Dinah Morris, no +Savonarola, no Mordecai, if her theories were the common ones; and it would +be even less possible for a Dorothea, a Felix Holt, a Daniel Deronda, or a +Romola to develop in such an atmosphere. What her intellectual speculations +would accomplish when accepted as the motives of life, is seen all too well +in the case of those many radical thinkers whom this century has produced. +Only the most highly cultivated, and those of an artistic or poetic +temperament, could accept her substitute for the old religion. The motives +she presents could affect but a few persons; only here and there are to be +found those to whom altruism would be a motive large enough to become a +religion. To march in the great human army towards a higher destiny for +humanity may have a strong fascination for some, and is coming to affect +and inspire a larger number with every century; but it is not enough to +know that the race is growing better. What is the end of human progress? +we have a right to ask. Does that progress go on in accordance with some +universal purpose, which includes the whole universe? We must look not +only for a perfect destiny for man, but for a perfect destiny for all +worlds and beings throughout the infinitude of God's creative influence. A +progressive, intellectual religion such as will answer to the larger needs +of modern life, must give belief in a universal providence, and it must +teach man to trust in the spiritual capacities of his own soul. Unless the +universe means something which is intelligible, and unless it has a purpose +and destiny progressive and eternal, it is impossible that religion will +continue to inspire men. That is, only a philosophy which gives such an +interpretation to the universe can be the basis of an enduring and +progressive religion. + +If religion is to continue, it is also necessary that man should be able to +believe in the soul as something more than the product of environment and +heredity. It is not merely the belief in immortality which has inspired the +greatest minds, but the inward impulse of creative activity, resting on the +conviction that they were working with God for enduring results. Absorption +into the life of humanity can be but a feeble motive compared with that +which grows out of faith in the soul's spiritual eternity in co-operation +with God. + +George Eliot's religion is highly interesting, and in many ways it is +suggestive and profitable. Her insistence on feeling and sympathy as its +main impulses is profoundly significant; but that teaching is as good +for Theism or Christianity as for the Religion of Humanity, and needs +everywhere to be accepted. In like manner, her altruistic spirit may +be accepted and realized by those who can find no sympathy for her +intellectual speculations. Love of man, self-sacrifice for human good, +cannot be urged by too many teachers. The greater the number of motives +leading to that result, the better for man. + + + + +XII. + + +ETHICAL SPIRIT. + +Whatever may be said of George Eliot's philosophy and theology, her moral +purpose was sound and her ethical intent noble. She had a strong passion +for the ethical life, her convictions regarding it were very deep and +earnest, and she dwelt lovingly on all its higher accomplishments. Her +books are saturated with moral teaching, and her own life was ordered after +a lofty ethical standard. She seems to have yearned most eagerly after a +life of moral helpfulness and goodness, and she has made her novels the +teachers of a vigorous morality. + +Her friends bear enthusiastic testimony to the nobleness of her moral life +and to her zeal for ethical culture. We are told by one of them that "she +had upbuilt with strenuous pains a resolute virtue," conquering many +faults, and gaining a lofty nobleness of spirit. Another has said, that +"precious as the writings of George Eliot are and must always be, her life +and character were yet more beautiful than they." Her zeal for morality was +very great; she was an ethical prophet; the moral order of life roused her +mind to a lofty inspiration. If she could not conceive of God, if she could +not believe in immortality, yet she accepted duty as peremptory and +absolute. Her faith in duty and charity seemed all the more vigorous and +confident because her religion was so attenuated and imperfect. Love of man +with her grew into something like that mighty and absorbing love of God +which is to be seen in some of the greatest souls. Morality became to her a +religion, not so intense as with saints and prophets, but more sympathetic +and ardent than with most ethical teachers. She was no stoic, no teacher +of moral precepts, no didactic debater about moral duties, no mere +_dilettante_ advocate of human rights. She was a warm, tender, yearning, +sympathetic, womanly friend of individuals, who hoped great things for +humanity, and who believed that man can find happiness and true culture +only in a moral life. + +She was distinctively a moral teacher in her books. The novel was never to +her a work of art alone. The moral purpose was always present, always +apparent, always clear and emphatic. There was something to teach for her +whenever she took the pen in hand; some deep lesson of human experience, +some profound truth of human conduct, some tender word of sympathy for +human sorrow and suffering. She seems to have had no sympathy with that +theory which says that the poet and the novelist are to picture life as it +is, without regard to moral obligations and consequences. In this respect +she was one of the most partisan of all partisans, an absolute dogmatist; +for she never forgot for a moment the moral consequences of life. She was +one of the most ardent of modern preachers, her books are crowded with +teaching of the most positive character. In her way she was a great +believer, and when she believed she never restrained her pen, but taught +the full measure of her convictions. She did not look upon life as a scene +to be sketched, but as an experience to be lived, and a moral order to be +improved by sympathy and devotedness. Consequently the artist appears in +the teacher's garb, the novelist has become an ethical preacher. She does +not describe life as something outside of herself, nor does she regard +human sorrows and sufferings and labors merely as materials for the +artist's use; but she lives in and with all that men do and suffer and +aspire to. Hers is not the manner of Homer and Scott, who hide their +personality behind the wonderful distinctness of their personalities, +making the reader forget the author in the strength and power of the +characters described. It is not that of Shakspere, of whom we seem to get +no glimpse in his marvellous readings of human nature, who paints other men +as no one else has done, but who does not paint himself. Hers is rather the +manner of Wordsworth and Goethe, who have a theory of life to give us, and +whose personality appears on every page they wrote. She has a philosophy, a +morality and a religion to inculcate. She had a vast subjective intensity +of conviction, and a strong individualism of purpose, which would not hide +itself behind the scenes. Her philosophy impregnates with a strong +personality all her classic utterances; her ethics present a marked purpose +in the development of her plots and in her presentation of the outcome of +human experience; and her religion glows in the personal ardor and sympathy +of her noblest characters, and in their passion for renunciation and +altruism. + +Her ethical passion adds to the strength and purpose of George Eliot's +genius. No supreme literary creator has been devoid of this characteristic, +however objective and impersonal he may have been. Homer, Virgil, Dante, +Cervantes, Shakspere, Scott, were all earnest ethical teachers. The moral +problems of life impressed them profoundly, and they showed a strong +personal preference for righteousness. The literary masters of all times +and countries have loved virtue, praised purity, and admired ethical +uprightness. Any other attitude than this argues something less than +genius, though genius may be far from didactic and not given to preaching. +The moral intent of life is so inwoven with all its experiences, that the +failure of any mind to be impressed with it, and profoundly affected, +proves it wanting in insight, poetic vision and genius. George Eliot is +entirely in harmony, in this respect, with all the masters of the literary +art. Her ethical passion is a clear sign of her genius, and proves the +vigor of her intellectual vision. No one who rightly weighs the value of +her books, and fairly estimates the nature of her teaching, can regret that +she had so keen a love of ethical instruction. The vigor, enthusiasm and +originality of her teaching compensate for many faults. + +Her teachings have a special interest because they afford a literary +embodiment of the ethical theories of the evolution philosophy. They +indicate the form which is likely to be given to ethics if theism and +individualism are discarded, and the peculiar effects upon moral life which +will be induced by agnosticism. She applied agnosticism to morals, by +regarding good and evil as relative, and as the results, of man's +environment. For her, ethics had no infinite sanctions, no intuitive +promulgation of an eternal law; but she regarded morality as originating in +and deriving its authority from the social relations of men to each other. +Our intuitive doing of right, or sorrow for wrong, is the result of +inherited conditions. In _Romola_ she speaks of Tito as affected by-- + + the inward shame, the reflex of that outward law which the great heart + of mankind makes for every individual man, a reflex which will exist + even in the absence of the sympathetic impulses that need no law, but + rush to the deed of fidelity and pity as inevitably as the brute mother + shields her young from the attack of the hereditary enemy. [Footnote: + Chapter IX.] + +This teaching is often found in her pages, and in connection with the +assertion of the relativity of morals. There is no absolute moral law for +her, no eternal ideal standard; but what is right is determined by the +environment. Instead of Kant's categorical imperative of the moral law, +proclaimed as a divine command in every soul, George Eliot found in the +conscience and in the moral intuitions simply inherited experiences. In +_Daniel Deronda_ she says, "Our consciences are not all of the same +pattern, an inner deliverance of fixed laws; they are the voice of +sensibilities as various as our memories." + +George Eliot's rejection of any absolute standard of moral conduct or of +happiness continually asserts itself in her pages. We must look at the +individual, his inherited moral power, his environment, his special +motives, if we would judge him aright. In the last chapters of _The Mill on +the Floss_, when writing of Maggie's repentance, this idea appears. Maggie +is not to be tried by the moral ideal of Christianity, nor by any such +standard of perfection as Kant proposed, but by all the circumstances of +her place in life and her experience. We are accordingly told that-- + + Moral judgments must remain false and hollow unless they are checked + and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances + that mark the individual lot. + +George Eliot says in one of the mottoes in _Felix Holt_ that moral +happiness is "mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions." +Even more explicit is her assertion, in one of the mottoes of _Daniel +Deronda_, of the relativity of moral power. + + Looking at life in the growth of a single lot, who having a practised + vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and + false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled--like that + falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing + that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp-- + precipitate the mistaken soul on destruction? + +She does not teach, however, that man is a mere victim of circumstances, +that he is a creature ruled by fate. His environment includes his own moral +heredity, which may overcome the physical circumstances which surround him. +In _Middlemarch_ she says, "It always remains true that if we had been +greater, circumstances would have been less strong against us." The same +thought appears in Zarca's appeal to Fedalma to be his true daughter, in +one of the most effective scenes of _The Spanish Gypsy_. Moral devotedness +is the strongest of all forces, he argues, even when it fails of its +immediate aim; and even in failure the inherited life of the race is +enlarged. + + No great deed is done + By falterers who ask for certainty. + No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, + The undivided will to seek the good: + 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings + A human music from the indifferent air. + The greatest gift the hero leaves his race + Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!-- + We feed the high tradition of the world, + And leave our spirit in our children's breasts. + +George Eliot never goes so far as to say that man may, by virtue of his +inward life, rise superior to all circumstances, and maintain the +inviolable sanctity of his own moral nature. She does not forget that +defeat is often the surest victory, that moral faithfulness may lead to +disgrace and death; but even in these cases it is for the sake of the race +we are to be faithful. The inward victory, the triumph of the soul in +unsullied purity and serenity, she does not dwell upon; and it may be +doubted if she fully recognized such a moral result. Her mind is so +occupied with the social results of conduct as to overlook the individual +victories which life ever brings to those who are faithful unto death. +George Eliot has put her theory of morality into the mouth of Guildenstern, +one of the characters in "A College Breakfast Party." + + Where get, you say, a binding law, a rule + Enforced by sanction, an Ideal throned + With thunder in its hand? I answer, there + Whence every faith and rule has drawn its force + Since human consciousness awaking owned + An Outward, whose unconquerable sway + Resisted first and then subdued desire + By pressure of the dire impossible + Urging to possible ends the active soul + And shaping so its terror and its love. + Why, you have said it--threats and promises + Depend on each man's sentence for their force: + All sacred rules, imagined or revealed, + Can have no form or potency apart + From the percipient and emotive mind. + God, duty, love, submission, fellowship, + Must first be framed in man, as music is, + Before they live outside him as a law. + And still they grow and shape themselves anew, + With fuller concentration in their life + Of inward and of outward energies + Blending to make the last result called Man, + Which means, not this or that philosopher + Looking through beauty into blankness, not + The swindler who has sent his fruitful lie + By the last telegram: it means the tide + Of needs reciprocal, toil, trust and love-- + The surging multitude of human claims + Which make "a presence not to be put by" + Above the horizon of the general soul. + Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, + And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?-- + The outward reason has the world in store, + Regenerates passion with the stress of want, + Regenerates knowledge with discovery, + Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, + Widens dependence, knits the social whole + In sensible relation more defined. + +As these words would indicate, George Eliot's faith in the moral meaning +and outcome of the world is very strong. All experience is moral, she would +have us believe, and capable of teaching man the higher life. That is, all +experience tends slowly to bring man into harmony with his environment, and +to teach him that certain actions are helpful, while others are harmful. +This teaching is very definite and emphatic in her pages, often rising into +a lofty eloquence and a rich poetic diction, as her mind is wrought upon by +the greatness and the impressiveness of the moral lessons of life. + +However effective the outward order of nature may be in creating morality, +it is to be borne in mind that ethical rules can have no effect "apart from +the percipient and emotive mind." It is, in reality, the social nature +which gives morality its form and meaning. It is a creation of the social +organism. Its basis is found, indeed, in the invariable order of nature, +but the superstructure is erected out of and by society. "Man's individual +functions," says Lewes, "arise in relations to the cosmos; his general +functions arise in relations to the social medium; thence moral life +emerges. All the animal impulses become blended with human emotions. In the +process of evolution, starting from the merely animal appetite of +sexuality, we arrive at the purest and most far-reaching tenderness. The +social instincts tend more and more to make sociality dominate animality, +and thus subordinate personality to humanity.... The animal has sympathy, +and is moved by sympathetic impulses, but these are never altruistic; the +ends are never remote. Moral life is based on sympathy; it is feeling for +others, working for others, aiding others, quite irrespective of any +personal good beyond the satisfaction of the social impulse. Enlightened by +the intuition of our community of weakness, we share ideally the universal +sorrows. Suffering harmonizes. Feeling the need of mutual help, we are +prompted by it to labor for others." [Footnote: Foundations of a Creed, +vol. I., pp. 147, 153.] Morality is social, not personal; the result of +those instincts which draw men together in community of interests, +sympathies and sufferings. Its sanctions are all social; its motives are +purely human; its law is created by the needs of humanity. There is no +outward coercive law of the divine will or of invariable order which is to +be supremely regarded; the moral law is human need as it changes from age +to age. The increase of human sympathies in the process of social evolution +gives the true moral ideal to be aspired after. What will increase the +social efficiency of the race, what will promote altruism, is moral. + +Alike because of the invariable order of nature, and the social dependence +of men on each other, are the effects of conduct wrought out in the +individual. George Eliot believes in "the orderly sequence by which the +seed brings forth a crop after its kind." All evil is injurious to man, +destructive of the integrity of his life. She teaches the doctrine of +Nemesis with as much conviction, thoroughness and eloquence as the old +Greek dramatists, making sin to be punished, and wrong-doing to be +destructive. Sometimes she presents this doctrine with all the stern, +unpitying vigor of an Aeschylus, as a dire effect of wrong that comes upon +men with an unrelenting mercilessness. In _Janet's Repentance_ she says,-- + + Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and + sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her + huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but + the victim totters under the dire clutch. + +Her doctrine of Nemesis resembles that of the old Greeks more than that of +the modern optimists and theists. Hers is not the idealistic conception of +compensation, which measures out an exact proportion of punishment for +every sin, and of happiness for every virtuous action. Wrong-doing injures +others as well as those who commit the evil deed, and moral effects reach +far beyond those who set them in operation. Very explicitly is this fact +presented in _The Mill on the Floss_. + + So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer + for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that + even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that + does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain. + +In _Adam Bede_, Parson Irwine says to Arthur,-- + + Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences + quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that + are hardly ever confined to ourselves. + +Yet wrong-doing does not go unpunished, for the law of moral cause and +effect ever holds good. This is the teaching of the first chapter of _Felix +Holt_. + + There is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it some + downfall of blindly climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering, some + quickly satiated desire that survives, with the life in death of old + paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny--some tragic + mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life that + went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has raised + the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern between + will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the world, for + there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make + human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying + existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of + murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and + joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer--committed to no sound except that + of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the + face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. + Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into + no human ear. + +In the same novel we are told, that-- + + To the end of men's struggles a penalty will remain for those who sink + from the ranks of the heroes into the crowd for whom the heroes fight + and die. + +The same teaching is to be found in the motto of _Daniel Deronda_, where we +are bidden to fear the evil tendencies of our own souls. + + Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: + There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires + That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, + Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible + As exhalations laden with slow death, + And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys + Breathes pallid pestilence. + +The manner in which George Eliot believes Nemesis works out her results has +already been indicated. Her effects do not appear in any outward and +palpable results, necessarily; her method is often unknown to men, hidden +even from the keenest eyes. Evil causes produce evil results, that is all; +and these are shown in the most subtle and secret results of what life is. +One of her methods is indicated in _Adam Bede_. + + Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences-- + out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused; there + is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral + sense learns the manners of good society, and smiles when others smile; + but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt + to take part against us. + +_The Mill on the Floss_ reflects this thought. + + Retribution may come from any voice; the hardest, crudest most imbruted + urchin at the street-corner can inflict it. + +More effective still is that punishment which comes of our own inward sense +of wrong-doing. George Eliot makes Parson Irwine say that "the inward +suffering is the worst form of Nemesis." This is well illustrated in the +experience of Gwendolen, who, after the death of her husband at Geneva, is +anxious to leave that place. + + For what place, though it were the flowery vale of Enna, may not the + inward sense turn into a circle of punishment where the flowers are no + better than a crop of flame-tongues burning the soles of our feet? + +Even before this, Gwendolen had come to realize the dire effects of selfish +conduct in that dread and bitterness of spirit which subdued her and mocked +all her hopes and joys. + + Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending + to a predominance which determines all currents toward itself, and + makes the whole life its tributary. And the intensest form of hatred is + that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and drives vehemence into + a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the + deserted object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with + which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed + their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the + secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect--rather with + the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her + husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the + pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse. The vision of her past + wrong-doing, and what it had brought on her, came with a pale ghastly + illumination over every imagined deed that was a rash effort at + freedom, such as she had made in her marriage. [Footnote: Chapter LIV.] + +The way in which wrong-doing affects us to our hurt is suggested also in +_Romola_, where its results upon the inward life are explicitly revealed. + + Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, + whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The + contaminating effect of deeds lies less in the commission than in + the consequent adjustment of our desires--the enlistment of our + self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the + purifying effect of public confession springs from the fact that by it + the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble + attitude of simplicity. + +In the same novel the effect of wrong-doing is regarded as an inward and +subduing fear of the consequences of our conduct. This dread so commonly +felt, and made a most effective motive by all religions, George Eliot +regards as the soul's testimony to the great law of retribution. Experience +that moral causes produce moral effects, as that law is every day taught +us, takes hold of feeling, and becomes a nameless dread of the avenging +powers. + + Having once begun to explain away Baldassarre's claim, Tito's thought + showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way + through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that + dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher + than a man's animal care for his own skin; that awe of the divine + Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more + positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind + simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such + terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it + will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a + moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of + imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have + any sanctity in the absence of feeling. "It is good," sing the old + Eumenides, in Aeschylus, "that fear should sit as the guardian of the + soul, forcing it into wisdom--good that men should carry a threatening + shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else how shall they + learn to revere the light?" That guardianship may become needless; but + only when all outward law has become needless--only when duty and love + have united in one stream and made a common force. [Footnote: Chapter + XI.] + +Another form in which Nemesis punishes us is described in the essay on "A +Half-Breed" in _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Mixtus was a man +with noble aims, but he was fascinated by Scintilla, and realized none of +his ideals. He was captivated by her prettiness, liveliness and music, and +then he was captured on his worldly side. She did not believe in "notions" +and reforms, and he succumbed to her wishes. As a result, his life was +crippled, he was always unsatisfied with himself. Of this form of +retribution George Eliot says,-- + + An early deep-seated love to which we become faithless has its + unfailing Nemesis, if only in that division of soul which narrows all + newer joys by the intrusion of regret and the established presentiment + of change. I refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love + of ideas, practical beliefs and social habits. And faithlessness here + means not a gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a + yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original + choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a + growing desire. In this sort of love it is the forsaker who has the + melancholy lot; for an abandoned belief may be more effectively + vengeful than Dido. The child of a wandering tribe, caught young and + trained to polite life, if he feels a hereditary yearning, can run away + to the old wilds and get his nature into tune. But there is no such + recovery possible to the man who remembers what he once believed + without being convinced that he was in error, who feels within him + unsatisfied stirrings toward old beloved habits and intimacies from + which he has far receded without conscious justification or unwavering + sense of superior attractiveness in the new. This involuntary renegade + has his character hopelessly jangled and out of tune. He is like an + organ with its stops in the lawless condition of obtruding themselves + without method, so that hearers are amazed by the most unexpected + transitions--the trumpet breaking in on the flute, and the oboe + confounding both. + +With a strong and eloquent energy, George Eliot teaches the natural +consequences of conduct. Every feeling, thought and deed has its effect, +comes to fruition. Desire modifies life, shapes our destiny, moulds us into +the image of its own nature. Actions become habits, become controlling +elements in our lives, and tend to work out their own legitimate results. +The whole of George Eliot's doctrine of retribution is, that human causes, +as much as any other, lead to their appropriate effects. Her frequent use +of the word _Nemesis_ indicates the idea she had of the inevitableness of +moral consequences, that a force once set in motion can never be recalled +in its effects, which make a permanent modification of human life in its +present and in its past. It was not the old doctrine of fate which she +presented, not any arbitrary inflictment from supernatural powers. The +inevitableness of moral consequences influenced her as a solemn and fearful +reality which man must strictly regard if he would find true manhood. + +The doctrine of retribution is very clearly taught by George Eliot in her +comments. With a still greater distinctness it is taught in the development +of her characters. As we follow the careers of Hetty, Maggie, Tito, +Fedalma, Lydgate and Gwendolen we see how wonderful was George Eliot's +insight into the moral issues of life. Not only with these, but with all +her characters, we see a righteous moral unfoldment of character into its +effects. There is no compromise with evil in her pages; all selfishness, +wrong and crime comes to its proper results. The vanity and selfishness of +Hetty leads to what terrible crime and shame for her, and what misery for +others! Tito's selfishness and want of resolute purpose carries him +inevitably downward to a hideous end. What is so plain in the case of these +characters is as true, though not so palpable, in that of many others in +her books. Dorothea's conduct is clearly shown to develop into consequences +(as did Lydgate's) which were the natural results of what she thought, did +and was. Maggie's misery was the product of her conduct, the legitimate +outcome of it. + +George Eliot goes beyond the conduct of any one person and its results, and +attempts to show how it is affected by the person's environment. It was +Maggie's family, education, social standing and personal qualities of mind +and heart which helped to determine for her the consequences of her +conduct. It was Dorothea's education and social environment which largely +helped to shape her career and to leave her bereaved of the largest +possibilities of which her life was capable. Gwendolen's life was largely +determined by her early training and by her social surroundings. Yet with +all these, life has its necessary issues, and Nemesis plays its part. +Retribution is for all; it is ever stern, just and inevitable. Just, +however, only in the sense that wrong-doing cannot escape its own effects, +but not just in the sense that the guiltless must often share the fate +of the guilty. Wrong-doing drags down to destruction many an innocent +person. It is to be said of George Eliot, however, that she never presents +any of her characters as doomed utterly by the past. However strong the +memories of the ages lay upon them, they are capable of self-direction. +Not one of her characters is wholly the victim of his environment. There +is no hint in _Middlemarch_ that Dorothea was not capable of heroism and +self-consecration. Her environment gave a wrong direction to her moral +purpose; but that purpose remained, and the moral nobleness of her mind was +not destroyed. Still, it is largely true, that in her books the individual +is sacrificed to his social environment. He is to renounce his own +personality for the sake of the race. Consequently his fate is linked with +that of others, and he must suffer from other men's deeds. + +With all its limitations and defects, George Eliot's teaching concerning +the moral effects of conduct is wholesome and healthy. It rests on a solid +foundation of experience and scientific evidence. Her books are full of +moral stimulus and strengthening, because of the profound conviction with +which she has presented her conception of moral cause and effect. With her, +we must believe that moral sequences are as inevitable as the physical. + +It would be very unjust to George Eliot to suppose that she left man in the +hands of a relentless moral order which manifests no tenderness and which +is incapable of pity and mercy. She did not believe in an Infinite Father, +full of love and forgiveness; that faith was not for her. Yet she did +believe in a providence which can assuage man's sorrows and deal tenderly +with his wrong-doing. While nature is stern and the moral sequences of life +unbending, man may be sympathetic and helpful. Man is to be the providence +of man; humanity is to be his tender forgiving Friend. A substitute so +poor for the old faith would seem to have little power of moral renovation +or sympathetic impulse in it; but it quickened George Eliot's mind with +enthusiasm and ardor. The "enthusiasm of humanity" filled her whole soul, +was a luminous hope in her heart and an inspiring purpose to her mind. +With Goethe and Carlyle she found in work for humanity the substitute +for all faith and the cure for all doubt. Faust finds for his life a +purpose, and for the universe a solution, when he comes to labor for the +practical improvement of humanity. This was George Eliot's own conclusion, +that it is enough for us to see the world about us made a little better +and more orderly by our efforts. All her noblest characters find in +altruism a substitute for religion, and they find there a moral anchorage. +She says very plainly in _Middlemarch_, that every doctrine is capable of +"eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct +fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men." To the same effect is her +saying in _Romola_, that "with the sinking of the high human trust the +dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, +since that also is a part of the common nature which is degraded in +our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled." In +_Janet's Repentance_ she has finely presented this faith in sympathetic +humanitarianism, showing how Janet found peace in the sick-room where all +had been doubt and trial before. + + Day after day, with only short intervals of rest, Janet kept her place + in that sad chamber. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so + often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt--a place of + repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all + creeds and all philosophies are at one:--here, at least, the conscience + will not be dogged by doubt--the benign impulse will not be checked by + adverse theory: here you may begin to act without settling one + preliminary question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through + the long night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the + helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond + the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye--these + are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent + to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls + where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is + subdued,--where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender + mercies of his fellow,--the moral relation of man to man is reduced to + its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory + cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute + nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed all the forces of our + nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience and of love, and + sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, + our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires. This blessing + of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple, + direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is + often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there + are of a hard and terrible kind. [Footnote: Chapter XXIV.] + +The basis of such sympathetic helpfulness she finds in the common sorrows +and trials of the world. All find life hard, pain comes to all, none are to +be found unacquainted with sorrow. These common experiences draw men +together in sympathy, unite them in a common purpose of assuagement and +help. The sorrow of Adam Bede made him more gentle and patient with his +brother. + + It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at + work within him. For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, + working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable + nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a + temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God + forbid! It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling + if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could + return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same + light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over + blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown toward + which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us + rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible + force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into + sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our + best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had + completely taken place in Adam yet; there was still a great remnant of + pain, which he felt would subsist as long as _her_ pain was not a + memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with + the light of every morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as + bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it; it + becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of + perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission; + and we are contented with our day when we are able to bear our grief in + silence, and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods + that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations + beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the + centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert. + +Armgart finds that "true vision comes only with sorrow." Sorrow and +suffering create a sympathy which sends us to the relief of others. "Pain +must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into +compassion," we are told in _Middlemarch_. In the trying hours of Maggie +Tulliver's life she came to know-- + + that new sense which is the gift of sorrow--that susceptibility to the + bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving + fellowship. + +Again, she learns that "more helpful than all wisdom is one draught of +simple human pity that will not forsake us." Man is in this way brought to +live for man, to suffer in his sufferings, to be mercifully tender and +pitiful with him in his temptations and trials. Sympathy builds up the +moral life, gives an ethical meaning to man's existence. Thus humanity +becomes a providence to man, and it is made easier for him to bear his +sufferings and to be comforted in his sorrows. Nemesis is stern, but man is +pitiful; retribution is inexorable, but humanity is sympathetic. Nature +never relents, and there is no God who can so forgive us our sins as to +remove their legitimate effects; but man can comfort us with his love, and +humanity can teach us to overcome retribution by righteous conduct. + +All idealistic rights are to be laid aside, according to her theory, all +personal claims and motives are to be renounced. In the duties we owe to +others, life is to find its rightful expression. In _Janet's Repentance_ +she says,-- + + The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond + the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition + of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to + mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order + of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has + been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of + impressions, desires and impulses. + +To live for self, George Eliot seems to regard as immoral; self is to be +ignored except in so far as it can be made to serve humanity. As rights are +individual they are repudiated, and the demand for them is regarded as +revolutionary and destructive. + +That man is a moral being because he is a social being she carries to its +farthest extreme in some of her teachings, as when she makes public opinion +the great motive power to social improvement. Felix Holt pronounces public +opinion--the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is +wrong, what is honorable and what is shameful--to be the greatest power +under heaven. In the "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt," published in +_Blackwood's Magazine_, Felix is made to say to his fellows,-- + + Any nation that had within it a majority of men--and we are the + majority--possessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the + bad practices, the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous + adulteration of goods, the retail cheating and the political bribery + which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A majority has the + power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and his-s before we + had the franchise: if we had groaned and hissed in the right place, if + we had discerned better between good and evil, if the multitude of us + artisans and factory hands and miners and laborers of all sorts had + been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober--and I don't + see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere without these + qualities--we should have made an audience that would have shamed the + other classes out of their share in the national vices. We should have + had better members of Parliament, better religious teachers, honester + tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence in infamous and + brutal men; and we should not have had among us the abomination of men + calling themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-gotten + gains. I say it is not possible for any society in which there is a + very large body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our + society is--to have as low a standard of right and wrong, to have so + much belief in falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a notion + of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above his fellows. + Therefore let us have done with this nonsense about our being much + better than the rest of our countrymen, or the pretence that that was a + reason why we ought to have such an extension of the franchise as has + been given to us. + +The essay on "Moral Swindlers," in _Theophrastus Such_, clearly indicates +George Eliot's point of view in ethics. She makes those moral traits which +are social of greater importance than those which are personal. She +complains that a man who is chaste and of a clean personal conduct is +regarded as a moral man when his business habits are not good. To her, his +relations to his fellows in all the social and business affairs of life are +of higher importance than his personal habits or his family relations. She +rebels against that deep moral instinct of the race which identifies +morality with personal character, and is indignant that the altruism she so +much believed in is not everywhere made identical with ethics. To her, the +person is nothing; the individual is thought of only as a member of a +community. She forgot that any large and noble moral life for a people must +rest upon personal character, upon a pure and healthy state of the moral +nature in individuals. Nations cannot be moral, but persons can. Public +corruption has its foundation in personal corruption. The nation cannot +have a noble moral life unless the individuals of which it is composed are +pure in character and noble in conduct. She complains that sexual purity is +made identical with morality, while business integrity is not. Every social +and moral bond we have, she says, "is a debt; the right lies in the payment +of that debt; _it can lie nowhere else_." It is a debt owed, not to God, +but to humanity; it is therefore to be paid, not by personal holiness, but +by human sympathy and devotion. + +The higher social morality, that which inspires nations with great and +heroic purposes, George Eliot believes is mainly due, as she says in the +essay on "The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" "to the divine gift of a memory which +inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, and gives the +sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more +respectable and innocent brute." The memories of the past lie mainly in the +direction of national movements, and hence the higher moral life of the +present must be associated with national memories. The glorious +commonplaces of historic teaching, as well as of moral inspiration, are to +be found in the fact "that the preservation of national memories is an +element and a means of national greatness, that their revival is a sign of +reviving nationality, and that every heroic defender, every patriotic +restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has made them his +watchword." To reject such memories, such social influences, she regards as +"a blinding superstition," and says that the moral visions of a nation are +an effective bond which must be accepted by all its members. Two of her +most characteristic books are written to inculcate this teaching. In _The +Spanish Gypsy_ we learn that there is no moral strength and purpose for a +man like Don Silva, who repudiates his country, its memories and its +religion. The main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is to show how binding and +inspiring is the vision of moral truth and life which comes from +association even with the national memories of an outcast and alien people. + +She wished to see individuals helped and good done in the present. She +makes Theophrastus Such, in the essay on "Looking Backward," speak her own +mind. + + "All reverence and gratitude for the worthy dead on whose labors we + have entered, all care for the future generations whose lot we are + preparing; but some affection and fairness for those who are doing the + actual work of the world, some attempt to regard them with the same + freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we + may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the + looking before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in + danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more + illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the + ascetic's contemplation of heaven." + +Again, she says that "the action by which we can do the best for future +ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for +contemporaries." And this was not merely the teaching of her books, it was +the practice of her life. Miss Edith Simcox has made it clear that she was +zealously anxious to help men and women by personal effort. She tells us +that "George Eliot's sympathies went out more readily towards enthusiasm +for the discharge of duties than for the assertion of rights. It belonged +to the positive basis of her character to identify herself more with what +people wished to do themselves than with what they thought somebody else +ought to do for them. Her indignation was vehement enough against dishonest +or malicious oppression, but the instinct to make allowance for the other +side made her a bad hater in politics, and there may easily have been some +personal sympathy in her description of Deronda's difficulty about the +choice of a career. She was not an inviting auditor for those somewhat +pachydermatous philanthropists who dwell complacently upon 'cases' and +statistics which represent appalling depths of individual suffering. Her +imagination realized these facts with a vividness that was physically +unbearable, and unless she could give substantial help, she avoided the +fruitless agitation. At the same time, her interest in all rational good +works was of the warmest, and she was inclined to exaggerate rather than +undervalue the merits of their promoters, with one qualification only. +'Help the millions, by all means,' she has written; 'I only want people not +to scorn the narrower effect.' Charity that did not begin at home repelled +her as much as she was attracted by the unpretentious kindness which +overlooked no near opportunity; and perhaps we should not be far wrong in +guessing that she thought for most people the scrupulous discharge of all +present and unavoidable duties was nearly occupation enough. Not every one +was called to the high but difficult vocation of setting the world to +rights. But on the other hand, it must be remembered that her standard of +exactingness was 'high, and some of the things that in her eyes it was +merely culpable to leave undone might be counted by others among virtues of +supererogation. Indeed, it is within the limits of possibility that a +philanthropist wrapped in over-much conscious virtue might imagine her cold +to the objects proposed, when she only failed to see uncommon merit in +their pursuit. No one, however, could recognize with more generous fervor, +more delighted admiration, any genuine unobtrusive devotion in either +friends or strangers, whether it were spent in making life easier to +individuals, or in mending the conditions among which the masses live and +labor.' This writer gives us further insight into George Eliot's character +when we are told that 'she came as a very angel of consolation to those +persons of sufficiently impartial mind to find comfort in the hint that the +world might be less to blame than they were as to those points on which +they found themselves in chronic disagreement with it. But she had nothing +welcome for those whose idea of consolation is the promise of a _deus ex +machina_ by whose help they may gather grapes of thorns and figs of +thistles. She thought there was much needed doing in the world, and +criticism of our neighbors and the natural order might wait at all events +until the critic's own character and conduct were free from blame.' She had +faith in ordinary lives, and these she earnestly desired to help and +encourage. Those who themselves struggle with difficulties are best +capable, she thought, of helping others out of theirs. In _Daniel Deronda_ +she said, 'Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless; as if those were not +often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their +mistakes.'" + +George Eliot's interest in the present amelioration of human conditions was +strengthened by her faith in the future of the race. She expected no rapid +improvement, no revolutionizing development; but she believed the past of +mankind justifies faith in a gradual attainment of perfect conditions. This +conviction was expressed when she said,-- + + What I look to is a time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be + as immediate and irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something + firm if I am falling. + +She saw too much evil and suffering to be an optimist; she could not see +that all things are good or tending towards what is good. Yet her faith in +the final outcome was earnest, and she looked to a slow and painful +progress as the result of human struggles. When called an optimist, she +responded, "I will not answer to the name of optimist, but if you like to +invent Meliorist, I will not say you call me out of my name." She trusted +in that gradual development which science points out as the probable result +of the survival of the fittest in human life. In "A Minor Prophet" she has +presented her conception of human advancement, and tenderly expressed her +sympathy with all humble, imperfect lives. + + Bitterly + I feel that every change upon this earth + Is bought with sacrifice. My yearnings fail + To reach that high apocalyptic mount + Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world, + Or enter warmly into other joys + Than those of faulty, struggling human kind, + That strain upon my soul's too perfect wing + Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall + Into short-sighted pity for the men + Who, living in those perfect future times, + Will not know half the dear imperfect things + That move my smiles and tears--will never know + The fine old incongruities that raise + My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits + That like a needless eyeglass or black patch + Give those who wear them harmless happiness; + The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, + That touch me to more conscious fellowship + (I am not myself the finest Parian) + With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout, + To whom raw onions give prospective zest, + Consoling hours of dampest wintry work, + Could hardly fancy any regal joys + Quite unimpregnate with the onion's scent: + Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear + Of waftings from that energetic bulb: + 'Tis well that onion is not heresy. + Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout. + A clinging flavor penetrates ray life-- + My onion is imperfectness: I cleave + To nature's blunders, evanescent types + Which sages banish from Utopia. + "Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend! + I worship in the temple with the rest; + But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook + For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves + Who stitched and hammered for the weary man + In days of old. And in that piety + I clothe ungainly forms inherited + From toiling generations, daily bent + At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, + In pioneering labors for the world. + Nay, I am apt, when floundering confused + From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox, + And pity future men who will not know + A keen experience with pity blent, + The pathos exquisite of lovely minds + Hid in harsh forms--not penetrating them + Like fire divine within a common bush + Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest, + So that men put their shoes off; but encaged + Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell, + Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars; + But having shown a little dimpled hand, + Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts + Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls. + A foolish, nay, a wicked paradox! + For purest pity is the eye of love, + Melting at sight of sorrow; and to grieve + Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love + Warped from its truer nature, turned to love + Of merest habit, like the miser's greed. + But I am Colin still: my prejudice + Is for the flavor of my daily food. + Not that I doubt the world is growing still, + As once it grew from chaos and from night; + Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope + Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn, + With earliest watchings of the rising light + Chasing the darkness; and through many an age + Has raised the vision of a future time + That stands an angel, with a face all mild, + Spearing the demon. I, too, rest in faith + That man's perfection is the crowning flower + Towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree + Is pressing--seen in puny blossoms now, + But in the world's great morrows to expand + With broadest petal and with deepest glow. + +With no disgust toward the crude and wretched life man everywhere lives +to-day, but with pity and tenderness for all sorrow, suffering and +struggle, she yet believed that the world is being shaped to a glorious +and a mighty destiny. This faith finds full and clear expression in the +concluding lines of the poem just quoted. + + The faith that life on earth is being shaped + To glorious ends, that order, justice, love, + Mean man's completeness, mean effect as sure + As roundness in the dewdrop--that great faith + Is but the rushing and expanding stream + Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past. + Our finest hope is finest memory, + As they who love in age think youth is blest + Because it has a life to fill with love. + Full souls are double mirrors, making still + An endless vista of fair things before + Repeating things behind: so faith is strong + Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink. + It comes when music stirs us, and the chords + Moving on some grand climax shake our souls + With influx new that makes new energies. + It comes in swellings of the heart and tears + That rise at noble and at gentle deeds-- + At labors of the master-artist's hand + Which, trembling, touches to a finer end, + Trembling before an image seen within. + It comes in moments of heroic love, + Unjealous joy in love not made for us-- + In conscious triumph of the good within, + Making us worship goodness that rebukes. + Even our failures are a prophecy, + Even our yearnings and our bitter tears + After that fair and true we cannot grasp; + As patriots who seem to die in vain + Make liberty more sacred by their pangs, + Presentiment of better things on earth + Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls + To admiration, self-renouncing love, + Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one: + Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night + We hear the roll and dash of waves that break + Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide, + Which rises to the level of the cliff + Because the wide Atlantic roils behind, + Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs. + +George Eliot did all that could be done to make the morality she taught +commendable and inspiring. In her own direct teachings, and in the +development of her characters and her plots, she has done much to make it +acceptable. Her strong insistence on the social basis of morality is to be +admired, and the truth presented is one of great importance. Even more +important is her teaching of the stern nature of retribution, that every +thought, word and deed has its effect. There is need of such teaching, and +it can be appropriated into the thought and life of the time with great +promise of good. Yet the outcome of George Eliot's morality was rather +depressing than otherwise. While she was no pessimist, yet she made her +readers feel that life was pessimistic in its main tendencies. She makes on +the minds of very many of her readers the impression that life has not very +much light in it. This comes from the whole cast of her mind, and still +more because the light of true ideal hopes was absent from her thought. A +stern, ascetic view of life appears throughout her pages, one of the +results of the new morality and the humanitarian gospel of altruism. +Unbending, unpitiful, does the universe seem to be when the idea of law and +Nemesis is so strongly presented, and with no relief from it in the theory +of man's free will. Not less depressing to the moral nature is an +unrelieved view of the universe under the omnipotent law of cause and +effect, which is not lighted by any vision of God and a spiritual order +interpenetrating the material. Her teaching too often takes the tone of +repression; it is hard and exacting. She devotes many pages to showing the +effects of the law of retribution; she gives comparatively few to the +correlative law that good always has its reward. Renunciation is presented +as a moral force, and as duty of supreme importance; life is to be +repressed for the sake of humanity. The spontaneous tendencies of the mind +and heart, the importance of giving a free and healthy development to human +nature, is not regarded. Her morality is justly to be criticised for its +ascetic and pessimistic tendencies. + + + + +XIII. + + +EARLIER NOVELS. + +The first four novels written by George Eliot form a group by themselves; +and while all similar to each other in their main characteristics, are in +important respects different from her later works. This group includes +_Clerical Scenes, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss_ and _Silas Marner_. +With these may also be classed "Brother Jacob." They are all alike novels +of memory, and they deal mainly with common life. Her own life and the +surroundings of her childhood, the memories and associations and +suggestions of her early life, are drawn upon. The simple surroundings and +ideas of the midland village are seldom strayed away from, and most of the +characters are farmers and their laborers, artisans or clergymen. _The Mill +on the Floss_ offers a partial exception to this statement, for in that +book we touch upon the border of a different form of society, but we +scarcely enter into it, and the leading characters are from the same class +as those in the other books of this group. "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" alone +enters wholly within the circle of aristocratic society. There is more of +the realism of actual life in these novels than in her later ones, greater +spontaneity and insight, a deeper sympathy and a more tender pathos. They +came more out of her heart and sympathies, are more impassioned and +pathetic. + +Throughout the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ are descriptions of actual scenes +and incidents known to George Eliot in her girlhood. Mrs. Hackit is a +portrait of her own mother. In the first chapter of "Amos Barton," +Shepperton Church is that at Chilvers Colon, which she attended throughout +her childhood. It is from memory, and with an accurate pen, she describes-- + + Shepperton Church as it was in the old days with its outer court of + rough stucco, its red-tiled roof, its heterogeneous windows patched + with desultory bits of painted glass, and its little flight of steps + with their wooden rail running up the outer wall, and leading to the + school-children's gallery. Then inside, what dear old quaintnesses! + which I began to look at with delight, even when I was so crude a + member of the congregation that my nurse found it necessary to + provide for the reinforcement of my devotional patience by smuggling + bread-and-butter into the sacred edifice. There was the chancel, + guarded by two little cherubims looking uncomfortably squeezed between + arch and wall, and adorned with the escutcheons of the Oldinport + family, which showed me inexhaustible possibilities of meaning in their + blood-red hands, their death's-heads and cross-bones, their leopards' + paws and Maltese crosses. There were inscriptions on the panels of the + singing-gallery, telling of benefactions to the poor of Shepperton, + with an involuted elegance of capitals and final flourishes which my + alphabetic erudition traced with ever-new delight. No benches in those + days; but huge roomy pews, round which devout churchgoers sat during + "lessons," trying to look everywhere else than into each others' eyes. + No low partitions allowing you, with a dreary absence of contrast and + mystery, to see everything at all moments; but tall dark panels, under + whose shadow I sank with a sense of retirement through the Litany, only + to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public + life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the + singing. + +Not only is this description of Shepperton Church accurate in every +particular, but a subject of neighborhood gossip is made the basis of the +story of "Amos Barton." When George Eliot was about a dozen years old a +strange lady appeared at the Cotou parsonage, and became a subject of much +discussion on the part of the parishioners. Much pity was felt for the wife +of the curate, an intimate friend of Marian Evans's mother, whose poverty, +seven children and poor health made her burdens far from easy. She died not +long after, and her grave may be seen at Chilvers Coton. The Knebley Church +of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is located only a short distance from Chilvers +Coton, and is the chancel of the collegiate church founded by Sir Thomas de +Astley in the time of Edward III. Its spire was very high, and served as a +landmark to travellers through the forest of Arden, and was called "The +lanthorn of Arden." The spire fell in the year 1600, but was rebuilt later. +The present church was repaired by the patron of George Eliot's father, Sir +Roger Newdigate. She describes it in the first chapter of "Mr. Gilfil's +Love Story" as-- + + a wonderful little church, with a checkered pavement which had once + rung to the iron tread of military monks, with coats of arms in + clusters on the lofty roof, marble warriors and their wives without + noses occupying a large proportion of the area, and the twelve apostles + with their heads very much on one side, holding didactic ribbons, + painted in fresco on the walls. + +A delightful lane, overshadowed with noble trees, that ran by Griff House, +the birthplace of George Eliot, led to the lodge of Arbury Hall, the home +of Sir Roger Newdigate. Arbury Hall was situated in the midst of a fine old +forest, and it was originally a large quadrangular brick house. Sir Roger +rebuilt it, acting as his own architect, and made it into a modern dwelling +of the commodious gothic Order. This house and its owner appear in "Mr. +Gilfil's Love Story" as Cheverel Manor and Sir Christopher Cheverel. In the +fourth chapter the reader is told that,-- + + For the next ten years Sir Christopher was occupied with the + architectural metamorphosis of his old family mansion, thus + anticipating through the prompting of his individual taste that general + re-action from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style towards a + restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth + century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness + of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his + fox-hunting neighbors.... "An obstinate, crotchety man," said his + neighbors. But I, who have seen Cheverel Manor as he bequeathed it to + his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of + his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic + personal exertion, to something of the fervor of genius. + +In this story an incident in the life of Sir Roger Newdigate may have been +made use of by George Eliot. He was childless, and adopted a cottager's +child he and his wife heard singing at its father's door one day. They +educated the child, who proved to have a fine voice and a passionate love +of music. + +_Janet's Repentance_ also has its scenes from actual life. Dr. Dempster was +thought to be recognized by his neighbors as a well-known person in +Nuneaton. Milby and its High street are no other than Nuneaton and its +market-place. The character of the town and the manner of life there are +all sketched from the Nuneaton of George Eliot's childhood. The school she +attended was very near the vicarage. While she was attending this school, +when about nine years old, a young curate from a neighboring hamlet was +permitted by the Bishop to give Sunday-evening lectures in the Nuneaton +church, with the results described in _Janet's Repentance_. + +In _Adam Bede_ there is also a considerable element of actual history. The +heroine, Dinah Morris, is, in some slight particulars at least, sketched +from Elizabeth Evans, an aunt of George Eliot's. Elizabeth Evans was born +at Newbold, Lincolnshire, in 1776. [Footnote: This subject has been fully +worked out in a book published by Blackwood, "George Eliot in Derbyshire: a +volume of gossip about passages in the novels of George Eliot," by Guy +Roslyn. Reprinted from London Society, with alterations and additions, and +an introduction by George Barnett Smith. Its statements are mainly based on +a small book published in London in 1859, by Talbot & Co., entitled "Seth +Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors." Guy Roslyn is a pseudonym for +Joshua Hatton.] She was a beautiful woman when young, with soft gray eyes +and a fine face, and had a very simple and gentle manner. She was a +Methodist preacher, lived at Wirksworth, Derbyshire, and preached wherever +an opportunity occurred. When it was forbidden that women should preach, +she continued to exhort in the cottages, and to visit the poor and the sick +in their homes. She married Samuel Evans, who was born in Boston, and was a +carpenter. He had a brother William, who was a joiner and builder. Their +father was a village carpenter and undertaker, honest and respectable, but +who took to drink in his later years. He was at an ale-house very late one +night, and the next morning was found dead in a brook near his house. +Samuel became a Methodist and a preacher, but was teased about it by his +brother, who criticised his blunders in prayer and preaching. He was gentle +and very considerate at home, and was greatly attached to his brother, +though they could not agree in matters of religion. While they were +partners in business they prospered, but Samuel did not succeed when by +himself. Samuel and Elizabeth were married at St. Mary's Church, +Nottingham. In company with a Miss Richards, Elizabeth attended, in 1801 or +1802, a Mary Voce who had poisoned her child. They visited her in jail, and +were with her when she was hung in Nottingham. Elizabeth wrote an account +of her own life, especially of her conversion and her early work in the +ministry. Concerning the execution of Mary Voce, she gives this account: +"At seven o'clock [on the morning of the execution] we all knelt down in +prayer, and at ten minutes before eight o'clock the Lord in mercy spoke +peace to her soul. She cried out, 'Oh, how happy I am! the Lord has +pardoned all my sins, and I am going to heaven.' She never lost the +evidence for one moment, and always rejoiced in the hope of glory. Is it +not by grace we are saved through faith? And is not the Saviour exalted at +the Father's right hand to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of +sins? If salvation were by works who would be saved? The vilest and worst +may come unto Him. None need despair. None ought to presume. Miss Richards +and I attended her to the place of execution. Our feelings on this occasion +were very acute. We rode with her in the cart to the awful place. Our +people sang with her all the way, which I think was a mile and a half. We +were enabled to lift up our hearts unto the Lord in her behalf, and she was +enabled to bear a public testimony that God in mercy had pardoned all her +sins. When the cap was drawn over her face, and she was about to be turned +off, she cried, 'Glory! glory! glory! the angels are waiting around me.' +And she died almost without a struggle. At this awful spot I lost a great +deal of the fear of man, which to me had been a great hindrance for a long +time. I felt if God would send me to the uttermost parts of the earth I +would go, and at intervals felt I could embrace a martyr's flame. Oh, this +burning love of God, what will it not endure? I could not think I had an +enemy in the world. I am certain I enjoyed that salvation that if they had +smote me on one cheek, I could have turned to them the other also. I lived + + "'The life of heaven above, + All the life of glorious love.' + +"I seemed myself to live between heaven and earth. I was not in heaven +because of my body, nor upon earth because of my soul. Earth was a scale to +heaven, and all I tasted was God. I could pray without ceasing, and in +everything give thanks. I felt that the secret of the Lord is with them +that fear Him. If I wanted to know anything I had only to ask, and it was +given, generally in a moment. Whether I was in the public street, or at my +work, or in my private room, I had continued intercourse with my God; and +many, I think I may say hundreds of times, He shone upon His Word, and +showed me the meaning thereof, that is, texts of scripture, so as to +furnish me with sufficient matter to speak to poor sinners for a sufficient +length of time." + +The life of Elizabeth Evans was only a hint to the mind of the author of +_Adam Bede_. Dinah was not intended as a portrait, and the resemblances +between the two were probably not the result of a conscious purpose on the +part of George Eliot. Soon after the publication of _Adam Bede_, when +gossip had begun to report that Dinah Morris was an accurate sketch of +Elizabeth Evans, and even that her sermon and prayers had been copied from +the writings of the aunt, George Eliot wrote a letter to her intimate +friend, Miss Sara Hennell, in which she explained to what extent she was +indebted to Elizabeth Evans for the portrait of Dinah Morris. + + +HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1850. + +Dear Sara,--I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to +tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt, +Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life +with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six +or seven years before he married my mother.... [Footnote: What is here +omitted of this letter will be found on page 12.] + +As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any +interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one +sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy +girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution, +and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among +the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass_. In her +account of the prison scenes. I remember no word she uttered--I only +remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. +Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she +was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my +mind for years on years as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my +mind a nisus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ +of _Adam Bede_. + +I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and a night with my +father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our +interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less +simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to +see me--when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some +pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude +state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This +is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear +aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not +possible you should see as I do how her entire individuality differed from +Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's +sermon, prayers and speeches were _copied_--when they were written with hot +tears as they surged up in my own mind! + +As to my indebtedness to facts of _locale_, and personal history of a small +kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what +kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those +counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I +more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as +facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect +allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk +about old times. + +As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that +Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is simply the vague, easily +satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It +is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to +enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a +portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with +_mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as +representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach +to the truth. + +Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am +prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years _Adam Bede_ and all +that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not +be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you. + +Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving + +MARIAN. + +When, in 1876, a book was published to show the identity of Dinah Morris +and Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot wrote to the author to protest against +such a conclusion. She said to him that the one was not intended to +represent the other, and that any identification of the two would be +protested against as not only false in fact and tending to perpetuate +false notions about art, but also as a gross breach of social decorum. Yet +these declarations concerning Elizabeth Evans have been repeated, and to +them has been added the assertion that she actually copied in _Adam Bede_ +the history and sermons of Dinah Morris. [Footnote: "Dinah Morris and +Elizabeth Evans," an article by L. Buckley in The Century for August, +1882.] During visits to her aunt in 1842 we are told they spent several +hours together each day. "They used to go to the house of one of Mrs. +Evans's married daughters, where they had the parlor to themselves and had +long conversations. These secret conversations excited some curiosity in +the family, and one day Mrs. Evans's daughter said, 'Mother, I can't think +what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans +replied, 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to +tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all +down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.' While at +Wirksworth, Miss Evans made a note of everything people said in her +hearing; no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which +seemed never out of her hand. These notes she transcribed every night +before going to rest. After her departure Mrs. Evans said to her daughter, +'Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and +that is the notes of the first sermon I preached on Ellaston Green.' The +sermon preached by Dinah on Hayslope Green has been recognized as one of +Mrs. Evans's." The purpose here seems to be to convey the impression that +George Eliot actually carried away one of Mrs. Evans's sermons, and that +she afterwards copied it into _Adam Bede_. George Eliot's own positive +statement on this subject ought to be sufficient to convince any candid +mind the sermon was not copied. The evidence brought forward so far in +regard to the relations of Dinah Morris to Elizabeth Evans is not +sufficient to prove the one was taken from the other. George Eliot's +declarations, written soon after _Adam Bede_ was published, when all was +perfectly fresh in her mind, and after her relatives had made their +statements about Mrs. Evans, ought to settle the matter forever. Unless +new and far more positive evidence is brought forward, Dinah Morris ought +to be regarded as substantially an original creation. + +That some features of Elizabeth Evans's character were sketched into that +of Dinah Morris seems certain. It is also said that the names of Mrs. +Poyser and Bartle Massey were the names of actual persons, the latter being +the schoolmaster of her father. As showing her power of local coloring, +Miss Mathilde Blind relates this incident: "On its first appearance, _Adam +Bede_ was read aloud to an old man, an intimate associate of Robert Evans +in his Staffordshire days. This man knew nothing concerning either author +or subject beforehand, and his astonishment was boundless on recognizing so +many friends and incidents of his own youth portrayed with unerring +fidelity, he sat up half the night listening to the story in breathless +excitement, now and then slapping his knees as he exclaimed, 'That's +Robert, that's Robert, to the life.'" + +In _Adam Bede_, as well as in the _Clerical Scenes_ and _The Mill on the +Floss_, she describes types of character instead of actual personages; and +yet so much of the realistic is embodied that more than one of her +characters has been identified as being in a considerable degree a sketch +from life. This is true of _The Mill on the Floss_ even more fully than of +her previous books. In Maggie she has portrayed one side of her own +character, and made use of much of her early experience. Lucy is said to be +her sister, and two of her aunts are sketched in the aunts of Maggie--Mrs. +Glegg and Mrs. Pullett. Her brother recognized the minute faithfulness of +this story, as he did that of _Adam Bede_. The town of St. Ogg's is a good +description of the tide-water town of Gainesborough in Lincolnshire. The +Hayslope of _Adam Bede_ has been identified as the village of Ellaston, +four miles from Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. It is near Wirksworth, the home +of Elizabeth Evans. + +The local exactness of George Eliot's descriptions is another evidence of +her realism. "It is not unlikely," suggests Mr. Kegan Paul, "that the time +will come when with one or other of her books in their hand, people will +wander among the scenes of George Eliot's early youth, and trace each +allusion, as they are wont to do at Abbotsford or Newstead, and they will +recognize the photographic minuteness and accuracy with which these scenes, +so long unvisited, had stamped themselves on the mind of the observant +girl." The historical setting of her novels is also faithful in even minute +details. The time of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is at the beginning of the +last quarter of the eighteenth century, and it well describes the country +customs of the earlier years of the present century. _Adam Bede_ describes +the first decade of the present century, while _Silas Marner_ is a little +later. With "Amos Barton," and _The Mill on the Floss_ we are in the second +decade of the century, before hand-looms had gone out or railroads had come +in. She has a fondness for these days of rustic simplicity, quiet habits +and homely disingenuousness, and she more than once expresses a doubt if +much has been gained by the introduction of machinery, suffrage and +culture. She regrets that-- + + Human advancement has no moments when conservative reforming intellect + takes a nap, while imagination does a little toryism by the sly, + revelling in regret that dear old brown, crumbling, picturesque + inefficiency is everywhere giving place to sick-and-span, new-painted, + new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, + elevations and sections; but, alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is + not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional tenderness for old + abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal + clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades + of vulgar errors. [Footnote: Amos Barton, chapter I.] + +In _Adam Bede_, when describing a leisurely walk home from church in the +good old days, she bursts out again into enthusiastic praise of the time +before there was so much advancement and culture. + + Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through + the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those + old leisurely times when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, + was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them + old brown leather covers, and opened with a remarkable precision always + in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, + and the pack-horses and the slow wagons and the pedlers who brought + bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell + you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create + leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for + eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for + amusement; prone to excursion trains, art museums, periodical + literature and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and + cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different + personage; he only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was + free from that "periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He + was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion--of + quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis, happy in his inability to + know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived + chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was + fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots + when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself + under the orchard boughs at noon when the summer pears were falling. He + knew nothing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the + Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the + blessing--liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were + the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly + conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal + of beer or port wine--not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and + lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he + fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the + sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going + to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe + upon him and judge him by our modern standard; he never went to Exeter + Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or + _Sartor Resartus_." [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter LII.] + +Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of +dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues +which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his +rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be +seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a +_chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people. +She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they +call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize, +as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and +rusticity of the life presented. + +George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for +she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which +would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not +to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance +be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is +spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, +dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, +plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the _Transactions of +the English_ _Dialect Society_, she has explained her methods of using +dialect. + + It must be borne in mind that my inclination to be as close as I could + to the rendering of dialect, both in words and spelling, was constantly + checked by the artistic duty of being generally intelligible. But for + that check I should have given a stronger color to the dialogue in + _Adam Sede_, which is modelled on the talk of North Staffordshire and + the neighboring part of Derbyshire. The spelling, being determined by + my own ear alone, was necessarily a matter of anxiety, for it would be + as possible to quarrel about it as about the spelling of Oriental + names. The district imagined as the scene of _Silas Marner_ is in North + Warwickshire; but here, and in all my other presentations of English + life except _Adam Bede_, it has been my intention to give the general + physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as + I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand + that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a + puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to + respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not + care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the + drawing-room and the newspaper. + +It may be said of George Eliot's realism that she did not borrow nearly so +much from actual observation as was done by Charlotte Brontë, in whose +novels, scenes, persons and events are described with great accuracy and +fulness. In large measure Charlotte Brontë borrowed her materials from the +life about her. Large as was her invention, original as her mind was, and +unique in its thought, yet she seems to have been unable to create the +plots of her novels without aid from real events and persons. Persons and +scenes and events were so vividly portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ as to be at once +recognized, subjecting the author to much annoyance and mortification. In +_Shirley_ there is even a larger use of local traditions and manners, the +locality of the story being described with great accuracy. George Eliot did +not use such materials to nearly so great an extent, being far less +dependent on them. Nor had she anything of Scott's need of local +traditions. Accurate as she is, she creates her own story, not depending, +as he did, on the suggestive help of the stories of the past. Few of his +novels are the entire creations of his own mind; but he used every hint and +suggestion he could find as the basis of his work. In this, George Eliot is +no more a realist than either of her great predecessors. Even Goldsmith and +Fielding were no more creative and original than she, for they depended as +much as she on the occurrences of real life for their plots. All genuine +novelists have drawn their materials from the life about them, and they +could not attain success otherwise. All depends, however, on how the +material thus used is made to bear its results. If Charlotte Brontë +borrowed more from actual life of event and scenery, yet she was not more a +realist; rather her power lies in something higher than realism, in that +subtle insight and creative power which gives originality to her work. She +was an idealist keeping close to the actual; and in this fact is to be +found her superiority to George Eliot in certain directions. George Eliot +studied life accurately and intimately, but she did not tie herself to any +individual occurrences or persons. She had so absorbed the spirit of the +life amidst which she lived, as to give a true expression to it under an +almost purely fictitious garb. + +There is less of distinct teaching in the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ than in +George Eliot's later novels. Yet even in these earlier stories there is to +be found many a clear indication of her thought. In "Amos Barton" she has +especially set forth her sympathy with humble life. This fundamental canon +of her art is presented more distinctly in this story, and dwelt upon more +fully, than in any of her subsequent novels. It would be difficult to +discover any special teaching in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story;" and this is +perhaps the only production of George Eliot's pen which has not some +distinct object beyond the telling of the story itself. The religious motif +is strong in _Janet's Repentance_, and not to be mistaken by any attentive +reader who now for the first time takes up the story. The value of religion +as a reforming force is plainly inculcated, as well as that the main and +only value of that force is altruistic. It presents a fine picture of the +Evangelical movement and its work, though mainly on its humanitarian side. +Its deeper spirit of devotion, its loftier religious ideal, its craving +after a more intimate realization of the divine presence, is not portrayed. +The real purport of the story is contained in its closing words, where the +reader is told that the true memorial left behind him by Edgar Tryan is to +be found in a life saved to all noble thing's by his efforts. + + It is Janet Dempster, rescued from self-despair, strengthened with + divine hopes, and now looking back on years of purity and helpful + labor. The man who has left such a memorial behind him must have been + one whose heart beat with true compassion, and whose lips were moved by + fervent faith. + +These _Scenes of Clerical Life_ surpass all George Eliot's later novels in +one respect--their pathos. _Adam Bede_ comes nearer them in this particular +than any of the later works, but even that novel does not equal them in +their power to lay hold of feeling and sympathy and in moving the reader to +tears. They differ greatly in this respect from another short story, +written only a few years later, entitled "Brother Jacob." This story has +more of light banter in it than any other novel of George Eliot's, and less +of tenderness and pathos. It is but another lesson on her great theme of +_retribution_. The author says in the last sentence of the story that "we +see in it an admirable instance of the unexpected forms in which the great +Nemesis hides herself." The central thought of the story is, that even in +the lives of the most ordinary persons, and in the case of even the +smallest departures from the right, there is a power of retribution at work +bringing us an unfailing punishment for the evil we do. + +The literary excellences of the _Scenes from Clerical Life_ are many. They +are simple, charming stories, full of life, and delightful in tone. Their +humor is rare and effective, never coarse, but racy and touching. Their +tenderness of tone lays warm hold upon the reader's sympathies and brings +him closer to the throbbing hearts of his fellow-men. There is a pure +idyllic loveliness and homelikeness about these stories that is exquisite. +They all evidently grew out of the tender memories and associations of +George Eliot's girlhood. + +In _Adam Bede_ the author's purpose is concentrated on character and the +moral unfoldment of the lives she describes, while the thorough dramatic +unity is lacking which such a work demands. It is a delightful picture of +country life, and for idyllic loveliness is scarcely equalled, never +surpassed, in English literature. The charm of the narrative is only +rivalled by the deep human interest the characters have for us. This +exquisite picture of rural life is not merely a piece of fine painting; but +the deepest problems, the largest human interests, ever appear as a +perpetual background of spiritual reality, giving a sublimity to the whole +that truly dignifies it. The thoughtful reader soon finds this inweaving of +a larger purpose adding greatly to the idyllic loveliness of these scenes. +The moral tone is clear and earnest, and the religious element gives a +charm and nobility to this delightful picture of rustic simplicity. + +_Adam Bede_ has probably delighted a larger number of her readers than any +other of George Eliot's books, and even a majority of her critics prefer it +to any other. It at once arrests and fixes the attention of the reader. The +first chapter has an immediate interest in its wonderful picture of Adam, +and its most vivid description of the workshop. The second chapter, with +its account of Dinah Morris and her preaching, leaves no possibility of +doubt about the genius and power of the book. The reader is brought at once +face to face with scenes and persons that act as enchantment on him; and +this complete absorption of interest never flags to the end. The elements +of this fascination, which is in itself so simple, natural and human, have +been pointed out by various critics. They are to be found in the +homeliness, pathos and naturalness of the whole story from beginning to +end. Little as the critics have noted it, however, much of this fascination +comes of the high and pure moral tone of the story, its grasp on the higher +motives and interests of life, and its undertone of yearning after a +religious motive and ideal adequate to all the problems of human destiny. +This religious motive is indeed more than a yearning, for it is a fixed and +self-contained confidence in altruism, expressed in sympathy and feeling +and pathos most tender and passionate. This novel is full of an eager +desire to realize to men their need of each other, and of longing to show +them how much better and happier the world would be if we were more +sympathetic and had more of fellow-feeling. Life is full of suffering, and +this can be lessened only as we help and love each other, only as we can +make our feelings so truly tender as to feel the sorrows of others as our +own, causing us to live for the good of those who suffer. It is said of +Adam Bede that-- + + He had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite + of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to + get enough patience and charity toward our stumbling, falling + companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way + in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his + heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share + not only the outward consequence of their error but their inward + suffering. + +This compassion for human suffering is conspicuous throughout, and it is +regarded as the most effective means of binding men together in common +sympathy and helpfulness. Sorrow is regarded as the true means of man's +elevation, as that purifying agent which is indispensable to his true +development. This teaching is fully depicted in the chapter headed "The +Hidden Dread," and in which Hetty's flight is described. We are told in +that chapter that this looks like a very bright world on the surface, but +that as we look closer within man's nature we find sorrow and pain untold. + + What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the + valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign + countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our + English Loamshire: the rich land tilled with just as much care, the + woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come + on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in + Loamshire--an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has + stood, perhaps, by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad + sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear + brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this + world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image + of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this + joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, + or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, + there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps + a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from + swift-advancing shame; understanding no more of this life of ours than + a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on + the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such + things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the + blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came + close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear + with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow + in it; no wonder he needs a Suffering God. + +The remedy for this sorrow, even in the pages of _Adam Bede_, is not the +atoning love of Christ or the blessedness of a divine forgiveness, but the +altruistic compassion of man for man. There is, however, a, deeper +recognition in this novel of Christian belief than in any other by George +Eliot. The prayer and sermon of Dinah Morris have a truly Christian tone +and thought. This is not the case with the teachings of Savonarola, who is +always much more an altruist than a Christian, and into whose mouth +Christian phrases are put, while it is very evident the Christian spirit in +its wholeness was not put into his heart. Sorrow and suffering are regarded +in _Adam Bede_ as the means of baptism into a larger life of sympathy, as +the means of purification from selfishness and individual aims. Along with +this teaching goes the cognate one, that feeling is the true test of the +religious life. A feeling that draws us close to others in helpfulness is +worth more than knowledge, culture and refinement of taste. + +The doctrine of retribution is presented as distinctly and positively in +_Adam Bede_ as in any subsequent book George Eliot wrote. It is given the +form of distinct statement, and it is developed fully in the working out of +the plot. Parson Irwine speaks the thought of the author in these words: + + "There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment + alone; you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in + you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each + other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease. + I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's + has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others + besides those who commit it." + +The tendency of selfishness and wrong to develop misery is fully unfolded. +The terrible law of moral cause and effect is made apparent throughout the +whole work. The folly of Arthur and the vanity of Hetty work them terrible +consequences of evil and bitterness. Many others are made to suffer with +them. The fatal Nemesis is unmasked in these revelations of human nature. + +If the critics are right in pronouncing _Adam Bede_ artistically defective, +it is not difficult to see that there is still less of unity in _The Mill +on the Floss_. Unconnected and unnecessary scenes and persons abound, while +the Tulliver and Dodson families, and their stupidities, are described at a +tedious length. Yet the picture of child-life given here compensates for +all we might complain of in other directions. Maggie is an immortal child, +wonderfully drawn, out of the very heart of nature herself. Her joy in +life, her doubts and fears, her conflicts with self, are delineated with a +master's hand, and justify--such is their faithfulness to child-life--the +supposition that this is George Eliot's own childhood, so delicate and +penetrating is the insight of this description, Swinburne has justly said +that "no man or woman, outside the order of poets, has ever written of +children with such adorable fidelity of affection as the spiritual mother +of Totty, Eppie and of Lillo." Nor have the poets surpassed her in +truthfulness to child-life and intuitive insight into child-nature. The +child Maggie is unsurpassed, not as an ideal being, but as a living child +that plays in the dirt, tears her frocks, and clips her hair in an hour of +childish anger. + +In this novel we first come distinctly upon another element in the writings +of George Eliot, and this is a yearning after a fuller, larger life. It +does not appear as distinctly developed in _Adam Bede_, where there is more +of poise and repose. Maggie represents the restless spirit of the +nineteenth century, intense dissatisfaction with self, and a profoundly +human passion for something higher and diviner. A passionate restlessness +and a profound spiritual hunger are united in this novel to an eager desire +for a deeper and fuller life, and for a satisfactory answer to the soul's +spiritual thirst. The spiritual repose of Dinah, who has found all the +religious cravings of her nature satisfied in Methodism, is abandoned for +the inward yearning of Maggie, whose passionate search for spiritual truth +ends in disaster. + +No other of George Eliot's books has been so severely criticised as this +one, except _Daniel Deronda_, and mainly because of Maggie. The apparent +fall of the heroine, and the crude tragedy of the ending, have been +regarded as serious defects. The moral tone and purpose have been severely +condemned. In his essays on foul and fair fiction, Ruskin puts _The Mill on +the Floss_ into that class of novels which describe life's blotches, burrs +and pimples, and calls it "the most striking instance extant of this study +of cutaneous disease." He says the personages are picked up from behind +the counter and out of the gutter, and he finds "there is not a single +person in the book of the smallest importance to anybody in the world but +themselves, or whose qualities deserved so much as a line of printer's +type in their description." To the same effect is Swinburne's criticism +of Maggie's relations to Stephen Guest. He calls it "the hideous +transformation by which Maggie is debased." He says that most of George +Eliot's admirers would regard this as "the highest and the purest and the +fullest example of her magnificent and matchless powers. The first two +thirds of the book suffice to compose perhaps the very noblest of tragic as +well as of humorous prose idyls in the language; comprising one of the +sweetest as well as saddest and tenderest, as well as subtlest examples of +dramatic analysis--a study in that kind as soft and true as Rousseau's, as +keen and true as Browning's, as full as either's of the fine and bitter +sweetness of a pungent and fiery fidelity. But who can forget the horror of +inward collapse, the sickness of spiritual re-action, the reluctant, +incredulous rage of disenchantment and disgust, with which he came upon the +thrice-unhappy third part? The two first volumes have all the intensity and +all the perfection of George Sand's best work, tempered by all the simple +purity and interfused with all the stainless pathos of Mrs. Gaskell's; they +carry such affluent weight of thought, and shine with such warm radiance of +humor, as invigorates and illuminates the work of no other famous woman; +they have the fiery clarity of crystal or of lightning; they go near to +prove a higher claim and attest a clearer right on the part of their author +than that of George Sand herself to the crowning crown of praise conferred +on her by the hand of a woman ever greater and more glorious than either in +her sovereign gift of lyric genius, to the salutation given as by an angel +indeed from heaven, of 'large-brained woman and large-hearted man.'" In the +momentary lapse of Maggie, Swinburne finds a fatal defect, which no +subsequent repentance atones for. He says that "here is the patent flaw, +here too plainly is the flagrant blemish, which defaces and degrades the +very crown and flower of George Eliot's wonderful and most noble work; no +rent or splash on the raiment, but a cancer in the very bosom, a gangrene +in the very flesh. It is a radical and mortal plague-spot, corrosive and +incurable." + +Such criticism has little if any value, because there is no point of +sympathy between the critic and his author. That real life contains such +errors as Maggie's cannot be doubted, and George Eliot wished to paint no +ideal scenes or heroines. To portray a passionate, eager, yearning nature, +full of poetry, longing for a diviner spiritual life, surrounded by dull +and unpoetic conditions and persons, was her purpose. That the hunger of +such a person for the expression of her inward cravings for joy, music and +beauty should lead her astray and make a sudden lapse possible, is not to +be doubted. The fault of the critics is in supposing that this lapse from +moral conduct was that of a physical depravity. Maggie's passion grew +wholly out of that inward yearning for a fuller life which made all her +difficulties. It was not physical passion but spiritual craving; and in the +purpose of the novelist she was as pure after as before. + +The cause of what must be regarded as the great defect in _The Mill on the +Floss_ is not that George Eliot chose to paint life in a diseased state, +but that she had not the power to make her characters act what they +themselves were. While the delightful inward portraiture of Maggie is in +process all are charmed with her, her soul is as pure and sweet as a rose +new-blown; but when the time arrives for her to act as well as to meditate +and to dream, she is not made equal to herself. Through all her books this +is true, that George Eliot can describe a soul, but she cannot make her men +and women act quite up to the facts of daily life. In this way Dinah and +Adam are not equal to themselves, and settle down to a prosaic life such as +is not in keeping with that larger action of which they were capable. +George Eliot's characters are greater than their deeds; their inward life +is truer and more rounded than their outward life is pure and noble. + +_The Mill on the Floss_ fully develops George Eliot's conception of the +value of self-renunciation in the life of the individual, and gives a new +emphasis to her ideas about the importance of the spiritual life as an +element in true culture. It has been said that she intended to indicate +the nature of physiological attraction between men and women, and how +large an influence it has; but whether that was an aim of hers or not, +she undoubtedly did attempt to indicate how altogether important is +renunciation to a life of true development, how difficult it is to attain, +and that it is the vital result of all human endeavor. She surrounded a +tender, sensitive, musical and poetic soul, one quick to catch the tone of +a higher spiritual faith, with the common conditions of ordinary social +life, to show how such an "environment" cripples and retards a soul full of +aspiration and capable of the best things. Maggie saw the way to the light, +but the way was hard, beset with difficulties individual and social, and +she could neither overcome herself nor the world. She was taken suddenly +away, and the novel comes to a hasty conclusion, because the author desired +to indicate the causes of spiritual danger to ardent souls, and not to +inculcate a formula for their relief. Maggie had learned how difficult it +is for the individual to make for himself a new way in life, how benumbing +are the conditions of ordinary human existence; and through her death we +are to learn that in such difficulties as hers there is no remedy for the +individual. Only through the mediation of death could Maggie be reconciled +to those she had offended; death alone could heal the social wounds she had +made, and restore her as an accepted and ennobled member of the corporate +existence of humanity. This seems to be the idea underlying the hurried +conclusion of this novel, that the path of renunciation once truly entered +on, brings necessarily such difficulties as only death can overcome; and +death does overcome them when those we have loved and those we have helped, +forget what seem to them our wrong deeds in the loving memories which +follow the dead. Over the grave men forget all that separated them from +others, and the living are reconciled to those who can offend them no more. +All that was good and pure and loving is then made to appear, and memory +glorifies the one who in life was neglected or hated. Through death Maggie +was restored to her brother, and over her grave came perfect reconciliation +with those others from whom she had been alienated. That renunciation may +lead to cruel martyrdoms is what George Eliot means; but she would say it +has its lofty recompense in that restoration which death brings, when the +individual becomes a part of the spiritual influence which surrounds and +guides us all. For those who can accept such a conclusion as this the unity +of the novel may seem complete. + +The poetry of Maggie's nature found itself constantly dragged down to +conditions of vulgar prose by the life about her. That life was prosy and +hard because those ideal aims which come from a recognition of the past and +its traditions were absent from it. Maggie tried to overcome them by +renunciation, but by renunciation which did not rest on any genuine sorrow +and pain. At last these came, and the real meaning of renunciation was made +clear to her. Her bitter sorrow taught her the great lesson which George +Eliot ever strives to inculcate, that what is hard, sorrowful and painful +in the world should move us to more and more of compassion and help for our +fellows who also find life sad and burdensome. At the last Maggie learned +this greatest of all lessons which life can give us. + + She sat quite still far on into the night, with no impulse to, change + her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of + prayer--only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It + came with the memories that no passion could long quench: the long past + came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and + affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by + the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by + heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a + low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against + the window, and the loud moan and roar of the wind: "I have received + the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear + it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me." + + But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob: + "Forgive me, Stephen. It will pass away. You will come back to her." + + She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly + on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of + parting. + + "I will bear it, and bear it till death... But how long it will be + before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have + patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall, and repent again? + Has life other trials as hard for me still?" With that cry of + self-despair Maggie fell on her knees against the table, and buried + her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that + would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught + her by this experience of great need, and she must be learning a secret + of human tenderness and long-suffering that the less erring could + hardly know. "O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and + comfort--" + +Then the flood came, and death. Maggie could repent, she could acquire the +true spirit of renunciation, she could even give herself to a life of +altruism; but death only could restore her to the world. Death, says George +Eliot, is the great reconciler. + +_Silas Marner_ is the only one of these earlier novels in which there is a +continuous unity of purpose and action. Its several parts are thoroughly +wrought into each other, the aim of the narrative is adhered to throughout, +and there are no superfluous incidents. The plot is simple, cause and +effect flow on steadily to the end in the unfoldment of character and +action, and the design of the author is easily grasped. One of her critics, +himself a novelist of a high order, has said that in its unity of purpose +and dramatic expression _Silas Marner_ is more nearly a masterpiece than +any other of George Eliot's novels; "it has more of that simple, rounded, +consummate aspect, that absence of loose ends and gaping issues, which +marks a classical work." [Footnote: Henry James, Jr.] In this novel, too, +her humor flows out with a richer fulness, a racier delight and a more +sparkling variety of expression than in any other book of hers, not +excepting _Adam Bede_. She has here reached the very height of her +qualities as a humorist, for in _Silas Marner_ her humor is constantly +genial and delightful. + +Certain ethical ideas appear very distinctly in this novel. It illustrates +man's need of social ties and connections. Silas forsook his old life, the +life of his childhood and youth, and the world was a blank for him in +consequence. With the sundering of the ties which bound him to the +traditional environment amidst which he was reared, all the purpose and +meaning of his life was gone. The old ties, obligations and associations +gone, his life was without anchorage, its ideal aims perished, and he lived +a selfish and worthless creature. When new social ties were formed by the +young child he found then his life opened up to a larger meaning again, and +he recovered the better things in his nature. He was then led back again +into his relations to society, he became once more a man, a fresh life was +opened to him. This brought a new confidence in religion, a new trust in +the moral motives of life. In this way George Eliot presents the social +basis of the higher life in man, and her theory that it cannot be broken +off from its traditional surroundings without grave injury to the finer +elements of our nature. The law of retribution manifests itself clearly in +these pages. Godfrey deserts wife and child. In after years he would fain +restore the child to its rightful place, but he finds it has grown up under +conditions which alienate it from any sympathy with him. He pronounces his +own condemnation: + + "There's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the + years that have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting + off, the trees have been growing--it's too late now. Marner was in the + right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his + door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless once, + Nancy--I shall pass for childless now against my wish." + +A pure moral tone, a keen ethical instinct, mark all these earlier novels +by George Eliot. Quite as noticeable is their spiritual atmosphere and +their high place assigned to the religious life. Their teaching in these +directions has a conservative tendency, and it is based on the most +vigorous convictions. + + + + +XIV. + + +ROMOLA. + +Whatever differences there may exist between George Eliot's earlier and +later books are due rather to the materials used than to any change in +purpose, methods or beliefs. In writing of the distinction drawn between +her earlier and later books, she said,-- + + Though I trust there is some growth in my appreciation of others and in + my self-distrust, there has been no change in the point of view from + which I regard our life since I wrote my first fiction, the _Scenes of + Clerical Life_. Any apparent change of spirit must be due to something + of which I am unconscious. The principles which are at the root of my + effort to paint Dinah Morris are equally at the root of my effort to + paint Mordecai. + +Her later books grow more out of conscious effort and deliberate study than +the earlier, are more carefully wrought out, and contain less of +spontaneity. The spiritual and ethical purpose, however, is not more +distinct and conscious in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _The Mill on the Floss_, +in _Romola_ than in _Adam Bede_. The ethical purpose may be more apparent +in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _Adam Bede_, more on the surface, and clearer +to the view of the general reader, but this is because it takes an unusual +form, rather than because it is really any more distinctly present. In _The +Mill on the Floss_ her teaching first became known to her readers, and in +_Romola_ this purpose to use the novel as the vehicle for propagating ideas +became fully apparent. Her aim having once come clearly to view, it was not +difficult to see how large an element it was in her earlier books, where it +had not been seen before. If she had written nothing but _Adam Bede_ her +teachings might not have come to light, though some of those she has most +often insisted on are to be found clearly stated in that book. Her +doctrinal aim, however, became more clear and pronounced as she went on in +her career as a novelist, and became more thoroughly conscious of her own +powers and of the purposes which she wished to work out in her novels. She +gained courage to express her ideas, and their importance was more deeply +impressed upon her mind and heart. + +In _Romola_ it was first made clear that George Eliot is to be judged as a +moralist as well as a literary artist. That she is a great literary artist, +surpassed only by a select few, is to be borne constantly in mind; but as a +moralist she surpasses most others in the amount of her teaching, and +teaching which is thoroughly incorporated into the literary fibre of her +work. She much resembles Wordsworth in this, that while she is an original +creator of artistic forms and ideas, her books will be sought for their +views of life as well for their qualities as novels. Wordsworth is a poet +of vast original powers, but the poetic fire in him often burns low and his +verses become mere prose. Yet his ideas about nature, life and morals +command for him a place higher than that occupied by any other poet of his +time, and a school of thinkers and critics has been developed through his +influence. In much the same way, George Eliot is likely to attract +attention because of her teachings; and it is probable her books will be +resorted to and interpreted largely with reference to her moral and +philosophical ideas. Should such a movement as this ever spring up, +_Romola_ will necessarily become one of the most important of all her +books. Some of her principal ideas appear therein more distinctly, in +clearer outline, and with a greater fulness of expression, than they obtain +in any other of her books. The foreign setting of her story enabled her to +give a larger utterance to her thoughts, while there was less of personal +and pathetic interest to impede their expression. This is also true of _The +Spanish Gypsy_, that it has more of teaching and less of merely literary +attraction than any other of her longer poems. The purpose to do justice to +the homely life of rustic England was no longer present, and she was free +to give her intellectual powers a deliberate expression in the form of a +thoughtful interpretation of a great historic period. Mr. Henry James, Jr., +has recognized the importance of this effort, and says of _Romola_, that +he regards it, "on the whole, as decidedly the most important of her +works,--not the most entertaining nor the most readable, but the one in +which the largest things are attempted and grasped. The figure of +Savonarola, subordinate though it is, is a figure on a larger scale than +any which George Eliot has elsewhere undertaken; and in the career of Tito +Melema there is a fuller representation of the development of a character. +Considerable as are our author's qualities as an artist, and largely as +they are displayed in _Romola_, the book is less a work of art than a work +of morals. Like all of George Eliot's works, its dramatic construction is +feeble; the story drags and halts,--the setting is too large for the +picture." + +The book lacks in spontaneity, is too deliberate, contemplative and +ethical. While its artistic elements are great, and even powerful, it is +too consciously moral in its purpose to satisfy the literary requirements +of a work of art. It wants the sensuous elements of life and the _abandon_ +of poetic genius. There is little which is sensational about the book; too +little, perhaps, of that vivid imaginative interest which impels the reader +headlong through the pages of a novel to the end. It is, however, a high +merit in George Eliot, that she does not resort to factitious elements of +interest in her books, but works honestly, conscientiously, and with a pure +purpose. If the reader is not drawn on by the sensational, he is amply +repaid by the more deliberate and natural interest which gives a meaning to +every chapter. + +George Eliot selected for her book one of the most striking and picturesque +periods of modern history, in the great centre of culture and art in the +fifteenth century. Florence was the intellectual capital of the world in +the renaissance period, and the truest representative of its spirit. It was +the time also of that remarkable monk-prophet, Savonarola, whose voice was +raised so powerfully against the corruptions of that most corrupt age. This +unique character, doubtless, had much to do in causing George Eliot to take +this city and time for her story. No one of the reformers of the fifteenth +and sixteenth centuries was more in earnest, had a loftier purpose, worked +in a nobler spirit, than this Dominican monk of Florence. His opposition to +the Medici, his conflict with Rome, his visions and prophecies, his +leadership of the politics of Florence, his powerful preaching, his +untimely death, all give a romantic and a tragic interest to his life, and +conspire to make him one of the most interesting figures in modern history. +His moral purpose was conspicuous even when tainted by personal ambition. +His political influence was supreme while it lasted, and was wielded in the +interests of Florence, for its liberties and its moral regeneration. As a +religious teacher he was profoundly in earnest; a prophet in his own belief +as well as in the depth of his religious insight, he accepted with the most +thorough intensity of conviction the spiritual truths he inculcated. In his +own belief he was constantly in communion with the spiritual world, and was +guided and taught by it. He swayed the people of Florence as the wind sways +the branches of a tree, and they bowed utterly to his will for the moment, +when he put forth all his moral and intellectual powers in the pulpit. A +puritan in morals, he had a most vivid realization of the terrible evils of +his time; and he could make his congregation look at the world with his own +faith and moral purpose. His influence on literature and art was also +great, and it was felt for many years after his death. + +Savonarola spoke in the pulpit with the authority of the profoundest +personal conviction, and his hearers were impressed by his preaching with +the feeling that they listened to one who knew whereof he spoke. Whenever +he preached there was a crowd to hear; people came three or four hours +before the time, and they came in throngs from the surrounding country. He +held separate services for men, for women, for children, in order that all +might hear. And this eagerness to listen to him was not for a few weeks, +but it continued for years. The greatest enthusiasm was awakened by his +influence, the people were melted into tears, every person listened with +bated breath to his words. Thousands were converted, and among them many of +the most learned of the poets, artists and statesmen of the time. The most +remarkable changes in the modes of life took place, money was restored, +and contributed freely to buy bread when famine threatened, and the +confessional was daily crowded with penitents. One of his biographers says +that "the most remarkable change that was apparent in the manners of the +people, in their recreations and amusements, was the abandonment of +demoralizing practices, of debauchery of all kinds, of profane songs of a +licentious character which the lower grades of the people especially were +greatly addicted to; and the growth of a new taste and passion for +spiritual hymns and sacred poetry that had succeeded that depraved taste." + +On one side of his nature, Savonarola seems to have been of a remarkably +pure and noble character, with high aims, noble ambitions and a clear moral +insight. Looked at on its better side, his religious reformation was +wholesome and salutary, and dictated by a genuine desire to elevate worship +and to purify faith. There was a very different side to his life and work, +however, and in some features of his character he seems to have been a +fanatic and enthusiast of the most dangerous sort. He was credulous, +superstitious and visionary. He had no clear, strong and well-reasoned +purpose to which he could hold consistently to the end. An earnest +Catholic, he only sought to reform the Church, not to supersede it; but his +moral aims were not high enough to carry him to the logical results of his +position. Involved by his visionary faith in claims of miraculous power and +supernatural communication, he had not the intellectual honesty to carry +those claims to their legitimate conclusion. Weakness, hesitation and +inconsistency marked his character in his later years, and have made him a +puzzle to modern students. These inconsistencies of character have led to +widely divergent conclusions about the man, his sincerity of purpose and +the outcome of his work. + +Another influence of the time, more powerful because more permanent, was +the renaissance movement, which was at this period working its greatest +changes and inspiring the most fervid enthusiasm. A new world had been +disclosed to the people of the fifteenth century in the revival of +knowledge concerning classic literature and art, and there came to be an +absorbing, passionate interest in whatever pertained to the ancients. +Manuscripts were eagerly sought after, translations were diligently made, +literature was modelled after the classic writers, to quote and to imitate +the ancients became the habit of the day. A change the most striking was +produced in the modes of thought and of life. The love of nature was +revived, and with it a graceful abandonment to the dominion of the senses. +Paganism seemed likely to return upon the world again and to reconquer from +Christianity all that it had once lost. The pagan spirit revived, its +tastes and modes of life came back again. Plato was restored to his old +place, and in the minds of the cultured seemed worthier of homage than +Christ. With such as Lorenzo Medici and his literary friends, Platonism was +regarded as a religion. + +The recovery of classic literature came to the men of this period as a +revelation. It opened a new world to them, it operated upon them like a +galvanic shock, it kindled the most fervid enthusiasms. It also had the +effect to restore the natural side of life, to liberate men from a false +spiritualism and an excessive idealism. From despising the human faculties, +men came back to an acceptance of their dictation, and even to an animal +delight in the senses and passions. The natural man was deified; but not in +the manner of the Greeks, in simplicity and with a pure love of beauty. +An artificial love of nature and the natural in man was the result of +the renaissance; a hothouse culture and a corrupting moral development +followed. Passion was given loose rein, the senses took every form of +indulgence. Yet the Church was even worse, while many of the classic +scholars were stoic in their moral purity and earnestness. This movement +developed individualism in thought, a selfish moral aim, and intellectual +arrogance. The men who came under its influence cared more for culture +than for humanity, they were driven away from the common interests of +their fellows by their new intellectual sympathies. It was the desire of +Savonarola to restore the old Christian spirit of brotherhood and +helpfulness. In this his movement was wide apart from that of the +renaissance, which gave such tyrants as the Medici a justification for +their deliberate attacks on the liberties of the people. He loved man, +they loved personal development. + +George Eliot shows these two influences in antagonism with each other; on +the one hand a reforming Christianity, on the other the renaissance +movement. She admirably contrasts them in their spirit and influence, +though she by no means indicates all of the tendencies of either. Her +purpose is not that of the historical novelist, who wishes simply to give a +correct and living picture of the time wherein he lays his plot. She vises +this portion of history because it furnishes an excellent opportunity to +unfold her ideas about life, rather than because it gives an abundance of +picturesque material to the novelist. Her primary object is not the +interpretation of Florentine life in the time of Savonarola; and this +subordination of the historical material must be kept fully in mind by the +reader or he will be misled in his judgment on the book. It has well been +said that the historical characters in _Romola_ are not so well sketched as +the original creations. Savonarola is not so lifelike as Tito. She seems to +have been cramped by the details of history; and she has not thoroughly +conquered and marshalled subordinate to her thought the mass of local +incidents she introduces. Her account of Savonarola is inadequate, because +it does not enter fully enough into his history, and because it omits much +which is necessary to a full understanding of the man and his influence. + +So far as the book has an historical purpose it is that of describing the +general life of the time rather than that of portraying Savonarola. Because +of this purpose much is introduced into the story which is irrelevant to +the plot itself. Not only did the author desire to contrast a man like +Savonarola, led by the spirit of self-denial and renunciation, with one +like Tito Melema led by the spirit of self-love and personal gratification; +but she wished to contrast worldliness and spirituality, or individualism +and altruism, as social forces. Lorenzo and the renaissance give one form +of life, Savonarola and Christianity give another; and these two appear +as affecting every class in society and every phase of the social order. +To bring out this contrast requires a broad stage and many scenes. Much +which seems quite irrelevant to the plot has its place in this larger +purpose, and serves to bring out the final unity of impression which the +author sought to produce. Nor is the purpose of the book merely that of +contrasting two great phases of thought and of social influence, but rather +to show them as permanent elements in human, nature and the nature of the +effect which each produces. + +_Romola_ demands for its thorough appreciation that the reader shall have a +considerable acquaintance with Italian history in the fifteenth century and +with the social and literary changes of that period. Whether it is read +with a keen interest and relish will much depend on this previous +information. To the mere novel-reader it may seem dull and too much +encumbered by uninteresting learning. To one who is somewhat familiar with +the renaissance period, and who can appreciate the ethical intention of the +book, it will be found to be a work of genius and profound insight. It will +help such a reader to a clearer comprehension of this period than he could +well obtain in any other manner, and the ethical purpose will add a new and +living interest to the story of Florentine life. He will be greatly helped +to comprehend the moral and intellectual life of the time, with its-- + + strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic + dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude + passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination toward a + self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human + conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was filling the air + with strange prophecies and presentiments. [Footnote: _Proem to + Romola_.] + +The artistic features of this period were many and striking, but George +Eliot has not made so large a use of them as could have been wished; at +least they appear in her book too much under the influence of historic +information. She could not be content merely to absorb and reflect an +historic period; but her active intellect, full of ideas concerning the +causes of human changes, must give an explanation of what was before her. +This philosophic tendency mars the artistic effect and blurs the picture +which would otherwise have been given. Yet the critic must not be too sure +of this, and he must be content simply to note that George Eliot was too +energetic a thinker to be willing to portray the picturesque features of +Florentine life in the fifteenth century and to do no more. She had at +least three objects,--to give a picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth +century, to show the influence of the renaissance in conflict with +Christianity, and to inculcate certain ethical ideas about renunciation, +tradition and moral retribution. While the book thus gains in breadth and +in a certain massive impression which it produces, yet it loses in that +concentration of effect which a more limited purpose would have secured. It +gives the impression of having been written by a vigorous thinker rather +than by a genius of the first order. The critic has no right to complain of +this, however, or even to assume that genius might do other work than it +has done. Had George Eliot been less thoughtful than she was, she would not +have been George Eliot. _Romola_ grew out of a genius so large and original +that it can well endure the criticisms caused by any defects it may have. + +The ideas of the time appear subtly expressed in the influence they produce +on the persons who entertain them. Savonarola's mysticism and high moral +purpose made him at once a prophet and a reformer, but he was not able to +separate the spiritual realities of life from devotion to his party. His +courage, purity and holiness cannot but be admired, while his fanaticism is +to be deplored. George Eliot has well conceived and expressed the effect +produced in all but the very greatest minds by the assumption of +supernatural powers. Savonarola was strong and great as a preacher and a +reformer, weak only on the side of his visions and his faith that his party +represented the kingdom of God. Not that his visions were weak, nor are +they assumed to be untrue; but his mysticism clouded his intellect, and his +fanaticism led him to overlook the practical truths to be inculcated by a +genuine reformer. He is a true type of the mystical churchman of the time, +who saw the corruption about him and desired a better order of things, +but who hoped to secure it by reviving the past in all its imagined +supernatural features. He would have ruled the world by visions to be +received by monks, and he would have made Jesus Christ the head of the +republic. Yet his visions entangled his clear intellect and perverted his +moral purpose. + +On the other hand, Tito Melema was intended to represent the renaissance +movement on its Greek, or its aesthetic and social side. He was not a bad +man at heart, but he had no moral purpose, no ethical convictions. He had +the Greek love of ease, enjoyment and unconcern for the morrow; a spirit +which the renaissance revived in many of its literary devotees. He lived +for the day, for self, in the delight of music, art, social intercourse and +sensual enjoyment. He had the renaissance quickness of assuming all parts, +its love of wide and pretentious learning, its superficial scholarship, +its social and political deftness and flexibility. The dry, minute, +unprofitable spirit of criticism is well indicated by Bardo Bardi, which +had no originality and no fresh vitality, but which loved to comment on the +classic writers at tedious length, and to collate passages for purposes the +most foreign from any practical aim life could possibly afford. In the +conception of Tito, George Eliot has quite surpassed herself, and in all +literature there is no delineation of a character surpassing this. One of +her critics says there is no character in her novels "more subtly devised +or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning +graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, +his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his +cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as +of a faithless summer sea, make up a being that at once fascinates and +repels, that invites love, but turns our love into loathing almost before +we have given it." [Footnote: Westminster Review, July, 1881.] Mr. R.H. +Hutton has expressed his conviction that this is one of the most skilfully +painted of all the characters in fictitious literature. He says, "A +character essentially treacherous only because it is full of soft placid +selfishness is one of the most difficult to paint;" but in sketching Tito's +career, "the same wonderful power is maintained throughout, of stamping on +our imagination with the full force of a master hand a character which +seems naturally too fluent for the artist's purpose. There is not a more +masterly piece of painting in English romance than this figure of Tito." + +Romola represents the divided interests of one who was affected by both the +renaissance and Christianity. Brought up to know only what the renaissance +had to teach, to delight in culture and to ignore religion, her contact +with Savonarola opened a new world to her mind. Her experience in life led +her to seek some deeper moral anchorage than was afforded by the culture of +her father and husband, yet she could not follow Savonarola into the region +of mystical visions and other-worldliness. Her life having broken loose +from the ties of love through the faithlessness of Tito, and from the ties +of tradition through the failure of culture to satisfy her heart, she +drifts out into the world, to find, under the leadership of the great +preacher, that life's highest duty is renunciation. His influence over the +noblest souls of his time is indicated in Romola's trust in him, and in her +acceptance of him as a master and a guide. When this guide failed, as all +human guides must fail, she found peace in the service of others. In living +for humanity, her sorrows were turned into strength, and her renunciation +became a religion. It is Romola who represents George Eliot in this book, +gives voice to her ideas, and who preaches the new gospel she would have +the world learn. If Romola has her limitations as a conception of womanly +character, is too "passionless and didactic," yet she does admirably +represent the influence on a thoughtful woman of a contention between +culture and religion, and how such a person may gradually attain to a +self-poised life in loving service toward others. She is not an ideal +woman. She was given a character which prevents her being quite attractive, +because she was made to represent ideas and social tendencies. + +The altruistic doctrine of renunciation, and of living for others, is more +fully developed in _Romola_ than in any other of George Eliot's books +except _The Mill on the Floss_. That the truest satisfaction life can +afford is to be found in work done for human good is conspicuously shown in +the experiences of Romola. She finds no peace as a follower of Savonarola, +she finds no abiding content in philosophy; but toil for others among the +sick, suffering and dying, brings heavenly joy and a great calm. She had no +special love for this work, her early education had even made it repulsive; +but Savonarola had shown her that in this direction lay life's true aim. He +communicated to her his own enthusiasm for humanity, and she retained this +faith even after her loss of confidence in him had loosened her hold on his +religious teachings. She went beyond her teacher and inspirer, learned his +lessons better than he did himself, and came to see that a true religion is +not of a sect or party, but humanitarian. When she warned him against his +fanatical devotion to his party, he attempted to justify his narrow policy +by identifying true Christianity with his own work, Romola replied,-- + + "Do you then know so well what will further the coming of God's + kingdom, father, that you will dare to despise the plea of mercy--of + justice--of faithfulness to your own teaching? Take care, father, lest + your enemies have some reason when they say that, in your visions of + what will further God's kingdom, you see only what will strengthen your + own party." + + "And that is true!" said Savonarola, with flashing eyes. Romola's voice + had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies. "The cause + of my party _is_ the cause of God's kingdom." + + "I do not believe it!" said Romola, her whole frame shaken with + passionate repugnance. "God's kingdom is something wider--else let + me stand outside it with the beings that I love." + + The two faces were lit up, each with an opposite emotion, each with an + opposite certitude. Further words were impossible. Romola hastily + covered her head and went out in silence. [Footnote: Chapter LIX.] + +Savonarola forgot the better spirit of his own teachings, he sought to +become a political leader. It was his ruin, for his purpose was vitiated, +and his influence waned. George Eliot well says that "no man ever struggled +to retain power over a mixed multitude without suffering vitiation; his +standard must be their lower needs, and not his own best insight." This was +the sad fate of the great Florentine preacher and reformer. He lost his +faith, and he spoke without the moment's conviction. When this result came +about, all hope for Savonarola as a reformer was gone. He was then only the +leader of a party. George Eliot has well painted the effect upon Romola of +this fall, and given deep insight into the results of losing our trust in +those great souls who have been our guides. All the ties of life had +snapped for Romola; her marriage had proved a failure, her friend had +become unworthy of her confidence; and she fled. + +Romola went away, found herself in the midst of a plague-stricken people, +gave her life to an assuagement of suffering and sorrow. Then she could +come back to her home purified, calm and noble. In the "Epilogue," we find +her speaking the word which gives meaning to the whole book. Tessa's child, +whom she had rescued, says to her that he would like to lead a life which +would give him a good deal of pleasure. Romola says to him,-- + + "That is not easy, my Lille. It is only a poor sort of happiness that + could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We + can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a + great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of + the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings + so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being + what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it + is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that + no man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless + he gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards, and gets strength + to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that + belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than + falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow + sacred; _he_ had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in + struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the + highest deeds they are capable of, And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act + nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, + you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will + happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose + something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own + pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just + the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the + one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man + say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.' I + will tell you something, Lillo." + + Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her hands, + and his young eyes were meeting hers. + + "There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great + deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was + young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle + and kind. I believe when I first knew him, he never thought of anything + cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that + was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, + he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds--such as make men + infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed + every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe + and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him." + +Aside from this altruistic teaching which is developed in connection with +the life of Romola, the doctrine of retribution is vigorously unfolded +in the history of Tito Melema. The effects of selfishness and personal +self-seeking have nowhere been so wonderfully studied by George Eliot as in +this character. His career is minutely traced from step to step of his +downfall, and with a remarkable faithfulness and courage. The effects of +vice and sin are nowhere so finely presented and with such profound ethical +insight. A careful study of this character alone will give a clear +comprehension of George Eliot's conception of retribution, how the natural +laws of life drag us down when we are untrue to ourselves and others. It is +a great moral lesson presented in this character, a sermon of the most +powerful kind. Nemesis follows Tito ever onward from the first false step, +lowers the tone of his mind, corrupts his moral nature, drags him into an +ever-widening circle of vice and crime, makes him a traitor, and causes him +to be false to his wife. Step by step, as he gives way to evil, we see the +degradation of his heart and mind, how the unfailing Nemesis is wreaking +its vengeance upon him. He is surely punished, and his death is the fit end +of his career. We are shown how his evil deeds affect others, how the great +law of retribution involves the innocent in his downfall. Here George Eliot +has unfolded for us how true it is that our lives are linked on every side +with the lives of our fellows, and how the deeds of any one must affect for +good or evil the lives of many others. + +Almost every leading thought of George Eliot's philosophy and ethics is +unfolded in greater or less degree in this novel. It is full of brave, +wholesome teaching, and of clear insight into the consequences of conduct. + +_Romola_ is the most thoughtful, the most ambitious, the most philosophical +of George Eliot's works; and it is also the most lacking in spontaneity, +and more than any other shows the evidences of the artist's labors. Yet +by many persons it will be accepted as the greatest of her works, and +not without the best of reasons. It contains some of her most original +characters, gives a remarkable emphasis to great moral laws, and interprets +the spiritual influence of the conflict which is ever waging between +tradition and advancing culture as no other has done. It is a +thought-provoking book, a book of the highest moral aims. + + + + +XV. + + +FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH. + +The scenes of George Eliot's later novels are laid in England, but for the +most part among a town rather than a rural population. Instead of Hayslope +and Raveloe, Mrs. Poyser and Silas Marner, we have Middlemarch and Treby +Magna, Dorothea Brooke and Felix Holt. If Felix Holt is quite as much a +working-man as Adam Bede, occupying a social position higher in no respect +whatever, yet he is a workingman of a far different type. If Adam is the +nobler character, the truer type of man, Felix represents a larger social +purpose and has higher moral aims. In _Adam Bede_, we find rustic +simplicity and contentment, but in _Felix Holt_ we touch social aspirations +and political ambitions. The horizon has widened, the plane of social life +has lifted, there are new motives and larger ideals. + +Very many of her readers and critics regard _Middlemarch_ as George Eliot's +greatest novel. This is said to have been her own opinion. With great +unanimity her readers pronounce _Felix Holt_ her weakest and least +interesting work. So far as the dramatic and artistic execution are +concerned, these judgments are not entirely correct. The machinery of +_Middlemarch_ is clumsy, and the plot desultory in aim and method. On the +other hand, _Felix Holt_ is strongly thought out and skilfully planned. It +has much of passion and enthusiasm in it, and not a little of pure and +noble sentiment, while _Middlemarch_ is never impassioned, but flows on +calmly. The author evidently put herself into _Felix Holt_ with the purpose +of teaching her own views about moral and social life. She lived in the +characters, felt and hoped with them, and wrote out of a deep, spontaneous +purpose. The sensational element has been more fully used, and the unity of +the plot more thoroughly developed, than in any other of her works, while +there is a living, breathing purpose in the story which is absent from her +later works. _Felix Holt_ is one of the two or three novels by George Eliot +which have an affirmative and thoroughly constructive purpose. It is this +purpose which makes the chief interest of the work. It is a story of social +reform, and is to be read as an embodiment of the author's political ideas. +From this point of view it is a story full of interest, and it is the one +of George Eliot's novels which will most strongly impress those who are +fully in sympathy with her ideas of progress and social regeneration. The +purpose of _Middlemarch_ is critical, to show how our modern social life +cramps the individual, limits his energies, and destroys his power of +helpful service to the world. This critical aim runs through the whole work +and colors every feature of it. The impression made by the whole work is +saddening; and the reader, while admiring the artistic power and the +literary finish of the book, is depressed by the moral issue. In strength +of imagination, intellectual insight, keen power of analysis, this novel +surpasses anything else George Eliot has written. + +_Felix Holt_ is a novel with an ethical purpose. It aims to show how social +and political reform can be brought about. Felix is George Eliot's ideal +working-man, a man who remains true to his own class, seeks his own moral +elevation, does not have much faith in the ballot, and who is zealous for +the education of his fellows. He is a radical who believes in heredity, who +is aware of our debt to the past, and who would use the laws of social +inheritance for the elevation of mankind. The account Felix gives of his +conversion contains George Eliot's conception of what is to be done by all +workingmen who rightly understand what social reform is and how it can be +most truly brought about. It is to be secured by each workingman living not +for self and pleasure, but to do what good he can in the world. + + "I'm not speaking lightly," said Felix. "If I had not seen that I was + making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could + have got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have + looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I + laughed out loud at last to think of a poor devil like me, in a Scotch + garret, with my stockings out at heel and a shilling or two to be + dissipated upon, with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and + old women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs--wanting to + turn my life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could + be turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place + for a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't + be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter + the world--that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in + it, And if I don't lie and filch, somebody else will. Well, then, + somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion. + Mr. Lyon, if you want to know it." + +When Felix gives Esther an account of his plans, and describes to her his +purpose to do what he can to elevate his class, we have George Eliot's own +views on the subject of social reform. Felix says,-- + + "I want to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, + who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither + flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage--an order I belong + to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I + want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, + in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions of + his nature, than if he belonged to the grimacing set who have + visiting-cards, and are proud to be thought richer than their + neighbors." + +That the leading aim of _Felix Holt_ is to show the nature of true social +reform may be seen in the address made by Felix at the election, and even +more distinctly in the address put into his mouth in _Blackwood's Magazine_ +for 1868. In the election speech Felix gives it as his belief that if +workingmen "go the right way to work they may get power sooner without +votes" than with them, by the use of public opinion, "the greatest power +under heaven." The novel points out the social complications of life, the +influence of hereditary privileges and abuses, and how every attempt at +reform is complicated by many interests, and is likely to fall into the +hands of demagogues who use the workingmen for their own purposes. The +address of Felix in _Blackwood's_ is really a commentary on the novel, or +rather a fine and suggestive summary of the moral, social and political +idea; it was meant to inculcate. + +In _Felix Holt_, George Eliot would teach the world that true social reform +is not to be secured by act of Parliament, or by the possession of the +ballot on the part of all workingmen. It is but another enforcement of the +theory that it is not rights men are to seek after, but duties; that social +and political reform is not to be secured by insistence on rights, but by +the true and manly acceptance of altruism. Felix Holt is a social reformer +who is not a demagogue, who does not seek office or personal advancement, +but who wishes to show by his own conduct how a larger life is to be won. +He would introduce universal education; he would teach the great principles +of right living, physically and morally; he would inculcate the spirit of +helpfulness and mutual service. As a brave, earnest, self-sacrificing, +pure-minded lover of humanity, he is an inspiring character. George Eliot +evidently wished to indicate in his creation what can be done by workingmen +towards the uplifting of their own class. A better social order, she would +have us believe, cannot be secured from external sources; but it must be +had by an internal impulse moving those whose lives are degraded to seek +for higher things because of their own intrinsic good. The demagogue +seeks the elevation of workingmen because he can use them for his own +advancement; but Felix desires their elevation for the good of the whole +social structure. To this end he would inspire in his fellows a greater +moral ambition and zeal for the common good. He is a Mazzini, Castelar or +John Bright in his own social order; one who loves his own class, wishes to +remain in it, and who desires above all things that it shall do its part in +the work of national elevation. His aim is not to oppose the other classes +in society, but to make his own necessary to the prosperity of his country. +Felix is not an ideal character, for he is rough, uncultured and +headstrong; but he is an inspiring personality, with gifts of intellectual +fascination and moral courage. George Eliot has created no other character +like him, for Deronda and Zarca, whose aims somewhat resemble his, are very +different. He is no hero, he is not altogether an attractive person. He +has, however, the power, which some of the noblest of George Eliot's +characters possess, of attracting and uplifting other persons. He made +Esther realize the wide gulf between self-pleasing and duty, he inspired +her with moral courage and awakened her mind to the higher aims and +satisfactions life has to give us. He was undoubtedly meant for a moral +hero of the working class, a prophet to the laborers. With all his +limitations he is one of the noblest and most helpful characters in George +Eliot's books. + +Other distinctive ideas of George Eliot's appear throughout this book. Her +theories of heredity, altruism and environment affect the whole development +of the story. Perhaps no more striking illustration of the law of +retribution is to be found in her books than in the case of Mrs. Transome. +This woman's sin corrupted her own life, and helped to darken the lives of +others. + +The aim had in view in _Middlemarch_ is to illustrate the impotence of +modern life so far as it relates in moral heroism and spiritual attainment. +High and noble action is hindered and baulked by the social conditions in +the midst of which we live; and those who would live grandly and purely, +and in a supreme unselfishness devote themselves to the world, find that +their efforts are in vain. Dorothea has longings after a life of love +and service; she would live for high purposes and give herself for others' +good. Her hopes end in disaster almost; and she is cramped and baulked +on every side. Lydgate would devote himself to science, to patient +investigations for the sake of alleviating human misery and disease. His +social environment cripples him, and his life comes to nothing compared +with what he had aimed at, and what he was capable of attaining. Dorothea +is presented as capable of becoming a saint, being of an ardent, heroic +nature, a woman who yearned after some lofty conception of the world that +was to be made, not merely poetry, but an actual fact about her; who was +"enamoured of intensity and greatness," and "likely to seek martyrdom." The +difficulties which most beset such a nature are presented in the very first +chapter, where these saintly tendencies are considered as probable +obstacles to her making a good marriage. + + A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a + brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly, as if + she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles--who had strange + whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old + theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with + a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere + with political economy, and the keeping of saddle-horses; a man would + naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship. + +The social life of Tipton really had no room for such a woman, could not +employ her rare gifts, knew not what to make of her yearnings and her +charity. And Tipton is the world and modern life, which spurns the heroic, +has no place for the poetry of existence, can make nothing of yearnings and +longings for high heroism. Because the social order into which she was born +could not use her gifts, because the vision of life in her soul was other +and higher than that which society had marked out for such as she, her life +was wasted in an unhappy marriage. In an earlier age she would have become +a St. Theresa, for society then had a place for such souls. Now she bows in +reverence to a man of learning, dreams great things of tender service to +him; but this proves not to be the place in which she belongs. In the last +paragraphs of the book the author gives her own account of Dorothea's +failure to reach the good she sought. + + Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a + mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in + Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine + girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and + in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry + his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and + not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually + observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would + not have married either the one or the other. + + Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally + beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse + struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on + her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch that + such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which she was + born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly man to a + girl less than half his own age--on modes of education which make a + woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance--on rules of + conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly asserted + beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to + breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life, + where great feelings take the aspect of error, and great faith the + aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so + strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new + Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual + life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in + daring all for the sake of a brother's burial; the medium in which + their ardent deeds took place is forever gone. But we insignificant + people with our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many + Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that + of the Dorothea whose story we know. + + Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were + not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander + broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on + the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was + incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly + dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you + and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived + faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. + +The influence of social environment is also presented in _Felix Holt_ as a +chief determining agent in the lives of individuals. However high the aims +and noble the purposes of the individual, he must succumb to those social +influences which are more powerful than he. In the third chapter we are +told that-- + + This history is chiefly concerned with the private lot of a few men + and women; but there is no private life which has not been determined + by a wider public life, from the time when the primeval milkmaid had + to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the cow she + milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare. Even + in that conservatory existence where the fair Camelia is sighed + for by the noble young Pineapple, neither of them needing to care + about the frost or rain outside, there is a nether apparatus of + hot-water pipes liable to cool down on a strike of the gardeners or + a scarcity of coal. And the lives we are about to look back upon do + not belong to those conservatory species; they are rooted in the + common earth, having to endure all the ordinary chances of past and + present weather. As to the weather of 1832, the Zadkiel of that time + had predicted that the electrical condition of the clouds in the + political hemisphere would produce unusual perturbations in organic + existence, and he would perhaps have seen a fulfilment of his + remarkable prophecy in that mutual influence of dissimilar destinies + which we shall see gradually unfolding itself. For if the mixed + political conditions of Treby Magna had not been acted on by the + passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Harold Transome would not have + presented himself as a candidate for North Loamshire, Treby would + not have been a polling-place, Mr. Matthew Jermyn would not have + been on affable terms with a Dissenting preacher and his flock, and + the venerable town would not have been placarded with handbills, + more or less complimentary and retrospective--conditions in this + case essential to the "where" and the "what," without which, as the + learned know, there can be no event whatever. + +In the case of Lydgate, if the ambition was less noble and pure, the fall +was greater, and the disaster sadder to contemplate. He, too, was hindered +by his "environment," but it was much more of his own creating, the result +of his own nature, than in the case of Dorothea. We are told that "he was +fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an +anatomical conception, and make a link in the chain of discovery." That he +was fully capable of achieving such a result is made to appear by the +author. The account given of the discovery he wished to make, abundantly +confirms this opinion of him; it also shows how large was George Eliot's +learning, and how well she could use it for the novelist's purposes. + +To show how a person capable of such work could be entangled in the +ordinary affairs of life and lose sight of his youthful vision, or at least +the power of realizing it, is the purpose developed in the career of +Lydgate. There were "spots of commonness" in his nature. These-- + + lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in spite of noble + intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary + men of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his + intellectual ardor did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about + furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without + his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons. + +The egotism of his nature, his incapacity for hard, severe economy and the +exclusion of luxury and refined pleasure, proved his destruction. Along +with this egotism went a too susceptible impressiveness in the presence of +beautiful women of soft, delicate ways. He meant to do great things in +science, but he could not endure the discipline, the sacrifice, the long +years of waiting, by which the great result was to be attained. Even if he +could have done this, he lost the power of doing it through the social +environment of marriage. How a man's love for a woman may corrupt the +heroic purposes of his life is hinted at in one of the paragraphs in which +George Eliot describes Lydgate, and the vision which enamoured his young +life until the woman turned all his gold into dross. + + We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to + fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally + parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we + are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom + and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old + Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other + kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious + thought and renunciation of small desires? In the story of this + passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious + marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom + the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the + Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their + vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as + the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant + to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of + their coming to be shapen after the average, and fit to be packed by + the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness for perhaps + their ardor for generous, unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the + ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked + like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. + Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual + change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may + have sent some of our breath toward infecting them when we uttered our + conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions; or perhaps it came + with the vibration from a woman's glance. + +The pathetic and saddening tragedy of a man's failure to realize the +possibilities of his own nature was never more clearly and minutely told +than in the case of Lydgate. We see all the steps of his fall, we know all +the reasons why it came, we comprehend fully what he might have been and +done. The bitterness of his own failure made him call his wife a basil +plant--"a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's +brains." His hair never became white, but having won a large practice in +his profession, he had his life heavily insured, and died at the age of +fifty. He regarded his own life as a failure, though he was outwardly +successful and "his skill was relied on by many paying patients." Against +his will, by ways and causes he could not foresee, through the tenderness +and ease of his own nature, the vision of his youth did not come true. + +Perhaps _Middlemarch_ is the most perfect example among George Eliot's +novels of her purpose to show how we are guided, controlled and modified in +our thought and action by the whole society of which the individual forms a +single atom. Many characters appear in _Middlemarch_, drawn with wonderful +skill and finish, each having some part to perform in the complicated, play +of life, and each some subtle, scarce-understood influence on all. Tragedy +and comedy, selfishness and renunciation, greed and charity, love and +jealousy, mingle here as in life. Many of these characters, such as Caleb +Garth, Farebrother, Mrs. Cadwallader and Mr. Brooke, are remarkable +portraitures, original and well conceived; but they all have their place in +the social structure, and serve a purpose in the moral issue to be worked +out. + +It has been said of _Felix Holt_, and justly, that its characters are too +typical, too much representative of a class, and too little personal in +their natures and individual in their actions. Yet this method of treating +character is consistent with the purpose of the novel, which is quite as +much ethical as literary. Here we have imbruted and ignorant workingmen, +laborers who would elevate their class, pious Dissenters, typical clergymen +of the Church of England, old hereditary families with the smouldering +evils which accumulate about them, ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers, +and all the other phases of character likely to be found in such a town as +Treby Magna. Each person stands for a class; and the aim of the novel is to +indicate how the relative position of the classes represented may be +changed with as little as possible of disorder and disruption. + +It should be borne in mind, however, that the aim of George Eliot is not +exclusively ethical. _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ are not ethical or +socialistic treatises, and the whole purpose does not run in these +directions. She ever keeps in mind, however, the great fact that on the +ethical basis of right and wrong rests all the tragedy and comedy of the +world. Her ideas are made alive with genius, and her ethical purposes take +color in the glow of a brilliant imagination. She never did violence to the +rule which she stated in her essay on the poet Young. + + On its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches science; on its + emotional side, art. Now the products of art are great in proportion as + they result from that immediate prompting of innate power which we call + genius, and not from labored obedience to a theory or rule; and the + presence of genius, or innate prompting, is directly opposed to the + perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is imperious, + and excludes the reflection _why_ it should act. In the same way, in + proportion as morality is emotional, _i.e._, has affinity with art, it + will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling and action, and not + as the recognition of a rule. Love does not say, "I ought to love"--it + loves. Pity does not say, "It is right to be pitiful"--it pities. + Justice does not say, "I am bound to be just"--it feels justly. It is + only where moral emotion is comparatively weak that the contemplation + of a rule or theory habitually mingles with its action; and in + accordance with this; we think experience, both in literature and life, + has shown that the minds which are pre-eminently didactic--which insist + on a "lesson," and despise everything that will not convey a moral, are + deficient in sympathetic emotion. + +The moral and social problems of life seem to fire her creative powers, +kindle her imagination, and give rein to her genius. While the thoughtful +reader may find in _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ more that interests his +speculative faculties than of what will satisfy his sentiments and +imagination, yet he must keep in mind the fact that these are works +depending largely for their effect on the mind to their poetic qualities. +There is in them both a large and thoughtful contemplation of life, but +with a constant reference to its passion, sentiment and ideal aims. If they +are realistic it is not to the exclusion of spiritual elements; and the +poetic, sentimental phases of human existence are never ignored. + + + + +XVI. + + +DANIEL DERONDA. + +The purpose of George Eliot's last novel is distinctly constructive. While +there is much of criticism in its pages, and criticism of the severest +kind, its aim is that of spiritual renewal and upbuilding. It unfolds her +conception of social growth, and of the influence of tradition and the +national idea, much more completely than any other of her works. Moreover, +it is all aglow with moral enthusiasm and spiritual ardor. It indicates a +greater spontaneity than any of her books after _The Mill on the Floss_, +and gives ample evidence that it possessed and absorbed the author's mind +with its purpose and spirit. It is written from a great depth of conviction +and moral earnestness. That it is her greatest book, artistically +considered, there is no reason for believing; that it has its serious +limitations as a literary creation all the critics have said. Yet it +remains also to be said, that for largeness of aim, wealth of sentiment, +and purity of moral teaching, no other book of George Eliot's surpasses +_Daniel Deronda_. Indeed, in its realization of the spiritual basis of +life, and in its portrayal of the religious sentiment, as these are +understood by positivism, this book surpasses every other, by whomsoever +written. + +_Daniel Deronda_ is a romance, and hence differs in kind, conception, +scope, circumstance and form from her other works. It is less a study of +character than most of her other works, has more of adventure and action; +and while it is no less realistic, yet it has higher ideal aims, and seeks +to interpret what ought to be. + +At least three distinct purposes may be seen running through the book, +which blend into and confirm each other: to show the all-powerful influence +of heredity, that blood will assert itself as more effective than any +conditions of social environment or education; to indicate that ideals, +subjective feelings and sentiments form the reality and the substance of +religion, and that tradition affords the true medium of its expression; and +to contrast a form of social life based on individualism with one based on +tradition. The aim of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is many-sided, and cannot +be expressed in a few phrases. It is too vital with life, touches the +emotions and sentiments too often, has an ideal motive too large, to be +dismissed with a quickly spoken word of contempt. Professor Dowden, one of +her best and most sympathetic critics, has said that it is "an homage to +the emotions rather than to the intellect of man. Her feeling finds +expression not only in occasional gnomic utterances in which sentiments are +declared to be the best part of the world's wealth, and love is spoken of +as deeper than reason, and the intellect is pronounced incapable of +ascertaining the validity of claims which rest upon loving instincts of the +heart, or else are baseless. The entire work possesses an impassioned +aspect, an air of spiritual prescience, far more than the exactitude of +science. The main forces which operate in it are sympathies, aspirations, +ardors; and ideas chiefly as associated with these." The object aimed at is +ideal and religious, much more than intellectual and scientific, to show +how necessary is religion, how weak and imperfect is man when the ideal +side of his nature is undeveloped. It makes clear the author's conviction +concerning the importance of religion, that she prized its spiritual hopes, +found satisfaction in its enthusiasms and aspirations. When Gwendolen was +cast down in utter dejection, all of joy and delight the world had afforded +her gone, and she felt the greatest need of something to comfort and +sustain her in her distrust of self and the world, Deronda said to her, +"The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the higher, the +religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our own +appetites and vanities." + +The religion inculcated, to be sure, is not that of faith in a personal God +and a personal immortality, but that which is based on the mystery of life +and nature, impressed on the sensitive soul of man in fears, sorrows, +hopes, aspirations, and built up into great ideals and institutions through +tradition. _Daniel Deronda_ gives us the gospel of altruism, a new +preaching of love to man. _Daniel Deronda_ proves as no other writing has +ever done, what is the charm and the power of these ideas when dissociated +from any spiritual hopes which extend beyond humanity. + +In order to give the most adequate expression to her ideas, and to show +forth the power of the spiritual life as she conceived it, George Eliot +made use of that race and religion which presents so remarkable an +illustration of the influence of tradition and heredity. She saw in Judaism +a striking confirmation of her theories, and a proof of what ideal +interests can do to preserve a nation. To vindicate that race in the eyes +of the world, to show what capacity there is in its national traditions, +was also a part of her purpose. That this was her aim may be seen in what +she said to a young Jew in whom she was much interested. + + I wrote about the Jews because I consider them a fine old race who have + done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as + I do for the Florentines. + +The same idea is to be seen very clearly in the last essay in the +_Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. She regarded the great memories and +traditions of this people as a priceless legacy which may and ought to draw +all the scattered Israelites together and unite them again in a common +national life. + + A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering + thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to + preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small + beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such + as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being + thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's + children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to + great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in + its institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which + makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest + with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their + blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all + calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and + thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual + man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, + if not in actual existence, yet existing in the past, in memory, as a + departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be + restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of + various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for + cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to + suffice for social energy. + +This was one of the favorite ideas of George Eliot, which she has again and +again expressed. She was impressed with the conviction that such a national +life is necessary to the world's growth and welfare, that the era of a +common brotherhood, dissociated from national traditions and hopes, has not +yet come. Hence her belief that Judaism ought to speak the voice of a +united race, occupying the old home of this people, and sending forth its +ideas as a national inheritance and inspiration. This belief inspires the +concluding words of her essay, as well as the last chapters of the novel. + + There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew: not + that he should shut out the utmost illumination which knowledge can + throw on his national history, but that he should cherish the store of + inheritance which that history has left him. Every Jew should be + conscious that he is one of a multitude possessing common objects of + piety in the immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of ancestors + who have transmitted to them a physical and mental type strong enough, + eminent enough in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar promise, to + constitute a new beneficent individuality among the nations, and, by + confuting the traditions of scorn, nobly avenge the wrongs done to + their fathers. + + There is a sense which the worthy child of a nation that has brought + forth industrious prophets, high and unique among the poets of the + world, is bound by their visions. + + Is bound? + + Yes; for the effective bond of human action is feeling, and the worthy + child of a people owning the triple name of Hebrew, Israelite and Jew, + feels his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and + the possible renovation of his national family. + + Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling and call his + doctrine a philosophy? He will teach a blinding superstition--the + superstition that a theory of human well-being can be constructed in + disregard of the influences which have made us human. + +The purpose of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is not merely to vindicate +Judaism. This race and its religion are used as the vehicles for larger +ideas, as an illustration of the supreme importance to mankind of spiritual +aims concentrated into the form of national traditions and aspirations. Her +own studies, and personal intercourse with the Jews, helped to attract her +to this race; but the main cause of her use of them in this novel is their +remarkable history. Their moral and spiritual persistence, their wonderful +devotedness to their own race and its aims, admirably adapted them to +develop for her the ideas she wished to express. What nation could she have +taken that would have so clearly illustrated her theory of national +memories and traditions? In the forty-second chapter of _Daniel Deronda_ +she has put into the month of Mordecai her own theories on this subject. He +vindicates his right to call himself a _rational_ Jew, one who accepts what +is reasonable and true. + + "It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that bind and + consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea, consecrate it with + kinship; the past becomes my parent, and the future stretches toward me + the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of + special kindred that makes the families of man rich in interchanged + wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the + cedar and the palm?" + +He declares that each nation has its own work to do in the world, in the +uplifting and maintenance of some special idea which is necessary to the +welfare and development of humanity. The place he assigns to Judaism is +precisely that which made it dear to George Eliot, because it embodied her +conception of religion and its social functions. + + "Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of + affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the + reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life + into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and + weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us." + +Again, he utters words which are simply an expression of George Eliot's own +sentiments. + + "Where else is there a nation of whom it may be as truly said that + their religion and law and moral life mingled as the stream of blood in + the heart and made one growth--where else a people who kept and + enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they were hunted + with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast + from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman that, swimming to save + his life, he held the roll of his writings between his teeth and saved + them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our race? + They struggled to keep their place among the nations like heroes--yea, + when the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but when the + plow and the harrow had passed over the last visible signs of their + national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with + the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, 'The spirit is alive, + let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because movable--so that + it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn + may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on + an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though + often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded + amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the + Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of + them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he + diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines + of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The native spirit + of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed, + and draw out the compressed virtues of law and prophecy." + +Then Mordecai unfolds his theory of national unity and of a regenerated +national life; and it is impossible to read his words attentively without +accepting them as an expression of George Eliot's own personal convictions. +As an embodiment of her conception of the functions of national life they +are full of interest aside from their place in the novel. + + "In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our + rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity, the soul of Judaism + is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which + has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. + Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the + ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a + voice among the peoples of the East and the West--which will plant the + wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, us of old, a medium of + transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living + warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition + will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the + illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge + alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.... The effect of our + separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation + unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is + the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people, + whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me + that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the + children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as + a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; + they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled + breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the + learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the + political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which + has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew + genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, 'We will + lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like + that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the + long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, + refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the + soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the + statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there + no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle + with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk + gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena? + There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, + simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality of + protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our + ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western + freedom amidst the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an + organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the + outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the + outraged Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Israel + gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East which + carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its + bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a + neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West. Difficulties? I + know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement + move in the great among our people, and the work will begin.... + + "What is needed is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The + heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in + their veins as a power without understanding, like the morning + exultation of herds; it is the inborn half of memory, moving as in a + dream among writings on the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot + divide into speech. Let the torch of visible community be lighted! Let + the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let + there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a + nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, + even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, + but who still have a national hearth, and a tribunal of national + opinion. Will any say, 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinoza had not a + faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect + at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's nakedness + and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' Yet Baruch + Spinoza confessed he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen + nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are dead? + Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and + Home, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe + and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dug + from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver + in millions of human frames.... + + "I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but + the good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our + religious life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of + aught but wrong. The masters have said an offence against man is worse + than an offence against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the + breasts of Jews who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what + wonder, since there is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Our + national life was a growing light. Let the central fire be kindled + again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our + race will learn to think of their sacred land not as a place for + saintly beggary to await death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic + where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the + old, purified, enriched by the experience our greatest sons have + gathered from the life of the ages. How long is it?--only two centuries + since a vessel earned over the ocean the beginning of the great North + American nation. The people grew like meeting waters; they were various + in habit and sect. There came a time, a century ago, when they needed a + polity, and there were heroes of peace among them. What had they to + form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected by the vision of a + better? Let our wise and wealthy show themselves heroes. They have the + memories of the East and West, and they have the full vision of a + better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art + and wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised between East and West--a + covenant of reconciliation. Will any say the prophetic vision of your + race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry; the angel of + progress hag no message for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the + paid workers to lay open--the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken + field? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human + choice. The sons of Judah have to choose, that God may again choose + them. The Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the + planting of the national ensign. The Nile overflowed and rushed onward; + the Egyptian could not choose the overflow, but he chose to work and + make channels for the fructifying waters, and Egypt became the land of + corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and + resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or + purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine principle + of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the + blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future + of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us be as if we + were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage, claim + the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with + the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there: it will be + fulfilled." + +These words put into the mouth of Mordecai, indicate how thoroughly George +Eliot entered into the spirit of Judaism. She read Hebrew with ease, and +had delved extensively in Jewish literature, besides being familiar with +the monumental works in German devoted to Jewish history and opinions. The +religious customs, the home life, the peculiar social habits of the race, +she carefully studied. The accuracy of her information has been pointed out +by her Jewish critics, by whom the book has been praised with the utmost +enthusiasm. One of these, Prof. David Kaufmann, of Buda-Pesth, in an +excellent notice of _Daniel Deronda_, bears testimony to the author's +learning and to the faithfulness of her Jewish portraitures. He says that, +"led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish +national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish characters, +and to recognize and give presentment to the influences which Jewish +education is wont to exercise--to prove by types that Judaism is an +intellectual and spiritual force, still misapprehended and readily +overlooked, but not the less an effective power, for the future of which it +is good assurance that it possesses in the body of its adherents a noble, +susceptible and pliant material which only awaits its final casting to +appear in a glorious form." He also says of the author's learning, that it +is loving and exact, that her descriptions of Jewish life are always +faithful and her characters true to nature. + +"Leader of the present so-called realistic school, our author keeps up in +this work the reputation she has won of possessing the most minute +knowledge of the subjects she handles, by the manner in which she has +described the Jews--the great unknown of humanity. She has penetrated into +their history and literature affectionately and thoroughly; and her +knowledge in a field where ignorance is still venial if not expressly +authorized, has astonished even experts. In her selection of almost always +unfamiliar quotations, she shows a taste and a facility of reference really +amazing. When shall we see a German writer exhibiting the courteous +kindliness of George Eliot, who makes Deronda study Zunz's _Synagogale +Poesie_, and places the monumental words which open his chapter entitled +'Leiden,' at the head of the passage in which she introduces us to Ezra +Cohen's family, and at the club-meeting at which Mordecai gives utterance +to his ideas concerning the future of Israel? She is familiar with the +views of Jehuda-ha-Levi as with the dreams and longings of the cabalists, +and as conversant with the splendid names of our Hispano--Arabian epoch as +with the moral aphorisms of the Talmud and the subtle meaning contained in +Jewish legends.... It is by the piety and tenderness with which she treats +Jewish customs that the author shows how supreme her cultivation and +refinement are; and the small number of mistakes which can be detected in +her descriptions of Jewish life and ritual may put to blush even writers +who belong to that race." Again this critic says of the visionary Mordecai, +who has been pronounced a mere dreamer and untrue to nature, that he is an +altogether probable character and portrayed with a true realistic touch." +Mordecai is carved of the wood from which prophets are made, and so far as +the supersensuous can be rendered intelligible, it may even be said that in +studying him we are introduced into a studio or workshop of the prophetic +mind. He is one of the most difficult as well as one of the most successful +essays in psychological analysis ever attempted by an author; and in his +wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or +reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic +profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united +to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making +Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy +of commoner metal, and by giving the angelic likeness features which are +familiar to us all." + +Another Jew has borne equally hearty testimony to the faithfulness with +which George Eliot has described Jewish life and the spirit of the Jewish +religion. "She has acquired," this writer says, "an extended and profound +knowledge of the rites, aspirations, hopes, fears and desires of the +Israelites of the day. She has read their books, inquired into their modes +of thought, searched their traditions, accompanied them to the synagogue; +nay, she has taken their very words from their lips, and, like Asmodeus, +has unroofed their houses. To say that some slight errors have crept into +_Daniel Deronda_ is to say that no human work is perfect; and these +inaccuracies are singularly few and unimportant." [Footnote: James +Picciotto, author of "sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," in the Gentleman's +Magazine for November, 1876.] Still another Jewish critic says that in her +gallery of portraits she "gives in a marvellously full and accurate way all +the many sides of the Jewish complex national character." He also says that +Mordecai is a true successor of the prophets and moral leaders of the race, +that the national spirit and temper are truly represented in him. +[Footnote: Joseph Jacobs, in Macmillian's Magazine for 1877.] + +That the main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is not that of defending Judaism, +must be apparent to every attentive reader. The Jewish race is made use of +for purposes of illustration, as a notable example in proof of her +theories. There is a deeper purpose conspicuous throughout the hook, which +rests on her conceptions of the spiritual life as a development of +tradition. This larger purpose also jests on her altruistic conception of +the moral and spiritual life. As Professor Kaufmann has pointed out, the +story falls into two widely separated portions, in one of which the Jewish +element appears, in the other the English. Jewish life and its religious +spirit are contrasted with English life and a common type of its religion. +This is not a contrast, however, which is introduced for the purpose of +disparaging Christianity or English social life, but with the object of +comparing those whose life is anchored in the spiritual traditions of a +great people, with those who find the centre of their life in egotism and +an individualistic spirit. Grandcourt is a type of pure egotism; Gwendolen +is a creature who lives for self and with no law outside of her own +happiness. This is the spirit of the society in which they both move. On +the other hand, Mordecai lives in his race, Deronda gives his life +constantly away for others, and Mirah is unselfishness and simplicity +itself. So distinctly is this contrast drawn, so clearly are these two +phases of life brought over against each other, that the book seems to be +divided in the middle, and to be two separate works joined by a slender +thread. This artistic arrangement has been severely criticised, but its +higher purpose is only understood when this comparison and antagonism is +recognized. Then the true artistic arrangement vindicates itself, and the +unity of the book becomes apparent. Deronda moves in both these worlds, and +their influence on him is finely conceived. He finds no spiritual aim and +motive for his life until he is led into the charmed circle of a +traditional environment, and learns to live in and for his race. Living for +self, the life of Gwendolen is blasted, her hopes crushed, and she finds no +peace or promise except in the steadfast spiritual strength yielded her by +Deronda. That such a contrasting of the two great phases of life was a part +of George Eliot's purpose she has herself acknowledged. A comparison of the +spiritual histories of Gwendolen and Deronda will show how earnest was this +purpose of the author. Gwendolen is a type of those souls who have no +spiritual anchorage in the religious life and traditions of their people. +At the opening of chapter third we are told she had no home memories, that +"this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been wanting +in Gwendolen's life." At the end of the sixth chapter we are also told that +she had no insight into spiritual realities, that the bonds of spiritual +power and moral retribution had not been made apparent to her mind. + + Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers, + both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her + ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of + circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of + twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as + in any position which would lack the tribute of respect. She had no + permanent consciousness of other fetters, or of more spiritual + restraints, having always disliked whatever was presented to her under + the name of religion, in the same way that some people dislike + arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her, no + alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it, had + not occurred to her, any more than it had occurred to her to inquire + into the conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she + had had many opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was + dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been ready to + admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state. What she + unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad for others to be + unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual dread, + though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into + connection with the religion taught her, or with any human relations. + She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in + remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for + example, she was walking without companionship and there came some + rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her + with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in + the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself. + The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her + imagination at work in a way that made her tremble; but always when + some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in + which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world, in which + her will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to + this world was no more identified for her with those uneasy impressions + of awe than her uncle's surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With + human ears and eyes about her, she had always hitherto recovered her + confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire. + +Her difficulties all came out of this egoistic spirit, this want of +spiritual anchorage and religious faith. Gradually her bitter experiences +awakened in her a desire for a purer life, and the influence of Deronda +worked powerfully in the same direction. She is to be regarded, however, as +simply a representative of that social, moral and spiritual life bred in +our century by the disintegrating forces everywhere at work. No moral +ideal, no awe of the divine Nemesis, no spiritual sympathy with the larger +life of the race, is to be found in her thought. The radicalism of the +time, which neglects religious training, which scorns the life of the past, +which lives for self and culture, is destroying all that is best in modern +society. Gwendolen is one of the results of these processes, an example of +that impoverished life which is so common, arising from religious rebellion +and egotism. + +Another motive and spirit is represented in the character of Deronda. As a +boy, his mind was full of ideal aspirations, he was chivalrous and eager to +help and comfort others. He would take no mean advantages in his own +behalf, he loved the comradeship of those whom he could help, he was always +ready with his sympathy. + + He was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those + heights. + +He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means +whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for +comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge +that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving +after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness. +Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those +which helped to form Gwendolen's character, yet a very different result was +produced in him because of his _inherited_ tendencies of mind. After he had +seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai,-- + + "It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited + yearning--the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in my ancestors-- + thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather. + Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a + city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and + born blind--the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing + for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their + inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument + never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious + moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives + music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I + began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task in + which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude--some + social captainship which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven + for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for + me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy." + +This inherited sense of a larger life made Deronda what he was, and +developed in him qualities absent in Gwendolen. This inherited power made +him a new Mazzini, a born leader of men, a new saviour of society, a +personal magnet to attract and inspire other souls. A magnetic power of +influence drew Gwendolen to him from the first time they met, he shamed her +narrow life by his silent presence, and he quickened to life in her a +desire for a purer and nobler existence. George Eliot probably meant to +indicate in his character her conception of the true social reformation +which is needed to-day, and how it is to be brought about. The basis on +which it is to be built is the traditional and inherited life of the past, +inspired with new energies and meanings by the gifted souls who have +inherited a large and pure personality, and who are inspired by a quickened +sense of what life ought to be. On the one side a life of altruism, on the +other a life of egotism, teach that the liner social and moral qualities +come out of an inheritance in the national ideals and conquests of a worthy +people, while the coarser qualities come of the neglect of this source of +spiritual power and sustenance. Two letters written to Professor David +Kaufmann indicate that this was the purpose of the hook. At the same time, +they show George Eliot's mind on other sides, and give added insights into +her character. As an indication of her attitude towards Judaism, and her +faith in the work she had done in Daniel Deronda, they are of great value. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, +May 31, '77. + +MY DEAR SIR,--Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper +satisfaction, I may say a more heartfelt joy, than you have given me in +your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_. [Footnote: George Eliot and Judaism: an +Attempt to Appreciate Daniel Deronda. By Prof. David Kaufmann, of the +Jewish Theological Seminary, Buda-Pesth.] + +I must tell you that it is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the +criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary +to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged +praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far +worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work, +is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no +discernment of good and evil. + +My husband reads any notices of me that come before him, and reports to me +(or else refrains from reporting) the general character of the notice, or +something in particular which strikes him as showing either an exceptional +insight or an obtuseness that is gross enough to be amusing. Very rarely, +when he has read a critique of me, he has handed it to me, saying, "_You_ +must read this." And your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_ made one of these +rare instances. + +Certainly, if I had been asked to choose _what_ should be written about my +book and _who_ should write it, I should have sketched--well, not anything +so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a +Jew who showed not merely sympathy with the best aspirations of his race, +but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the +artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent +praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating +sensibility, the perfect response to the artist's intention, which must +make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and +not in compliance with current fashions. Such a response holds for an +author not only what is best in "the life that now is," but the promise of +"that which is to come." I mean that the usual approximative, narrow +perception of what one has been intending and professedly feeling in one's +work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff +without roots to hike any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any +instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative +prompting has foreshadowed, and will continue to satisfy, a need in other +minds. + +Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt +in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the +prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute +something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian +community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a +moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that +the effort has been needed,--yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hanger +for certain signs of sympathetic discernment, which you only have given. I +may mention as one instance your clear perception of the relation between +the presentation of the Jewish element and those of English social life. + +I work under the pressure of small hurries; for we are just moving into the +country for the summer, and all things are in a vagrant condition around +me. But I wished not to defer answering your letter to an uncertain +opportunity.... + +My husband has said more than once that he feels grateful to you. For he is +more sensitive on my behalf than on his own. + +Hence he unites with me in the assurance of the high regard with which I +remain + +Always yours faithfully, +M.E. LEWES. + +This first letter was followed a few months later by a second. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PAKE, +Oct. 12, '77. + +MY DEAR SIR,--I trust it will not be otherwise than gratifying to you to +know that your stirring article on _Daniel Deronda_ is now translated into +English by a son of Prof. Ferrier, who was a philosophical writer of +considerable mark. It will be issued in a handsomer form than that of the +pamphlet, and will appear within this autumnal publishing season, Messrs. +Blackwood having already advertised it. Whenever a copy is ready we shall +have the pleasure of sending it to you. There is often something to be +borne with in reading one's own writing in a translation, but I hope that +in this case you will not be made to wince severely. + +In waiting to send you this news I seem to have deferred too long the +expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew +translations of Leasing and the collection of Hebrew poems, a kindness +which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must +be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, +when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most +gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched the +gift of his work. + +I see by your last letter to my husband that your Theological Seminary was +to open on the 4th of this month, so that this too retrospective letter of +mine will reach you in the midst of your new duties. I trust that this new +institution will be a great good to professor and students, and that your +position is of a kind that you contemplate as permanent. To teach the young +personally has always seemed to me the most satisfactory supplement to +teaching the world through books, and I have often wished that I had such a +means of having fresh, living, spiritual children within sight. + +One can hardly turn one's thought toward Eastern Europe just now without a +mingling of pain and dread; but we mass together distant scenes and events +in an unreal way, and one would like to believe that the present troubles +will not at any time press on you in Hungary with more external misfortune +than on us in England. + +Mr. Lewes is happily occupied in his psychological studies. We both look, +forward to the reception of the work you kindly promised us, and he begs me +to offer you his best regards. + +Believe me, my dear sir, +Yours with much esteem, +M.E. LEWES. + +It was a part of George Eliot's purpose in _Daniel Deronda_ to criticise +the social life of England in the spirit in which she had criticised it in +_Middlemarch_, as being deficient in spiritual power, moral purpose and +noble sentiment. If she made it clear in _Middlemarch_ that the individual +is crippled and betrayed by society, it was her purpose to make it quite as +clear in _Daniel Deronda_ how society may become the true inspirer of the +individual. We may quarrel with her theory of the origin and nature of the +spiritual life in man, but she has somewhat truly conceived its vast +importance and shown the character of that influence it everywhere has over +man's life. As types of spiritual lifts, and as individual conceptions of +human character, the personages of this novel are drawn with marvellous +skill. Mr. E.P. Whipple says that Daniel Deronda is "one of the noblest +and most original characters among the heroes imagined by poets, dramatists +and novelists." With equal or even greater justice can it be said that +Gwendolen Harleth is one of the most powerful and grandly conceived of +imaginary creations in all literature. In the characters, the situations, +and the whole working out of this novel, George Eliot shows herself one of +the great masters of literary creation. + +When the prejudices aroused by the Jewish element in it are allayed, and +_Daniel Deronda_ is read as a work of literary genius, it will be found not +to be the least interesting and important of George Eliot's books. It has +the religious interest and inspiration of _Adam Bede_, the historic value +of _Romola_, and the critical elements of _Middlemarch_; and these are +wrought into a work of lofty insight and imagination, along with a high +spiritual ardor and a supreme ethical purpose. In this novel, for the first +time, as Professor Dowden says, her poetical genius found adequate +expression, and in complete association with the non-poetical elements of +her nature. + + + + +XVII. + + +THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS. + +It was _The Spanish Gypsy_, published in 1868, which brought the name of +George Eliot before the public as a poet. This work is a novel written in +blank verse, with enough of the heroic and tragic in it to make the story +worthy of its poetic form. The story is an excellent one, well conceived +and worked out, and had it been given the prose form would have made a +powerful and original novel. While it would doubtless have gained in +definiteness of detail and clearness of purpose by being presented in the +prose form, yet its condensation into a poem is a gain, and the whole +setting of the story has been made of greater interest by this method of +expression. The poetic form is as original as are the theories of life +which the poem is designed to inculcate. In structure it combines, with a +method quite its own, the descriptive and dramatic forms of poetry. In this +it nearly approaches the method followed in her novels of combining +description and dialogue in a unitary structure of great strength and +perfection. The descriptive passages in her prose works are strong and +impressive, lofty in tone, and yet lovingly faithful in detail. Her +conversations are often highly dramatic and add greatly to the whole +outcome of these novels. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ the surroundings of the +story are first described in verse which, if not always perfectly poetic, +is yet imaginatively thought out and executed in a manner befitting the +subject. Suddenly, however, the narrative and descriptive form ceases and +the dramatic begins. By means also of full "stage directions" to the +dramatic portions of the poem, the story is wrought out quite as much in +detail as it needs to be; and much is gained of advantage over the length +of her novels by this concentration of scene and narrative. While the +narrative portion of the poem is much less in extent than the dramatic, yet +it has in it some of the main elements of the plot, and those without which +the action could not be worked out. The dramatic element gives it a real +and living power. The characters are strongly conceived, and nearly all of +them are individualities of an original type and of an action thoroughly +distinct and human. + +As a work of art, the most serious defect in _The Spanish Gypsy_ is its +doctrinal tone. It is speculative in its purpose quite as much as poetical, +and the speculation is so large an element as to intrude upon the poetry. +Thought overtops imagination, the fervor and enthusiasm of the poet are +more than matched by the ethical aims of the teacher. This ethical purpose +of unfolding in a dramatic form the author's theories of life has filled +the book, as it has her novels, with epigrams which are original, splendid +and instructive. Into a few lines she condenses some piece of wisdom, and +in words full of meaning and purpose. Into the mouth of Sephardo, a +character distinctive and noteworthy, she puts some of her choicest wisdom. +He says,-- + + Thought + Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, + And seizing some fine thread of verity + Knows momentary godhead. + +Again he utters the same idea, but in more expressive words. + + Our growing thought + Makes growing revelation. + +Don Silva is made to use this highly poetic imagery. + + Speech is but broken light upon the depth + Of the unspoken. + +Zarca, that truest and most original character in the poem, says of the +great work he purposes to accomplish, + + To my inward vision + Things are achieved when they are well begun. + +Again, he says,-- + + New thoughts are urgent as the growth of wings. + +Expressive and original as _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, yet it gives the +impression of lacking in some poetic quality which is necessary to the +highest results. Difficult as it may be to define precisely what it is that +is wanting, nearly every reader will feel that something which makes poetry +has been somehow left out. Is it imagination, or is it a flexible poetic +expression, which is absent? While George Eliot has imagination enough to +make a charming prose style, and to adorn her prose with great beauty and +an impressive manner, yet its finer quality of subtle expression is not to +be found in her poetry. Those original and striking shades of meaning which +the poet employs by using words in unique relations, she does not often +attain to. It is the thought, the ethical meaning, in her poetry as in her +prose, which is often of more importance than the manner of expression; and +she is too intent on what is said to give full heed always to how it is +said. She has, however, employed that form of verse which is best suited to +her style, and one which does not demand those lyrical or those imaginative +qualities in which she is deficient. The blank verse is well adapted to her +realism, though it does not always answer well to the more dramatic and +tragical and impassioned portions of the story. + +As a study of an historic period, _The Spanish Gypsy_ is not so great a +success as _Romola_; yet it more perfectly unfolds a unitary moral purpose, +and the various types of character are more originally developed. The +conflict of motives, the contrasted and opposed national interests, are +distinctly brought out, but the aroma of the time and place are wanting. To +describe a poetic and heroic era she is never content to do. Her method is +totally different from that of Scott, who reflects the spirit and life of +the time he depicts with almost absolute faithfulness. No gypsy was ever +such a character as Zarca, no gypsy girl ever had the conscience of +Fedalma. As in the case of _Romola_, so here, an historic period is used, +not so much for artistic as for philosophic purposes, because it is well +designed to present her ideas about heredity and tradition. _The Spanish +Gypsy_ is essentially a romance, and contains much of those more poetic +and ideal elements which distinguish _Daniel Deronda_ from her other +novels. This romantic element, if it does not develop poetry of the highest +quality, does bring out in its most perfect form all the finest +characteristics of her style. + +While _The Spanish Gypsy_ affords many points of attack for the critic, yet +it cannot be dismissed by saying it is not a great poem. Its strong +qualities are too many to permit of its being disposed of in haste. With +all its defects it is a noble piece of work, and genuinely adds to the +author's expression of genius. It is one of those poems which win, not +popularity, but the heartiest admiration of a choice and elect few who find +life and highest inspiration in it, because giving strength to their +thoughts and purpose to their moral convictions. As a study of some of the +deeper problems of the ethical and social life of man, it is unsurpassed, +and the teaching imparted by it is singularly well and impressively +conveyed by the whole make of the poem. It is also remarkable for its large +and impressive style, its rich command of words, and the lofty beauty of +its diction. One of its most striking qualities, as Mr. Henry James, Jr., +suggests, "is its extraordinary rhetorical energy and eloquence," and "its +splendid generosity of diction." The same writer says of the character of +Don Silva, that "nowhere has her marvellous power of expression, the +mingled dignity and pliancy of her style, obtained a greater triumph." The +critics have almost without exception dealt severely with the poem, but +they have applied to it the canons of poetic art as interpreted by +themselves. Genius creates its own laws, makes its own methods, reverses +old decisions and triumphs against the whole brood of critics. The world +accepts what is true and excellent, however defective in technical +requirements. Imperfect meters, and poetic structures not orthodox, may +disturb those who deal in criticism, but such limitations as these are not +sufficient to fix the final acceptance of a poem. More than one of the +greatest poems could not endure such tests. That _The Spanish Gypsy_ has +vitality of purpose, enduring interest in treatment, and a lofty eloquence +of diction, is doubtless enough to insure it an accepted place among the +few greater poems in the language. Its profoundly thoughtful interpretation +of some of the greater social problems mankind has to deal with, will +necessarily give a permanent interest for the lovers of speculative poetry, +while its genuine poetic merits will largely add to that interest, and add +to it by its tragic power, its rich ethical wisdom, and its fine portrayal +of character. + +No other book of George Eliot's is so filled and inspired by the spirit of +her teachings as _The Spanish Gypsy_. Its inspiration and its interest lie +mainly in the direction of its moral and spiritual inculcations. Verse did +not stimulate her, but was a fetter; it clogged her highest powers. The +rich eloquence of her prose, with its pathos and sentiment, its broad +perspective and vigorous thought, was to her a continual stimulus and +incentive. Her poems are more labored than her novels, and for this very +reason they show the philosophy which gives them meaning more clearly. +Their greater concentration and less varied elements also largely help to +make apparent the teachings they contain. Her sympathy with the evolution +philosophy of the day is conspicuous in _The Spanish Gypsy_. It is simply a +dramatic interpretation of the higher phases of Darwinism. The doctrinal +element does not intrude itself, however; it is not on the surface, it is +well subordinated to the artistic elements of the poem. Even intelligent +readers may not detect it, and the majority of those who read the poem +without any preconceptions may not discover its philosophic bearings. Yet +to the studious reader the philosophy must be the most conspicuous element +which enters into the poem, and it gives character and meaning to the work +far more fully than in the case of any of her novels. + +The aim of the poem is to show how hereditary race influences act as a +tragic element in opposition to individual emotions and inclinations. The +teaching of _Romola_ is much of it reproduced, at least that portion of it +which inculcates renunciation and altruism. Its distinguishing features, +however, more nearly resemble those of _Daniel Deronda_. The race element +is introduced, and the effect of the past is shown as it forms character +and gives direction to duties. One phase of its meaning has been very +clearly described by Mr. R.H. Hutton, who says the poem teaches "how the +inheritance of the definite streams of impulse and tradition stored up in +what we call race, often puts a veto upon any attempt of spontaneous +individual emotion or volitions to ignore or defy their Control, and to +emancipate itself from the tyranny of their disputable and apparently cruel +rule." "How the threads," he says again, "of hereditary capacity and +hereditary sentiment control as with invisible chords the orbits of even +the most powerful characters,--how the fracture of those threads, so far as +can be accomplished by mere _will_, may have even a greater effect in +wrecking character than moral degeneracy would itself produce,--how the man +who trusts and uses the hereditary forces which natural descent has +bestowed upon him, becomes a might and a centre in the world, while the +man, intrinsically the nobler, who dissipates his strength by trying to +swim against the stream of his past, is neutralized and paralyzed by the +vain effort,--again, how a divided past, a past not really homogeneous, may +weaken this kind of power, instead of strengthening it by the command of a +larger experience--all this George Eliot's poem paints with tragical +force." + +The main thought of _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, that the moral and spiritual in +man is the result of social conditions which, if neglected, lead to the +destruction of all that is best in human nature. In the description of Mine +Host, in the opening pages of the poem, this evil result of a severing of +life from tradition is described. He was educated in the Jewish faith, but +was made a Christian at the age of ten. + + So he had to be converted with his sire, + To doff the awe he learned as Ephriam, + And suit his manners to a Christian name. + +The poet then delivers one of her doctrinal utterances, and one which is in +this case the keynote of the whole poem. + + But infant awe, that unborn moving thing, + Dies with what nourished it, can never rise + From the dead womb and walk and seek new pasture. + +That awe which grows up in childhood, if destroyed later, brings anarchy +into human life. All the characters of the poem exemplify this teaching, +and each is but a product of his past, individual or social. Don Silva, +Zarca, Fedalma, the Prior, Sephardo, illustrate this idea. The latter gives +utterance to the thought of the poem, when Don Silva says to him that he +has need of a friend who is not tied to sect or party, but who is capable +of following his "naked manhood" into what is just and right, without +regard to other considerations. + + My lord, I will be frank; there's no such thing + As naked manhood. If the stars look down + On any mortal of our shape, whose strength + Is to judge all things without preference, + He is a monster, not a faithful man. + While my heart beats, it shall wear livery-- + My people's livery, whose yellow badge + Marks them for Christian scorn. I will not say + Man is first man to me, then Jew or Gentile: + That suits the rich _marranos_; but to me + My father is first father and then man. + So much for frankness' sake. But let that pass. + 'Tis true at least, I am no Catholic + But Salomo Sephardo, a born Jew, + Willing to serve Don Silva. + +[Footnote: In a note George Eliot gives the following explanation of the +word _marranos_: "The name given by the Spanish Jews to the multitudes of +their race converted to Christianity at the end of the fourteenth century +and beginning of the fifteenth. The lofty derivation from _Maran-atha_, the +Lord cometh, seems hardly called for, seeing that _marrano_ is Spanish for +_pig_. The 'old Christians' learned to use the word as a term of contempt +for the 'new Christians,' or converted Jews and their descendants; but not +too monotonously, for they often interchanged it with the fine old crusted +opprobrium of the name _Jew_. Still, many Marranos held the highest +secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and were respected +accordingly."] + +In the conversation between Don Silva and this uncle, the Prior expresses +in the strongest language his conviction that Fedalma will in time reveal +her gypsy blood, and that any rejection on the part of Don Silva of the +life assigned him by his birth will end in sorrow and misery. When Don +Silva declares his intention of following his own inclinations the Prior +answers,-- + + Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength + Of fallen angels. Can you change your blood? + You are a Christian, with the Christian awe + In every vein. A Spanish noble, born + To serve your people and your people's faith. + Strong, are you? Turn your back upon the Cross-- + Its shadow is before you. Leave your place: + Quit the great ranks of knighthood: you will walk + Forever with a tortured double self, + A self that will be hungry while you feast, + Will blush with shame while you are glorified, + Will feel the ache and chill of desolation + Even in the very bosom of your love. + +This eloquent expostulation against rejection of any of those ties and +obligations imposed by birth and race is repeated again in the plea of +Zarca to his daughter, when he urges that there is no life and joy for +Fedalma apart from that race to which she belongs and those social +conditions which gave her mind its characteristics. + + Will you adopt a soul without its thoughts, + Or grasp a life apart from flesh and blood? + Till then you cannot wed a Spanish Duke + And not wed shame at mention of your race, + And not wed hardness to their miseries-- + Nay, wed not murder. + +Zarca and the Prior are each faithful to race, religion and social +tradition. Each knows his duty, is content with the opportunities given him +by social inheritance, is thoroughly in harmony with his own past. Both are +consequently strong, resolute, successful. Zarca is a grand character, and +though a hero in a nation of vagabonds, he wholly identifies himself with +his people and accepts their destiny as his own. The Prior is a haughty +Spanish Churchman, who has inherited all the traits of a noble family, and +is proud of his priestly functions. + +In the case of Don Silva and Fedalma there is a conflict between love and +race. The one is a Spanish nobleman, the other the daughter of a Zincala +chief. Yet they love, and feel that no outward circumstances are sufficient +to separate them. This verdict of their hearts is the verdict of mankind in +all ages; but it is not the one arrived at by George Eliot in obedience to +her philosophy. The reasons why these two should not wed grew entirely out +of the social circumstances of the time. An English nobleman of to-day +could marry such a woman as Fedalma without social or other loss. The +capacities of soul are superior to conditions of race. Virtue and genius do +not depend on social circumstances. Yet _The Spanish Gypsy_ has for its +motive the attempt to prove that the life of tradition and inheritance is +the one which provides all our moral and social and religious obligations. +In conformity with this theory the conflict of the poem arises, because Don +Silva is not in intellectual harmony with his own character. A thoughtful, +fastidious, sensitive soul was his, not resolute and concentrated in +purpose, He was no bigot, could not be content with any narrow aim, saw +good on many sides. + + A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious + In his acceptance, dreading all delight + That speedy dies and turns to carrion: + His senses much exacting, deep instilled + With keen imagination's airy needs;-- + Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes, + Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision, + Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream + Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed + With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart. + Silva was both the lion and the man; + First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang, + Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed + And loosed the prize, paying his blood for naught. + A nature half-transformed, with qualities + That oft betrayed each other, elements + Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, + Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. + Haughty and generous, grave and passionate; + With tidal moments of devoutest awe, + Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt; + Deliberating ever, till the sting + Of a recurrent ardor made him rush + Right against reasons that himself had drilled + And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed + Too proudly special for obedience, + Too subtly pondering for mastery: + Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, + Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity, + Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness + And perilous heightening of the sentient soul. + +Too noble and generous to accept the narrow views of his uncle, Don Silva +insisted on marrying Fedalma, because he loved her and because she was a +pure and true woman. He had a poet's nature, was sensitive to all beauty, +and his heart vibrated to all ideal excellence. His love became to him a +thing apart, a sacred shrine; and Fedalma was made one with all joy and +beauty. + + He thought all loveliness was lovelier, + She crowning it; all goodness credible, + Because of that great trust her goodness bred. + +His love gave a delicious content and melody to his day dreams. + + + O, all comforters, + All soothing things that bring mild ecstasy, + Came with her coming, in her presence lived. + Spring afternoons, when delicate shadows fall + Pencilled upon the grass; high summer morns + When white light rains upon the quiet sea + And cornfields flush with ripeness; odors soft-- + Dumb vagrant bliss that seems to seek a home + And find it deep within 'mid stirrings vague + Of far-off moments when our life was fresh; + All sweetly tempered music, gentle change + Of sound, form, color, as on wide lagoons + At sunset when from black far-floating prows + Comes a clear wafted song; all exquisite joy + Of a subdued desire, like some strong stream + Made placid in the fulness of a lake-- + All came with her sweet presence, for she brought + The love supreme which gathers to its realm + All powers of loving. Subtle nature's hand + Waked with a touch the far-linked harmonies + In her own manifold work. Fedalma there, + Fastidiousness became the prelude fine + For full contentment; and young melancholy, + Lost for its origin, seemed but the pain + Of waiting for that perfect happiness. + +So strong was Don Silva's love, so ardent his passion for Fedalma, that he +forsook all duties and social obligations and became a Zincala for her +sake. Yet once awakened to the real consequences of his act, he killed +Zarca and sought to regain by hard penances his lost knighthood. + +With Fedalma also love was an absorbing passion. The passionate devotion of +a woman is in her words. + + No ills on earth, though you should count them up + With grains to make a mountain, can outweigh + For me his ill who is my supreme love. + All sorrows else are but imagined flames, + Making me shudder at an unfelt smart; + But his imagined sorrow is a fire + That scorches me. + +With great earnestness she says she will-- + + Never forsake that chief half of her soul + Where lies her love. + +With what depth of love does she utter these words: + + I belong to him who loves me--whom I love-- + Who chose me--whom I chose--to whom I pledged + A woman's truth. And that is nature too, + Issuing a fresher law than laws of birth. + +Though her love is deep and passionate and full of a woman's devotedness, +the mark of race is set deep within her soul. The moment the claim of race +is brought clearly before her as the claim of duty, as the claim of father +and of kindred, she accepts it. Her love is not thrown hastily aside, for +she loves deeply and truly, and it tears her heart in sunder to renounce +it; but she is faithful to duty. Her love grows not less, loses none of its +hold upon her heart. + + No other crown + Is aught but thorns on my poor woman's brow. + +Hers is not a divided self, however; to see the way of duty with her, was +to follow in it. Her father's invincible will, courage and patient purpose +are her own by inheritance. Once realizing the claim of birth and race, she +does not falter, love is resolutely put aside, all delight in culture and +refinement becomes dross in her eyes. + + I will not count + On aught but being faithful. I will take + This yearning self of mine and strangle it. + I will not be half-hearted: never yet + Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul. + Die, my young joy--die, all my hungry hopes! + The milk you cry for from the breast of life + Is thick with curses. O, all fatness here + Snatches its meat from leanness--feeds on graves. + I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. + The saints were cowards who stood by to see + Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves + Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain-- + The grandest death, to die in vain--for love + Greater than sways the forces of the world! + That death shall be my bridegroom. I will wed + The curse that blights my people. Father, come! + +The poem distinctly teaches that Fedalma was strong, because the ties of +blood were strongly marked upon her mind and willingly accepted by her +intellect and conscience; while Don Silva was weak, because he did not +acknowledge those ties and accept their law. In the end, however, both +declare that the inherited life is the only one which gives joy or duty, +and that all individual aims and wishes are to be renounced. The closing +scene of this great poem is full of sadness, and yet is strong with moral +purpose. Don Silva and Fedalma meet for the last time, she on her way to +Africa with her tribe to find a home for it there, he on his way to Rome, +to seek the privilege of again using his knightly sword. Both are sad, both +feel that life has lost all its joy, both believe it is a bitter destiny +which divides them from the fulfilment of their love, and yet both are +convinced that love must be forsworn for a higher duty. Their last +conversation, opened by Don Silva, is full of power, and concentrates into +its last words the total meaning of the poem. + + I bring no puling prayer, Fedalma--ask + No balm of pardon that may soothe my soul + For others' bleeding wounds: I am not come + To say, "Forgive me:" you must not forgive, + For you must see me ever as I am-- + Your father's... + + FEDALMA. + + Speak it not! Calamity + Comes like a deluge and o'erfloods our crimes, + Till sin is hidden in woe. You--I--we two, + Grasping we knew not what, that seemed delight, + Opened the sluices of that deep. + + DON SILVA. + + We two?-- + Fedalma, you were blameless, helpless. + + FEDALMA. + + No! + It shall not be that you did aught alone. + For when we loved I willed to reign in you, + And I was jealous even of the day + If it could gladden you apart from me. + + And so, it must be that I shared each deed + Our love was root of. + + DON SILVA. + + Dear! you share the woe-- + Nay, the worst part of vengeance fell on you. + + FEDALMA. + + Vengeance! She does but sweep us with her skirts. + She takes large space, and lies a baleful light + Revolving with long years--sees children's children, + Blights them in their prime. Oh, if two lovers leane + To breathe one air and spread a pestilence, + They would but lie two livid victims dead + Amid the city of the dying. We + With our poor petty lives have strangled one + That ages watch for vainly. + + DON SILVA. + + Deep despair + Fills all your tones as with slow agony. + Speak words that narrow anguish to some shape: + Tell me what dread is close before you? + + FEDALMA. + + None. + No dread, but clear assurance of the end. + My father held within his mighty frame + A people's life: great futures died with him + Never to rise, until the time shall ripe + Some other hero with the will to save + The outcast Zincali. + + DON SILVA. + + And yet their shout-- + I heard it--sounded as the plenteous rush + Of full-fed sources, shaking their wild souls + With power that promised sway. + + FEDALMA. + + Ah yes, that shout + Came from full hearts: they meant obedience. + But they are orphaned: their poor childish feet + Are vagabond in spite of love, and stray + Forgetful after little lures. For me-- + I am but as the funeral urn that bears + The ashes of a leader. + + DON SILVA. + + O great God! + What am I but a miserable brand + Lit by mysterious wrath? I lie cast down + A blackened branch upon the desolate ground. + Where once I kindled ruin. I shall drink + No cup of purest water but will taste + Bitter with thy lone hopelessness, Fedalma. + + FEDALMA. + + Nay, Silva, think of me as one who sees + A light serene and strong on one sole path + Which she will tread till death... + He trusted me, and I will keep his trust: + My life shall be its temple. I will plant + His sacred hope within the sanctuary + And die its priestess--though I die alone, + A hoary woman on the altar-step, + Cold 'mid cold ashes. That is my chief good. + The deepest hunger of a faithful heart + Is faithfulness. Wish me naught else. And you-- + You too will live.... + + DON SILVA. + + I go to Rome, to seek + The right to use my knightly sword again; + The right to fill my place and live or die + So that all Spaniards shall not curse my name. + I sate one hour upon the barren rock + And longed to kill myself; but then I said, + I will not leave my name in infamy, + I will not be perpetual rottenness + Upon the Spaniard's air. If I must sink + At last to hell, I will not take my stand + Among the coward crew who could not bear + The harm themselves had done, which others bore. + My young life yet may fill some fatal breach, + And I will take no pardon, not my own, + Not God's--no pardon idly on my knees; + But it shall come to me upon my feet + And in the thick of action, and each deed + That carried shame and wrong shall be the sting + That drives me higher up the steep of honor + In deeds of duteous service to that Spain + Who nourished me on her expectant breast, + The heir of highest gifts. I will not fling + My earthly being down for carrion + To fill the air with loathing: I will be + The living prey of some fierce noble death + That leaps upon me while I move. Aloud + I said, "I will redeem my name," and then-- + I know not if aloud: I felt the words + Drinking up all my senses--"She still lives. + I would not quit the dear familiar earth + Where both of us behold the self-same sun, + Where there can be no strangeness 'twixt our thoughts + So deep as their communion." Resolute + I rose and walked.--Fedalma, think of me + As one who will regain the only life + Where he is other than apostate--one + Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows + Of Spanish knight and noble. But the breach-- + Outside those vows--the fatal second breach-- + Lies a dark gulf where I have naught to cast, + Not even expiation--poor pretence, + Which changes naught but what survives the past, + And raises not the dead. That deep dark gulf + Divide us. + + FEDALMA. + + Yes, forever. We must walk + Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite + Is our resolve that we will each be true + To high allegiance, higher than our love. + Our dear young love--its breath was happiness! + But it had grown upon a larger life + Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled-- + The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed; + For we shall carry each the pressure deep + Of the other's soul. I soon shall leave the shore. + The winds to-night will bear me far away. + My lord, farewell! + +What has been said of _The Spanish Gypsy_ applies very nearly as well to +all her other poems. They are thoughtful, philosophic, realistic; they are +sonorous in expression, stately in style, and of a diction eloquent and +beautiful. On the whole, the volume containing the shorter poems is a +poetical advance on _The Spanish Gypsy_, containing more genuine poetry, +more lyrical fire, and a greater proportion of humor, sympathy and passion. +They are carefully polished and refined; and yet that indefinable something +which marks the truest poetry is wanting. They are saturated with her +ideas, the flavor of her thought impregnates them all, with but two or +three exceptions. + +Her artistic conceptions are more fully developed in some of these poems +than in any of her novels, especially in "Armgart" and "The Legend of +Jubal." The special thought of "Armgart" is, that no artistic success is of +so much worth as a loving sympathy with others. The longing of Armgart was +to be-- + + a happy spiritual star + Such as old Dante saw, wrought in a rose + Of light in Paradise, whose only self + Was consciousness of glory wide-diffused, + Music, life, power--I moving in the midst + With a sublime necessity of good. + +Her ambition runs very high. + + May the day be near when men + Think much to let my horses draw me home, + And new lands welcome me upon their beach, + Loving me for my fame. That is the truth + Of what I wish, nay, yearn for. Shall I lie? + Pretend to seek obscurity--to sing + In hope of disregard? A vile pretence! + And blasphemy besides. For what is fame + But the benignant strength of One, transformed + To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come + As necessary breathing of such joy; + And may they come to me! + +Armgart is beloved of the Graf, and he tries to persuade her to abandon her +artistic career and become his wife. He says to her,-- + + A woman's rank + Lies in the fulness of her womanhood: + Therein alone she is loyal. + +Again he says to her,-- + + Pain had been saved, + Nay, purer glory reached, had you been throned + As woman only, holding all your art + As attribute to that dear sovereignty-- + Concentering your power in home delights + Which penetrate and purify the world. + +Armgart will not listen; her whole heart is enlisted in music. She says to +the Graf,-- + + I will live alone and pour my pain + With passion into music, where it turns + To what is best within my better self. + +A year later Armgart's throat has failed, and her career has ended in +nothing. Then her servant and friend, Walpurga, who has devoted her life to +Armgart, speaks that lesson George Eliot would convey in this little story, +that a true life is a life of service. Walpurga chides Armgart's false +ambition in these words: + + I but stand + As a small symbol for the mighty sum + Of claims unpaid to needy myriads; + I think you never set your loss beside + That mighty deficit. Is your work gone-- + The prouder queenly work that paid itself + And yet was overpaid with men's applause! + Are you no longer chartered, privileged, + But sunk to simple woman's penury, + To ruthless Nature's chary average-- + Where is the rebel's right for you alone? + Noble rebellion lifts a common load; + But what is he who flings his own load off + And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right? + Say, rather, the deserter's. + +Armgart learns from her master, the old and noble Leo, that he had also +been ambitious, that he had won only small success, and that he now lived +for the sake of the good he could do to those about him. He says to her,-- + + We must bury our dead joys, + And live above them with a living world. + +Then Armgart is brought to see that there is a noble privilege in living as +her friend has lived, in making music a joy to others, and in doing what +she can to make life better for humanity. + +There are two very distinct ideas running through the poem, that a life +guided by altruism is better than--a merely artistic life, and that woman +is to find in home and wedded joys that opportunity for the development of +her soul, without which no artistic career can be complete. The words of +the Graf speak George Eliot's own thought, that Armgart's life and her art +would have been both more perfect and more noble had she held all her art +as attribute to the dear sovereignty of affection. + +The same artistic conception pervades "The Legend of Jubal." That fame for +which Jubal also yearns comes to him, he is taught, in the good which he +leaves behind him for humanity to enjoy. He dies, and ceases to be as a +personal being. At least this may be inferred from the concluding lines. + + Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, + The All-creating Presence for his grave. + +A _sun-wave_ while living, his being is now _quenched_. But he lives on in +the life of the race, lives on in man's joy of music, in the deeper life +which music awakens in all bosoms through all ages. He is told that he has +no need of-- + + aught else for share + Of mortal good, than in his soul to bear + The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest + Of the world's springtide in his conscious breast. + +His own loved Past says to him,-- + + This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, + And that immeasurable life to know + From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead, + A seed primeval that has forests bred. + +This poem views death as positivism conceives it, and gives a poetic +interpretation of that subjective immortality, or that immortality in the +race, in which George Eliot so heartily believed. No other artistic +presentation of this theory has ever been made which equals that given in +this poem, and in the one beginning, "O may I join the choir invisible." +This latter poem is not only beautiful in itself, but it has made altruism +attractive and lovely. Its tone of thought is elevated, its spirit lofty +and noble, and its ideal pure and gracious. All that can be said to make +altruism lovely and winning, to inspire men with its spirit and motive, is +here said. The thought presented in these two poems is repeated in "The +Death of Moses." Here we have Moses living forever in the human influence +he created. + + He dwells not with you dead, but lives as Law. + +For her ideas about resignation we must turn to the pages of _The Mill on +the Floss and Romola_, for those about heredity and the past to _The +Spanish Gypsy_ and _Daniel Deronda_; but in these shorter poems she has +completely unfolded the positivist conception, as she accepted it, of death +and immortality. The degree to which she was moved and inspired by this +belief in an immortality in humanity is seen in the greater ardor and +poetic merit of these poems than any others she wrote. + +It is interesting to note that she introduces music into "The Legend of +Jubal" and "Armgart". It was the art she most loved. She even said that if +she could possess the power most satisfactory to her heart, it would be +that of making music the instrument of the homage which the great +performers secure. Yet she teaches in "Armgart" that there is a power +higher than this, the power of affectionate service. Her books are full of +the praise of music. She makes Maggie Tulliver express her own delight in +it. + + "I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have + plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas + into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled + with music." + +In _Adam Bede_ she becomes most poetic when extolling the power of +exquisite music to work on the soul. + + To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your + soul, the delicate fibres of life wherein memory can penetrate, and + binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable + vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the + love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating + in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt + lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with + past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy. + +In the "Minor Prophet" is to be found George Eliot's theory of progress. +That poem also repeats her faith in common humanity, and gives new emphasis +to her joy in the common toils and affections of men. In the "College +Breakfast Party" and "Self and Life," her thoughts take a more truly +philosophic form than in any of her other poems, but the first of these is +the poorest piece of poetic work she gave to the public. Nothing new in the +way of teaching appears in these or her other poems. + +George Eliot is the poet of positivism. What is beautiful, touching and +inspiring in that conception of the world she has sung, and in as poetic a +manner as that philosophy is ever likely to inspire. Her poetry is full of +the thoughts and sentiments of the time. It reflects the mood of her +generation. Prof. Sidney Colvin has truly said that "there is nothing in +the literature of the day so rousing--to the mind of the day there is +scarcely anything so rousing in all literature--as her writing is. What she +writes is full of her time. It is full of observation, imagination, pathos, +wit and humor, all of a high class in themselves; but what is more, all +saturated with modern ideas poured into a language of which every word +bites home with peculiar sharpness to the contemporary consciousness." This +is true even more of her poetry than of her prose. That poetry lacks where +the age lacks, in true poetic quality. The ideal, the breath of eternal +spring, is not in it. + + + + +XVIII. + + +LATER ESSAYS. + +The later essays of George Eliot have the same characteristics as the +earlier ones, and are mainly of interest because they furnish additional +evidences of her philosophical, ethical and political opinions. While they +indicate the profound thoughtfulness of her mind, her deep concern about +the largest problems of human existence, and her rare ethical tone and +purpose, they add little or nothing to her literary reputation. It is very +plain that while George Eliot was not a poet in the largest, truest sense, +she was still less an essayist in that genial, widely sympathetic sense +which has adorned English literature with so many noble books of comment on +the foibles and the virtues of man. Her manner is heavy, her thoughts +philosophical, her purpose doctrinal: and the result is far from +satisfactory to the lover of fine essay-writing. + +She needs the glow of her imagination, the depth of her emotions, to +relieve and lighten the burden of her thoughts. But in her essays she is +less wise, less racy and expressive, than in the didactic passages of her +novels. She could best make her comment on the ways of life while +describing a character or studying an action. These additions to her +narrative and conversation are, to the thoughtful reader, among the best +portions of her novels, for they give meaning to all the rest, and throw a +flood of light on the hidden facts of life. She is never so great, so wise, +so profoundly inspired by her theme, as in many of these passages. + +There is need, however, in her case, of the large surrounding life of her +novels in order to draw out this wisdom and inspiration. Her essays lack in +the fine sentiment and the fervid eloquence of the chorus-utterances in her +novels. They give little evidence that she would have attained to great +things had she followed the early purpose of her life. In view of what she +has written in the shape of essays, no one can regret that she confined her +chief efforts to her imaginative prose creations. Yet her essays have a +special value on account of their subjects, and they will be read by many +with a hearty appreciation, simply because they were George Eliot's. No one +thoroughly interested in the work done by the great realistic novelist can +afford to overlook her essays, even if they do not nearly touch the highest +mark in their kind. + +After she began her career as a novelist George Eliot wrote about twenty +essays, nearly all of which are included in her last book, _Impressions of +Theophrastus Such_. Previous to this, however, she had published in the +first number of the _Fortnightly Review_, issued May 15, 1865, and edited +by Lewes, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in review of Mr. +W.H. Lecky's book on that subject. A year after the appearance of _Felix +Holt_ she wrote out her views on the subject of political reform, in the +shape of an "Address to Workingmen by Felix Holt," which appeared in +_Blackwood's Magazine_ for January, 1868. These essays are significant, +because of the light they afford concerning the author's views on religious +and political subjects. The first is a piece of thorough reviewing, and +shows what George Eliot might have done in that direction. She is a +merciless critic, and yet one inclined to appreciate all that is best in an +author. Her sympathies with positivism and with the "scientific method" in +philosophy find expression in the pages of this essay. In it she gives a +most expressive utterance to her ideas about the universality of law and +the influence of tradition. Her point of view is so antagonistic to Mr, +Lecky's that she does not do full justice to his work. His idealism is +repugnant to her, and he does not give prominence enough to please her to +those positivist influences in which she so strongly believed. Her +dissatisfaction with his idealism appears in her very first words. + + There is a valuable class of books on great subjects which have + something of the character and functions of good popular lecturing. + They are not original, not subtle, not of close logical texture, not + exquisite either in thought or style; but by virtue of these negatives + they are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence. They have + enough of organizing purpose in them to make their facts illustrative, + and to leave a distinct result in the mind even when most of the facts + are forgotten; and they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in + their theory to win them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. The + vagueness and vacillation are not devices of timidity; they are the + honest result of the writer's own mental character, which adapts him to + be the instructor and the favorite of "the general reader." For the + most part, the general reader of the present day does not exactly know + what distance he goes; he only knows that he does not go "too far." Of + any remarkable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he + likes to have it said "that his errors are to be deplored." leaving it + not too certain what those errors are; he is fond of what may be called + disembodied opinions, that float in vapory phrases above all systems of + thought or action; he likes an undefined Christianity which opposes + itself to nothing in particular, an undefined education of the people, + an undefined amelioration of all things: in fact, he likes sound + views--nothing extreme, but something between the excesses of the past + and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader + may be known in conversation by the cordiality with which he assents to + indistinct, blurred statements. Say that black is black, he will shake + his head and hardly think it; say that black is not so very black, he + will reply, "Exactly." He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to + get up at a public meeting and express his conviction that at times, + and within certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be + equal; but, on the other hand, he would urge that the spirit of + geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry + against any clearly defined opinion; not in the least based on a + scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought--a + spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one + thing he is staunch for is the utmost liberty of private haziness. + + But precisely these characteristics of the general reader, rendering + him incapable of assimilating ideas unless they are administered in a + highly diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that there are + clever, fair-minded men who will write books for him--men very much + above him in knowledge and ability, but not too remote from him in + their habits of thinking, and who can thus prepare for him infusions + of history and science that will leave some solidifying deposit, and + save him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skeleton. Among + such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky's _History of the Rise and + Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_ entitles him to a + high place. He has prepared himself for its production by an unusual + amount of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and quotations + with much judgment; and he gives proof of those important moral + qualifications, impartiality, seriousness and modesty. This praise is + chiefly applicable to the long chapter on the history of Magic and + Witchcraft, and to the two chapters on the antecedents and history of + Persecution. + +A further evidence of her wide culture and reading, and of her large +critical ability, may also be found in the first number of the _Fortnightly +Review_, for which she wrote the first of the "notices of new books" which +it published. This was a review of Mr. Owen Jones's _Grammar of Ornament_. +The author was one of her friends, and the decorator of the rooms in which +her Sunday receptions were held. She praised the book very highly. The +first paragraph of this notice betrays her appreciation of the aesthetic +movement in England, and her sympathy with its objects and spirit. The +moral value of aesthetic influences is characteristically expressed. The +influence of the environment, as she understood it, is here seen. The +largeness of her faith in the moral efficiency of material causes is +nowhere so strongly expressed by her as in the words which follow. + + The inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufelsdröckh, was + disbanding hired armies, cashiering most kings and senates, and + creating a whole new democratic world. Has any one yet said what great + things are being done by the men who are trying to banish ugliness + from our streets and our homes, and to make both the outside and the + inside of our dwellings worthy of a world where there are forests, and + flower-tressed meadows, and the plumage of birds; where the insects + carry lessons of color on their wings, and even the surface of a + stagnant pool will show us the wonders of iridescence and the most + delicate forms of leafage? They, too, are modifying opinions, for they + are modifying men's moods and habits, which are the mothers of + opinions, having quite as much to do with their formation as the + responsible father--Reason. Think of certain hideous manufacturing + towns where the piety is chiefly a belief in copious perdition, and + the pleasure is chiefly gin. The dingy surface of wall pierced by the + ugliest windows, the staring shop-fronts, paper-hangings, carpets, + brass and gilt mouldings, and advertising placards, have an effect + akin to that of malaria; it is easy to understand that with such + surroundings there is more belief in cruelty than in beneficence, and + that the best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external + senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is + taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle + relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids + that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our + intellectual discernment; and--more than that--as it is probable that + fine musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily + organization, it is also probable that just coloring and lovely + combinations of lines may be necessary to the complete well-being of + our systems, apart from any conscious delight in them. A savage may + indulge in discordant chuckles and shrieks and gutturals, and think + that they please the gods, but it does not follow that his frame would + not be favorably wrought upon by the vibrations of a grand church + organ. One sees a person capable of choosing the worst style of + wall-paper become suddenly afflicted by its ugliness under an attack of + illness. And if an evil state of blood and lymph usually goes along + with an evil state of mind, who shall say that the ugliness of our + streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the vulgarity of our + upholstery, have not something to do with those bad tempers which + breed false conclusions? + +The address to workingmen which George Eliot put into the mouth of Felix +Holt is a suggestive and valuable piece of political writing. Tradition is +therein presented as a moral and political influence. The spiritual +treasures mankind possesses she says are the products of tradition, and +these must be preserved. This can be done only by keeping the old +institutions and forms until they can be organically supplanted by others. +All the various portions of society are mutually dependent, and the +destruction of any one of them will be to the injury of all. This she says +to workingmen as a reason why they should not antagonize the social orders +above them, whose work is as important as their own. The organs of society +are the various social classes of which it is composed, and society is to +be improved by turning class interests into the functions by which Humanity +is to be developed. The spiritual treasures of the past are only to be +preserved by order and good government; hence all revolutionary methods are +suicidal. Life is to be advanced by giving social influence into the hands +of the wisest. True principles must regulate society, and these George +Eliot would have rest on science and altruism. + +Such are some of the ideas of this remarkable essay, one of the most +suggestive and instructive of all she wrote. The emphasis she laid on +retribution, tradition, heredity and duties appears here in all its force. +Perhaps nothing else she wrote so clearly brings out some of the +characteristics of her mind. Her intense distrust of individualism does not +permit her to say a single word of the _rights_ of the laboring classes. +The right of rebellion and revolution is totally disregarded, rather it is +not recognized that any rights whatever exist. The workingman is not to +think of himself or his class, but of society and humanity; he is to become +an altruistic worker for the common good. While this is fine in theory, yet +history indicates that the aristocratic classes have yielded to the broader +social spirit only when they have been compelled to do so. The concessions +must come from above, not from beneath. George Eliot's political +philosophy, if carried into actual life, would keep the proletariate where +they are, and strengthen the social power of the aristocratic classes. +These words may indicate the drift of the essay: + + But I come back to this: that, in our old society there are old + institutions, and among them the various distinctions and inherited + advantages of classes, which have shaped themselves along with all the + wonderful slow-growing system of things made up of our laws, our + commerce and our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, such + as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, such as scientific thought + and professional skill. Just as in that case I spoke of before, the + irrigation of a country, which must absolutely have its water + distributed or it will bear no crop; these are the old channels, the + old banks and the old pumps, which must be used as they are until new + and better have been prepared, or the structure of the old has been + gradually altered. But it would be fool's work to batter down a pump + only because a better might be made, when you have no machinery ready + for a new one: it would be wicked work, if villages lost their crops by + it. Now the only safe way by which society can be steadily improved and + our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt to do away directly with + the actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if + everybody could have the same sort of work or lead the same sort of + life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by + turning of Class Interests into Class Functions or duties. What I mean + is, that each class should be urged by the surrounding conditions to + perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility + to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a + state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless + conduct. In this way, the public judgment would sift out incapability + and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition + would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the + most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions of those + around them: and for one person to put on a cap and bells, or to go + about dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast + sum of money in having more finery than his neighbors, he must be + pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. Now changes can only be + good in proportion as they help to bring about this sort of result: + in proportion as they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and + fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course of + substitution class distinctions must inevitably change their character, + and represent the varying Duties of men, not their varying Interests. + But this end will not come by impatience. "Day will not break the + sooner because we get up before the twilight." Still less will it come + by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we + believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the + franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in + magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the + franchise will greatly hasten that good end in proportion only as every + one of us has the knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will + make him well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nature of + things in this world has been determined for us beforehand, and in such + a way that no ship can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage, + and reach the right port, unless it is well-manned: the nature of the + winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails and the cordage, will + not accommodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors. + + You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of + joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way and need not + be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, + the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so + that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may + be given to this society of ours, this living body in which our lives + are bound up. After the Reform Bill of 1832, I was in an election riot, + which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what public disorder must + always be; and I have never forgotten that the riot was brought about + chiefly by the agency of dishonest men who professed to be on the + people's side. Now the danger hanging over change is great, just in + proportion as it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large + number of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low and + brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their hands and + may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look round us and say + that he sees no signs of any such danger now, and that our national + condition is running along like a clear broadening stream, safe not to + get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful man; perhaps he does his own + gardening, and seldom takes exercise far away from home. To us who have + no gardens, and often walk abroad, it is plain that we can never get + into a bit of a crowd but we must rub clothes with a set of roughs, who + have the worst vices of the worst rich--who are gamblers, sots, + libertines, knaves, or else mere sensual simpletons and victims. They + are the ugly crop that has sprung up while the stewards have been + sleeping; they are the multiplying brood begotten by parents who have + been left without all teaching save that of a too-craving body, without + all well-being save the fading delusions of drugged beer and gin. They + are the hideous margin of society, at one edge drawing towards it the + undesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening imperceptibly into + the lowest criminal class. Here is one of the evils which cannot be got + rid of quickly, and against which any of us who have got sense, decency + and instruction have need to watch. That these degraded fellow-men + could really get the mastery in a persistent disobedience to the laws + and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not believe; but wretched + calamities would come from the very beginning of such a struggle, and + the continuance of it would be a civil war, in which the inspiration on + both sides might soon cease to be even a false notion of good, and + might become the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have all to see + to it that we do not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in + the breasts of our generation--that we do not help to poison the + nation's blood, and make richer provision for bestiality to come. We + know well enough that oppressors have sinned in this way--that + oppression has notoriously made men mad; and we are determined to + resist oppression. But let us, if possible, show that we can keep sane + in our resistance, and shape our means more and more reasonably towards + the least harmful, and therefore the speediest, attainment of our end. + Let us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to be driven mad, + but can keep that sober determination which alone gives mastery over + the adaptation of means. And a first guarantee of this sanity will be + to act as if we understood that the fundamental duty of a government is + to preserve order, to enforce obedience of the laws. It has been held + hitherto that a man can be depended on as a guardian of order only when + he has much money and comfort to lose. But a better state of things + would be, that men who had little money and not much comfort should + still be guardians of order, because they had sense to see that + disorder would do no good, and had a heart of justice, pity and + fortitude to keep them from making more misery only because they felt + some misery themselves. There are thousands of artisans who have + already shown this fine spirit, and have endured much with patient + heroism. If such a spirit spread and penetrated us all, we should soon + become the masters of the country in the best sense and to the best + ends. For, the public order being preserved, there can be no government + in future that will not be determined by our insistence on our fair and + practicable demands. It is only by disorder that our demands will be + choked, that we shall find ourselves lost amongst a brutal rabble, with + all the intelligence of the country opposed to us, and see government + in the shape of guns that will sweep us down in the ignoble martyrdom + of fools. + +The eighteen essays published as the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ +purport to have been the work of a bachelor of singular habits and tastes, +who had written a book which proved a failure, and who left this volume to +appear posthumously. He had been in the habit of giving an account to +himself of the characters he met with, and he begins his book by describing +his own weaknesses. He classes himself as one of the blunderers he would +portray, as having the faults and foibles he finds in others. Expressively +the author says, "If the human race has a bad reputation, I perceive that I +cannot escape being compromised." This may be taken as the sentiment of +George Eliot herself; and it is she who really speaks in these words +concerning the satirical criticisms of those she describes: + + If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your + labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous + adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavors in a rashly chosen + part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately + I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that + I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?--for even what + we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or + shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we can think of + exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. + +After the second essay Theophrastus disappears, and no further hint is +given that it is he who is the reputed author. This slight fictitious +machinery is too weak to carry the load put upon it. The reader soon feels +that it is George Eliot who is talking, and the opinions put forth, the +sentiments expressed, are recognized as her own. Indeed, it would have been +better, so the reader may probably come to say to himself, if this +attempted disguise had been entirely dispensed with. By the time he has +reached the sixth essay, "Only Temper," the discerning reader, familiar +with George Eliot's books, will be ready to affirm that this is no other +than the author herself speaking very frankly and finely her own +sentiments. In this essay the moral temper of her mind appears, and her +strong inclination to subordinate the individual to the social requirements +of life. + +These papers are modelled on those of the great essay-making period in +English literature. Old-fashioned names are adopted, which have a greater +or less significance in connection with the purpose of the essay. The man +with the excitable temper is called Touchwood, while the man who slides +into a deferential acceptance of opinions made for him is Mixtus. This +method of the old essayists seems antiquated, cumbersome and unsuitable to +the subjects discussed. The persons described lose their individuality by +its use, and the reader forgets that they were meant to be creatures of +flesh and blood. For the most part, they are mere abstractions, mere +figures of straw, to be knocked over by the ingenious pen of the author. +Some special fault or sin is given the name of a personality, but it is too +much isolated from actual existence to produce the impression of a living +thing. + +These essays much resemble occasional chapters in her novels, and might +have been studies for a new work. They are studies simply, done with a fine +skill and polish, but fragmentary. The large setting of her novels is +needed to give them relief and proportion. They disappoint as they are, for +the satire is too apparent, and we do not see these characters in action, +where their follies would obtain for them a more living interest. They are +studies of individual character, portraying types of social and literary +weakness, such as may have come under George Eliot's observation. They are +careful dissections of motives and conduct, and full of a minute analysis +of the moral and intellectual nature of her characters. There is abundance +of candid criticism, shrewd observation and compressed wisdom of statement. +Occasionally she is at her very best; but she uses many long, cumbersome +sentences, the satire is too harsh and the wisdom too unwieldy. Her +sympathy, love, pathos and pity are not so apparent as in her novels; she +takes less delight in these creations, and evidently created them for +purposes of dissection. She is never so weak in her other writings as in +these essays, so wanting in genius and large-heartedness. She scourges many +of the intellectual follies of the time, the conceit of culture, the pride +of literature, and the narrowness of politics; but in most of the essays +this is all. + +The artistic conception of the book is too slight and fragmentary, and it +gives the impression of being unfinished in execution and desultory in +purpose. Yet there is in it much of fine feeling, pure sentiment, lively +satire and apt wisdom. Sometimes the thought is labored; but there is a +wealth of clear-cut conviction, strong thoughts and rich experience. There +is force in the arguments, richness of ideas throughout, and a wonderful +aptness of allusion and illustration. Her culture and learning are +everywhere apparent in the fine perception of the most exact analogies and +in the ease with which she brings science to the support of morals. Those +of her admirers who come closest to her spirit, thoroughly appreciate her +ideas, and delight in them, will read this book with satisfaction, and feel +thankful that she wrote it. No one who would know the mind of George Eliot +can afford to overlook it. + +When George Eliot writes on subjects involving a moral purpose or ideal, +she is always wise and interesting. When, however, she attempts to satirize +some weakness or laugh at some folly, she is not always successful. Rich as +may be the satire and the wit of her novels, both are often heavy and dull +in her essays. + +The greater number of essays in this volume are devoted to the analysis of +special types of character, but a few are given to moral problems. These +latter are of the more interest and value, and they present some new +discussions of those problems with which George Eliot was so much +fascinated. Her earnest faith in altruism, realism, tradition, natural +retribution and the social value of morality, is as distinct here as in her +novels or poems. In the essay on "False Testimonials" she gives a good +realistic definition of imagination, which she says is "always based on a +keen vision, a keen consciousness of what is, and carries the store of +definite knowledge as material for the construction of its inward visions." +She is no realist, however, in the sense of confining poetry merely to a +photographic picture of outward nature. She accepts Dante as a genuine +realist, for "he is at once the most precise and homely in his reproduction +of actual objects, and the most soaringly at large in his imaginative +combinations." She would have faithfulness to facts, but no limitation of +vision; she would have the imagings exact and legitimate, but she would +give our moral and intellectual insights no narrow bounds. Her realism is +well defined when she criticises one of those persons who take mere fancy +for imagination, to whom all facts are unworthy of recognition. + +In at least two of these essays, those on "Debasing the Moral Currency" and +"The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" she has newly expressed herself concerning +tradition. In the first she protests against the too-common custom of +satirizing what is noble and venerable. Our need of faith in the higher +things of life is very great, and that faith is to be established only +through our regard for what has been given us by those who have gone before +us. Whatever lowers our trust in the results of human efforts is +corrupting, for it breaks down our faith in the true sources of human +authority. "This is what I call debasing the moral currency," she says; +"lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition so that it will +command less and less of the spiritual products, the generous motives which +sustain the charm and elevation of our social existence--the something +besides bread by which man saves his soul alive." With her conception of +tradition, as the legitimate source of the moral and spiritual life in man, +and as the influence which builds up all which is truest and purest in our +civilization, she can endure to see no contempt put upon its products. This +essay, more perhaps than anything else she wrote, gives an insight into her +conception of the higher life and her total lack of faith in any idealistic +sources of human motive or inspiration. Contempt for the traditional, with +her, implies contempt for the spiritual and moral. To destroy the +traditional is revolutionary, dangerous and immoral. She cannot reject +tradition in the name of higher wisdom, in the name of higher truth and +authority. It gone, and all is gone; hence her fear of all iconoclastic and +revolutionary methods. So she would keep whole and pure the national +memories of every people. In the last essay of the book she says, "The +preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national +greatness, and their revival a sign of reviving nationality." It is "the +divine gift of memory" as it expresses itself in the life and purposes of a +people, "which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, +and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the +brutes." All which lowers the influence or the sacredness of this memory is +debasing. The corrupting of this memory "is the impoverishment that +threatens our posterity;" and this "new famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd +grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our +human sentiments." That eager yearning of the nineteenth century for truth +and reality, for something more than traditions and national memories, +which displays itself in reforms and revolutions of every kind, had little +of George Eliot's sympathy. Yet this spirit is stronger even than +tradition, and creates for us a new world and a higher life. + +Throughout these essays it is the social side of morality which is praised +and commended. What will increase the altruistic spirit, what will widen +sympathy and helpfulness, is regarded as truly ethical in its import. Ideal +aims are brought to the level of present needs and the possibilities of +human nature as it now exists. + + Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the + highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that + touches the mixed life of the earth. They are archangels with awful + brow and flaming sword, summoning and encouraging us to do the right + and the divinely heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their + presence; but to learn what it is they summon us to do, we have to + consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and + our own appetites.... On the whole, and in the vast majority of + instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of + the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries. + A sour father may reform prisons, but considered in his sourness he + does harm. + +In another essay, that entitled "Only Temper," the social side of morality +is again presented. Especially does it appear in that on "Moral Swindlers." +"Let us refuse to accept as moral," says George Eliot, "any political +leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be +determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less +immoral even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert +Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme +in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous +impartiality." George Eliot is almost without exception sound and just in +her moral judgments, but here her theories have made her overlook the true +conditions of a moral life. + + Seeing that Morality and Morals under their _alias_ of Ethics are the + subject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis a pressing + matter of dispute--seeing that the most famous book ever written on + Ethics, and forming a chief study in our colleges, allies ethical with + political science, or that which treats of the constitution and + prosperity of States, one might expect that educated men would find + reason to avoid a perversion of language which lends itself' to no + wider view of life than that of village gossips. Yet I find even + respectable historians of our own and of foreign countries, after + showing that a king was treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction + gross breaches in the administration of justice, end by praising him + for his pure moral character, by which one must suppose them to mean + that he was not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin of the + typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in + chewing bang and fondling dancing-girls. And since we are sometimes + told of such maleficent kings that they were religious, we arrive at + the curious result that the most serious wide-reaching duties of man + lie quite outside both Morality and Religion--the one of these + consisting in not keeping mistresses (and perhaps not drinking too + much), and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with + God which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest + conduct toward men. With such a classification as this, it is no + wonder, considering the strong re-action of language on thought, that + many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, + are fain to seek for the grounds of social duty; and without + entertaining any private intention of committing a perjury which would + ruin an innocent man, or seeking gain by supplying bad preserved meats + to our navy, feel themselves speculatively obliged to inquire why they + should not do so, and are inclined to measure their intellectual + subtlety by their dissatisfaction with all answers to this "Why?" + +It would be quite impossible for George Eliot to write an essay without +some fresh thought or some new suggestion. To those who admire her genius +and are in sympathy with her teachings this volume will have a special +interest. Its few essays which touch upon moral or speculative subjects are +of the utmost value as interpretations of her life and thought. + +All her essays, the later as the earlier, are mainly of interest as aids to +an understanding of her philosophy. Nothing is worthless which helps us +clearly to comprehend an original mind. + + + + +XIX. + + +THE ANALYTIC METHOD. + +George Eliot's literary method was that of Fielding and Thackeray, both of +whom evidently influenced her manner. Their realism, and especially their +method of comment and moral observation, she made her own. She had little +sympathy with the romanticism of Scott or the idealism of Dickens. Her +moral aims, her intense faith in altruism, kept her from making her art a +mere process of photographing nature. Nature always had a moral meaning to +her, a meaning in reference to man's happiness and health of soul; and that +moral bearing of all human experiences gave dignity and purpose to her art. + +It was the method of Scott to present the romantic, picturesque and poetic +side of life. He was not untrue to nature, but he cared more for beauty and +sentiment than for fact. He sometimes perverted the historic incidents he +made use of, but he caught the spirit of the time with which he was dealing +with absolute fidelity. In this capacity for historic interpretation he +surpassed George Eliot, who had not his instinctive insight into the past. +Scott had no theory about the past, no philosophy of history was known to +him; but above all novelists he had the power to see by the light of other +days, and to make the dead times live again. Not George Eliot and not +Thackeray was his rival in this historic insight and poetic power of +interpretation; and his superior success was due not only to his peculiar +genius but also to his romanticism. Scott failed where George Eliot +succeeded, in giving an intellectual interpretation of life. With certain +social and moral tendencies he was clearly at home. On its side of +adventure and social impulse and craving for a wider life, as a single +instance of his power, he was a true interpreter of the age of Elizabeth. +Its deeper spirit, its intellectual movements, he did not, and could not, +bring within the range of his story. It was here George Eliot was superior, +as is abundantly shown in _Romola_. The thoughtful aspects of Florentine +life she truthfully presented; but its more romantic elements it needed a +Scott to make living and real. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ there is very little +of genuine interpretation. Certain local features may be accurate, but the +spirit of the time is not there; the characters are not such as that age +and country developed. Scott, with all his romanticism, would have +introduced _reality_ into such an historic picture. + +Within her own lines of power George Eliot is much greater than Scott, who +could not have written _Adam Bede_ or _Middlemarch_, or brought out what is +best in those works. Adventure was necessary to Scott; he could not have +transfigured the plain and homely with beauty as George Eliot has done. +Where she is at her best, as in the simple scenes of _Silas Marner_, there +is a charm, pathos and sympathy in her work which must endear it to all +hearts. That peculiar power Scott did not have; yet it would be most +difficult to decide which is the truer to nature. Genuine art, it is true, +has its foundation in the realities of human experience: but those +realities are not always best interpreted by the methods of realism. In his +own province Scott was truer to nature than George Eliot was in the same +field, as may be seen at once by comparing _The Spanish Gypsy_ with +_Ivanhoe_, or any of Scott's novels dealing with the mediaeval and feudal +ages, he took the past into himself, caught its spirit, reflected it in +its wholeness. In this he was a genuine realist, and all the more faithful +to reality because he did not accept realism as a theory. + +In comparing George Eliot with Dickens, it must first of all be noted that +each is the superior of the other in his own special province. Dickens has +more imagination; he appeals to more universal sentiments, touches a wider +circle of experiences, captivates his readers with a resistless interest +and tenderness of spirit. His characters are unreal, mere caricatures +often, mere puppets. Yet he had an imagination of marvellous power, so that +his characters appeared to his own mind as if real, and he describes them +as if they actually stood before him, making them intensely real to his +readers. Many of his persons never lived, never could have lived; yet they +are types or certain traits of character made living and brought out into a +distinctive existence. What those traits of character are he makes all the +more apparent by this method. + +Dickens had not a fine literary taste, he had no clear insight into some of +the purer human sentiments, he was grossly untrue and false in many of his +pictures. Yet all in all, with his many faults, it is to be said that his +idealism, which was not of a high type, made him a true interpreter of +life. If his characters are less faithfully drawn than George Eliot's, his +insight into some of the sentiments and emotions was truer. His pictures +may be false in some particulars, but he has given them the true spirit +with which they should be animated. + +In thoughtful fidelity to the facts of life, George Eliot surpasses Scott +or Dickens. Scott by his insight, Dickens by his imagination, were able to +do what she could not; but they put little thought into their work. They +did not think about what life meant; she did. They worked instinctively, +she thoughtfully. Her characters are more often to be met with than theirs; +and there is a freshness, a wholesomeness, about them theirs do not have. +She is more simple and refined than Fielding, more elevated in tone of +thought, there is a deeper and a richer purpose in her work. None of the +cynicism and hardness of Thackeray appear in her pages. She is fresher, +more genuine, more poetic than he, with more of humanity. + +In her essay on "The Natural History of German Life" she said of Dickens +that he was "gifted with the utmost power of rendering the external traits +of our town population." City life Dickens and Thackeray most truly +photographed in all its features of snobbishness and selfishness. Its +better side, its nobler sentiments, its humanity, they did not succeed +in so well; not so well as George Eliot did, and simply because they did +not so much sympathize with it. Country life they did not understand, and +could not have sketched. Where George Eliot best succeeded they would have +failed. Her real advance upon Dickens and Thackeray, however, lay in +another direction. She says in the essay just quoted, speaking of Diekens's +portraitures of town populations, that "if he could give us their +psychological character--their conception of life and their emotions--with +the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest +contribution art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies." +In the two directions here indicated lay her superiority over other +novelists,--her humanitarian sympathies and her psychologic insight. In +reality, she did not contribute anything new to the realism of literary +art. All which can be said for faithfulness to nature in art and poetry has +been said by Ruskin, and George Eliot was early a reader of his books. Her +predecessors, especially Thackeray, opened the way in the application of +the realistic principles in its newer spirit. The enlargement of realism, +however, was carried on to a much greater extent by the pre-Raphaelites in +painting and poetry, and George Eliot was influenced by them as well. Their +principle of loyal fidelity to the time and circumstances depicted was her +own, at least in theory. + +It was in another direction her chief characteristic lay, that of +describing "psychologic character." Here she was no imitator, but she made +a way of her own, and developed a new method. The method of science she +applied to literature. Science has adopted the method of analysis, of +inductive inquiry, of search in all the facts of nature for the laws which +underlie them. So magnificent have been the results obtained by this +process in the study of the material world, that it has been applied with +the hope of securing the same thorough investigation of the phenomena +presented by history, ethics and religion. Even here the method has +justified itself, and has in recent years opened up new and valuable +results, giving to the world an enriched conception of the life of man. +The speculative mind has been stimulated to fresh activity, and new +philosophies, of vast and imposing proportions, have been the result. The +studies of Charles Darwin, and the elaboration of the theory of evolution, +have given a marvellous incentive to the new method, resulting in its +wide-spread application to all the questions of nature and life. + +A method so productive in all directions must have its effect on +literature. What claims the attention of all thinking men cannot long +be kept out of poetry and art. In painting and in music it has been +largely developed in the direction of a more intimate and sympathetic +interpretation of nature and man. In literature the new method has been +mainly brought into application hitherto in the form of photographic +studies of human life. To describe what is, to make a true word-picture, +has been the chief aim. With George Eliot began a wider use of the new +method and its application in a more sympathetic spirit to the deeper +problems of the mind and heart. She was not content to paint the surface of +nature, to give photographic sketches of the outside of human life, but she +wished to realize every subtle fact and every most secret impulse. An +admirer of the Dutch school in painting, and of Jane Austen as a novelist, +she was not content with their results and methods, wishing to interpret +the spirit as well as the letter of nature and life. + +In literature, the new method as developed in recent years consists in an +application of psychology to all the problems of man's nature. George +Eliot's intimate association with the leaders of the scientific movement in +England, naturally turned her mind into sympathy with their work, and made +her desirous of doing in literature what they were doing in science. In the +special department of physiological psychology, no one did more than George +Henry Lewes, and her whole heart went out in genuine appreciation of his +work. He studied the mind as a function of the brain, as being developed +with the body, as the result of inherited conditions, as intimately +dependent on its environment. Here was a new conception of man, which +regarded him as the last product of nature, considered as an organic whole. +This conception George Eliot everywhere applied in her studies of life and +character. She studied man as the product of his environment, not as a +being who exists above circumstances and material conditions. "In the eyes +of the psychologist," says Mr. James Sully, "the works of George Eliot must +always possess a high value by reason of their large scientific insight +into character and life." This value consists, as he indicates, in the fact +that she interprets the inner personality as it is understood by the +scientific student of human nature. She describes those obscure moral +tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which +enter so much into life. She lays much stress on the subconscious mental +life, the domain of vague emotion and rapidly fugitive thought. + +The aim of the psychologic method is to interpret man from within, in his +motives and impulses. It endeavors to show why he acts, and it unfolds the +subtler elements of his character. This method George Eliot uses in +connection with her evolutionary philosophy, and uses it for the purpose of +showing that man is a product of hereditary conditions, that he has been +shaped into his life of the emotions and sentiments by the influence of +tradition. The psychologic method may be applied, however, without +connection with the positive or evolutionary philosophy. The mind may be +regarded as a distinct force and power, exercised within social and +material limits, and capable of being studied in all its inner motives and +impulses. Yet in her mental inquiries George Eliot did not regard man as an +eternal soul in the process of development by divine methods, but as the +inheritor of the past, moulded by every surrounding circumstance, and as +the creature of the present. Instead of regarding man as _sub specie +eternitatis_, she regarded him as an animal who has through feeling and +social development come to know that he cannot exist beyond the present. +This limitation of his nature affected her work throughout. + +The psychologic method in literature has also been that of Robert Browning, +and he has been as faithful to it as any other. He, too, analyzes his +characters, penetrates all the hidden causes of motive and deed, lays bare +the soul. No other poet has surpassed him in power to unveil the inner +workings of the mind, to discover all the influences affecting it or in +revealing how motives are created and how motives lead up to deeds. In two +important particulars Robert Browning differs from George Eliot. His +characters speak for themselves, reveal the secrets of their own minds. He +does not talk about them, does not criticise their words and conduct, does +not stand off from them as a spectator. He differs from her also in his +conception of man as a being who is here developing an eternal existence +under the laws of an Infinite Spirit. He, too, believes in the natural, and +believes that the highest law of the soul is, to be true to every pure +impulse arising within us. To calculate, to philosophize, he holds to be +always to man's injury, that nature when perfectly obeyed is the only +guide. He studies man as affected by all the circumstances of his +existence, and as wrought upon by the great social forces which have made +him what he is. His analysis is as keen as George Eliot's; he makes the +soul appear before us in all its reality. His is a more creative, a more +dramatic method than hers; yet he is fully as subjective, as much an +interpreter of the soul. Neither is content to record the deeds of men; +both wish to know why men act. + +Browning has fittingly been called the poet of psychology. He is a +dissecter, a prober, an analyzer in the full spirit of scientific research. +He spares no pains to get at and to completely unfold the truth about man's +nature, to show all the hidden causes of his action, all the secret motives +of his life, using this method as thoroughly as George Eliot. It is +interesting to note his attitude towards the great religious problems. His +faith in God is intensely passionate and sublime in its conception. In +words the most expressive in their meaning, and indicating a conviction the +deepest, he reveals his faith. + + "He glows above + With scarce an intervention, presses close + And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours." + +The lifting and inspiring power of faith in an Infinite Being he has sung +with a poet's purity of vision. Along with this faith goes his belief that +man is being glowly perfected for a higher and nobler existence. + + "To whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? + Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands! + What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever the same? + Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands? + There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; + The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; + What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; + On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round. + + "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; + Not its likeness, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power + Whose voice has gone forth, but, each survives for the melodist + When eternity confirms the conceptions of an hour. + The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, + The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, + Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; + Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." + +He teaches that progress is the true mark and aim of man's being, a +progress sure and glorious. + + "Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, + Not God's and not the beast's; God is, they are, + Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." + +Man yearns after more than he can gain here; that yearning is the mark of +his higher nature and the means of progress. If he follows the better +impulses of his nature, all experience will help to unfold his soul into +higher attainments, and impulse will at last become, in clearer moments, +revelation. + + "Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! + But not quite so much that moments, + Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, + When the spirit's true endowments + Stand out plainly from its false ones, + And appraise it if pursuing + Or the right way or the wrong way + To its triumph or undoing. + There are flashes struck from midnights, + There are fireflames noondays kindle, + Whereby piled-up honors perish. + Whereby swol'n ambitions dwindle, + While just this or that poor impulse + Which for once had play unstifled + Seems the sole work of a lifetime, + That away the rest have trifled." + +More impersonal and dramatic than George Eliot, Browning introduces his +doctrines less often. It is not easy to discover what are his theories as +distinguished from those of his characters, for he makes no comments, and +is faithful in developing the unity and integrity of his _dramatis +personae_, whether in his monologues or dramas. Great as his other faults +maybe, he surpasses George Eliot in his power to reveal character, but not +in his power to make his characters stand out distinctly and unprejudiced +from his own mind. His obscurity of expression and his involved style are +serious defects in much of his work; and to most readers his thoroughly +dramatic manner is puzzling. He gives but faint clue to the situation in +his monologues, little explanation of the person, time or place. All is to +be discovered from the obscurest allusions and hints. Defective as this +method is in Browning's treatment, it is the true psychologic method, +wherein motive and character are developed dramatically and without labored +discussion. It is a more vital and constructive process than that followed +by George Eliot, because nothing of the meaning and fulness of life is lost +in the process of analysis. That Browning can never be read by more than a +few, indicates how great are his faults; but in lyric passion, dramatic +power and psychologic analysis he is one of the greatest poets of the +century. The value and range of the new method are well illustrated in its +use by two such thinkers and poets. + +The analytic method as applied by George Eliot regards man as a social +being, studies him as a member of society. All that he is, and all +the influences working upon him, are understood only as affected by +his connection with the life of the race. This fact gives the most +distinguishing characteristic to her literary methods. Her imitators may +not, and nearly all of them do not, follow her into positivism; but they +all study man as a social being. They deal with him as affected by +heredity, education, and social characteristics. Even here it is not her +theories, but her artistic methods, which are imitated. The novel is no +longer regarded as a story to be told dramatically and with moving effect, +but as a study of character, as an analysis of situations and motives. The +advocates of the new method say that "in one manner or another the stories +were all told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist +thinks about persons and situations." [Footnote: W.D. Howells in the +Century for November, 1882.] This interpretation of the mission of the +novelist well describes George Eliot's work, for she never hesitated to +tell her reader what she thought about the situations and the persons of +whom she wrote. + +The new method, as developed in sympathy with agnosticism, fails in +literature just as science fails to be a complete interpretation of the +universe. The process which answers in the material world does not answer +in the spiritual. The instruments which tell the secrets of matter, close +the avenues to the revelations of mind. The methods of experiment and +demonstration which have brought the universe to man's knowledge, have not +been sufficient to make the soul known to itself. Any literary methods +imitating physical science must share in its limitations without its power +over the materials with which it has to deal. Literature has hitherto been +made helpful and delightful and acceptable because of its ideal elements. +Belief in a spiritual world, belief in the imperative law of righteousness +as a divine command, runs through all effective literature. However +realistic the poets have been when they have reached their highest and +best, they have believed that the soul, and what belongs to it, is the only +_reality_. Divorced of this Element, literature is at once lowered in tone, +a dry-rot seizes upon it and eats away its finest portions. If Goethe and +Shakspere are realists in literary method, as some of their interpreters +would claim, yet to them the spiritual is supreme, the soul is monarch. +So it is with Homer, with Dante, with Scott, with Cervantes, with Victor +Hugo, with every supremely artistic and creative mind. Great minds +instinctively believe in the creative power of the mind, in its capacity +for self-direction. An unbiassed mind gifted with genius sees over +and through all obstacles, leaps to magnificent results, will not be +restrained by the momentary conditions of the present. Education or social +environment, however adverse, will not long hinder the poet from his work. +He writes for the future, if the present will not accept him, confident +that what his soul has to utter can be truly uttered only as his own +individuality impels, and that if he is faithful to his genius the world +will listen in due time. This power of personality lies at the basis of all +genuine literature, teaching faith in the soul, faith in a providential +ordering of the world, and overturning all agnostic theories about realism +and environment. + +This instinctive faith in mind is the basis of all genuine idealism. The +idealist is not the creator of an imaginary world, peopling it with shapes +that never existed; but he is one who believes in ideas, and in mind as +their creator and the vehicle of their expression. Contemporary with George +Eliot was a group of men who believed in the mind as something other than +the temporary product of an evolutionary process. With them she may be +contrasted, her work may be measured by theirs. Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning +and Buskin shared with her the radical ideas of the time. Not one of them +has been fettered by narrow theories or cramped by old social doctrines. +The broad, inquiring, scientific spirit of the time has been shared by them +all. Buskin is a realist, Carlyle believed in the enduring realm of facts, +and they have all accepted the spirit of naturalism which has ruled the +century. The scientific, philosophic and social theories of the time have +been their inspiration. Certain ideas about law, progress and social +regeneration have affected them through and through. Yet as regards the one +great characteristic of idealism, all have widely departed from George +Eliot, for all regard mind as supreme, all believe in a spiritual realm +environing man. This fact appears throughout their work. To them the +spiritual is objective; they are the true realists. To George Eliot the +spiritual is subjective, the result of our own feelings, to which it is +limited. When the feelings are gone, all is gone. In the pages of these men +there is consequently to be found a power and an inspiration not to be +found in hers. Wonderful as is her skill as an artist, and in the analysis +of character, yet we feel that we are walking over mocking graves whenever +we reach her spiritual conception of the world. She deceives us with a +shadow, offers us a name in place of what we crave for with every nobler +instinct of the soul. Our own feelings are given us, mirrored in the +feelings of others, in place of the reality we desire to possess. + +These men have linked their work with those spiritual convictions which +have been the moral sustenance of the ages. They have gained in strength +and effectiveness thereby. Tennyson has his many doubts, his teachings have +been questioned; and yet he sings,-- + + "That each, who seems a separate whole, + Should move his rounds, and passing all + The skirts of self again, should fall, + Remerging in the general soul,-- + + "Is faith as vague as all unsweet: + Eternal form shall still divide + The eternal soul from all beside; + And I shall know him when we meet." + +His flight of song is more sustained for this faith. He is a truer poet, of +stronger wing and loftier flight, because life has for him an infinite +meaning, because he opens his mind to the impressions which come of man's +spiritual existence. In the same way, Carlyle has a grander meaning running +through his books, more of sublimity, a finer eloquence, because the +spiritual is to him real. Doubter and scorner as he was, he could not but +see that man's being reaches beyond the material world and interprets some +higher realm. Vague as that faith was with him, it was a source of the most +effective literary power and stimulus. He bursts forth, under its impulse, +into impassioned passages of the noblest poetic beauty. + +"Perhaps my father, all that essentially was my father, is even now near +me, with me. Both he and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God, we +shall in some higher state of being meet one another, recognize one +another. As it is written, we shall be forever with God. The possibility, +nay (in some way) the certainty, of perennial existence daily grows plainer +to me." + +Ruskin has made it plain how necessary is that tone of mind which is +religious to the best work in art. His own faith has been earnest and +strong in the reality of the spiritual. Realist as he is in art, he +believes in the original and creative power of the mind, and his work has +all taken on a higher spirit and a finer expression because of his +religious convictions. Writing in _Modern Painters_ of man as made in the +image of God, he answers the objection which is raised to the idea that all +the revelation man has is contained in a being so imperfect. + +"No other book, nor fragment of book, than that, will you ever +find,--nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. The +flesh-bound volume is the only revelation that is, that was, or that can +be. In that is the image of God painted; in that is the law of God written; +in that is the promise of God revealed. Know thyself; for through thyself +only thou canst know God. Through the glass, darkly; but except through the +glass, in no wise. A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the +ground;--you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure and at +your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you +shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for +those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be +bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love +your life. Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on +subjection to the human soul. Man is the Sun of the world; more than the +real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth +gauge or measure. Where he is, are the tropics; where he is not, the +ice-world." + +Such words may not be scientific, but they convey real meaning. Their +assertion that the world is to be tested and understood by man, not man by +the world, is one worthy of attention. The conviction of this truth has a +literary power and incentive not to be found in "the scientific method" or +any of its corollaries. + +To this group of writers may be added Mrs. Browning, who, as a poet, did +great and lasting work. Its value, in large measure, rests on its depth of +spiritual conviction, and on its idealism in purpose and spirit. Her +conception of love is finer and truer than George Eliot's, because she gave +it an ideal as well as an altruistic meaning; because she thought it has an +eternal as well as a social significance. As a poet she lost nothing of +charm or of power or of inspiration because she could herself believe, with +simple trust, what she has embodied in "A Child's Thought of God." + + "God is so good, He wears a fold + Of heaven and earth across his face-- + Like secrets kept, for love, untold. + But still I feel that his embrace + Slides down by thrills, through all things made, + Through sight and sound of every place." + +That art is to be nothing more than a copying and interpretation of nature +Mrs. Browning did not believe. In _Aurora Leigh_ she says,-- + + "Art's the witness of what is + Beyond this show. If this world's show were all, + Mere imitation would be all in art." + +The glow of genius burns up out of all her pages, and there is an aroma and +a subtle power in them which comes alone of this conception of art. She +could not rest content with the little round of man's experience, but found +that all the universe is bound together and all its parts filled with a +God-spirit. + + "No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee + But finds some coupling with, the spinning stars; + No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere; + No chaffinch but implies the cherubim: + ... Earth's crammed with heaven, + And every common bush afire with God." + +That is a larger faith and a truer faith than appears anywhere in the pages +of George Eliot, and it is one which impregnates most of the best +literature the world posseses with light and life. It is a faith which +gives hope and impulse where the other saddens and unnerves. + +There is wanting in George Eliot's books that freshness of spirit, that +faith in the future, and that peaceful poise of soul which is to be found +in the writings of Tennyson, Ruskin and Mrs. Browning. Even with all his +constitutional cynicism and despair, the teachings of Carlyle are much more +hopeful than hers. An air of fatigue and world-weariness is about all her +work, even when it is most stimulating with its altruism. Though in theory +not a pessimist, yet a sense of pain and sorrow grows out of the touch of +each of her books. In this she missed one of the highest uses of +literature, to quicken new hopes and to awaken nobler purposes. There is a +tone of joy and exultation in the power life confers, an instinctive sense +of might to conquer the world, in the best writing. To make men think, to +move men to action, to confer finer feelings and motives, is the power of +the true poet. When he does not accomplish this he has written to a lesser +purpose. Literature aims either to please or to quicken the mind. It cannot +please when it leaves the heart depressed and burdened with the failures +and sadness of the world. If it is to please, it must make use of that +goodness and joy which are in excess of evil and misery. It cannot quicken +when it unnerves the mind and brings despair of moral purpose. If it is to +inspire it must show that something great is to be done, and awaken the +courage to do it. + +That life has its sad and painful elements is a terrible fact, and the +novelist who would paint life as it is must recognize them. It is quite as +true that the good and the hopeful are more than the sad and painful, that +right is more powerful in human life than wrong. The novelist who would +paint life with an exact and even-handed justice, must not make all his +endings sorrowful, for very many in real life are not so. _The Mill on the +Floss_ would have been a more powerful and effective book could Maggie have +been made to conquer. It would have been quite as true to nature to have +represented her as overcoming her defects, and as being purified through +suffering. Is all suffering to conquer us, instead of our being able to +conquer it, and gaining a more peaceful and a purer life through its aid? +If Maggie is George Eliot in her youthful experiences, then the novel is +untrue to fact in that Marian Evans conquered and Maggie failed. The same +fault is to be found in _Middlemarch_, that Dorothea, great as she is, +deserved a much better fate than that accorded to her. The elements of +womanly greatness were in her character, and with all the barriers created +by society she would have done better things had her creator been true to +her capacities in unfolding her life-history. The effect of both these +great novels is one of depression and disappointment. The reader always +expects more as he goes on his way through these scenes, depicted with such +genius, than is realized at the end. Disappointment is almost inevitable, +for the promise is greater than the fulfilment. The like result is produced +by those books which have the brightest closing scenes, as in _Adam Bede_ +and _Daniel Deronda_, where the author's aim was evidently hopeful and +constructive. _Silas Marner_ and _Felix Holt_ are the only exceptions to +this pessimistic tone, and in which justice is done to the better side of +life. In all her later books the ending is painful. In _The Mill on the +Floss_, Maggie and Tom are drowned after Maggie had been led to a most +bitter end of her love-affairs. In _Romola_ the heroine is left a widow, +after her husband's treachery had brought him to a terrible death, and +after Savonarola had suffered martyrdom. Dorothea marries into a life of +ordinary drudgery, and Lydgate fails. Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen are +separated from each other, and Deronda goes to the east in furtherance of a +wild scheme of Jewish colonization. Fedalma loses her father by the +treachery of her lover, and without hope conducts her tribe to Africa. +Jubal dies dishonored, and Armgart loses her voice. Yet it is not merely +that the conclusion does not lead to the expected result, but throughout +there is a tone of doubt and failure. That George Eliot purposed to give +life this tinge of sadness is not to be accepted as the true explanation of +it. It is known that she did not have such a purpose, that she was +surprised and disappointed that her books should produce such a result on +her readers. The explanation is to be found in another direction. + +She was an agnostic; life had no wide horizon for her. The light of a +genuinely ideal and spiritual conception of life was not hers. The world +was bounded to her vision, rounded into the little capacity possessed by +man. Where others would have cast a glow of hope and sunset brilliance, +promise of a brighter day yet to dawn over the closing scenes of her +novels, she could see nothing beyond but the feeble effect of an earthly +transmitted good. In this regard her books afford a most interesting +contrast to those of the two other great women who have adorned English +literature with their genius. The lot of Mrs. Browning and Charlotte Brontë +was much sadder and more depressing than that of George Eliot; more of +darkness and pain affected their lives. A subtle tone of sadness runs +through their books, but it is not burdensome and depressing as is the case +of George Eliot. There is hope with it, and a buoyant faith in the good, +which lies above and beyond all pain and sorrow. With neither of them was +this faith conventional, a mere reflection of the religion taught them in +childhood. It was a thoughtful result of a large experience, and of hard +contact with many of the severest facts of human experience. That wide +horizon of spiritual reality which shone for them on every hand, lights all +their work with a brilliance which almost puts out of sight the pain and +sorrow of the world. The reader of their books is made to believe that life +is an endless good; he is cheered and made stronger for what life offers +him. + +Agnosticism may have its great and heroic incentives, it may impel men to a +nobler activity, but its literary effect, as a motive towards a more +inspiring life, has not been satisfactory in the hands of George Eliot. +Shakspere is not a teacher of philosophy or ethics, he has no doctrines to +preach, no theories to advocate. What he believed, it would be difficult to +ascertain from his writings; yet he is an effective teacher of morals, he +stimulates into activity all that is best in man, life widens and deepens +under the touch of his genius. So is it with Milton, Schiller, Moliere, +Calderon, Montaigne and Wordsworth. So is it with George Eliot in all that +concerns our duties, and even with our human sympathies. In the one +direction of trust she is wanting, and her books are devoid of it. +Shakspere makes us realize that God rules over the world; George Eliot +leaves us with the feeling that we know nothing, and can hope for but +little. That her theories really cast a shadow over the world, may be seen +in all her dealings with love. Love is with her a human passion, deep, +pure, blessed. It crowns some of her characters with joy and peace and +strength; it is never impure and base in her pages. Yet it is human, it is +a social force, it is to be made altruistic. It never gains that high +poetic influence and charm which glorifies it in the writings of Mrs. +Browning, Browning and Tennyson. Browning conceives of it as an eternal +passion, as one with all that is divinest in man, as a medium of his +spiritual development. In his pages it glows with moral promise, it +inspires and regenerates. The poet should deal with love, not as a thing +base and susceptible of abuse, but as an influence capable of the most +beneficent results in the uplifting of man's nature. If it degrades, it +also sweetens; and only that is love which makes life richer and more +worthy. The true artist can afford to deal with that which pleases, not +with that which saddens and disgusts. The real love is the pure love, not +the depraved. The natural is the noble, not the debased life. + +George Eliot's originality of method has given rise to a new school in +fiction. Her imitators, even when at their best, are not her equals, and +they have degraded her methods oftentimes to paltry uses. They have tried +to take photographs of life, supposing that art has for its aim to copy +nature. They have failed to see, what she did see, though not so clearly as +could have been desired, that art must do much more than imitate some scene +or fact out of nature. It must give beauty, meaning and expression to what +it copies. And it must do more than imitate: it must go beyond mere +description, and introduce unity, purpose and thought into its work. True +art has a soul as well as a body, says something to the mind as well as to +the eye, appeals to the soul as well as to sense. Had George Eliot done +nothing more than to describe common English life there would have been +small excuse for her work. She did more, touched that life with genius, +made it blossom into beauty, and gave to it deep moral meanings. The +defects of her method are to be seen in the fact that her imitators cannot +get above life's surface, and deal mainly with shallow or degraded natures. +Her methods do not inspire great work, while her own genius redeemed the +false ways into which she was led by her philosophic theories. + +Science can dissect the human body, but it can do little towards an +explanation of the subtler meanings of life and mind. Its methods are +analytical; it has reached no truly synthetic results in the regions where +knowledge is most to be desired. Its effects on literature are destructive. +Science destroys poetry, dries up the poetic sense, closes the doors of +imagination. The attempt to make science co-operate with poetry is in +itself the promise of failure. The limitations of George Eliot's work are +the limitations of poetry subdued by science. Could she have rid herself of +that burden, been impelled by a faith and an ideal purpose commensurate +with her genius, the result would have been much greater. This limitation +suggests the fact that literature is synthetic and constructive in its +purpose and spirit. It is this fact which has made the classic literatures +so powerful in their effect on modern Europe. They have given unity, +spiritual purpose and ideal aims to the whole modern world. The freshness +as of an eternal spring was in the literature of Greece, the naturalness of +a healthy manhood. That literature is organic, it is one with life, it is +refreshing as nature itself. That literature lives and flames with power +because it is synthetic, buoyant, touched with an eternal spiritual beauty, +great with promise of a growing earth. Its poets do not dissect, but build; +they do not analyze, but create. And this is the literary need of the +present time. There is need of more poetry, a more poetic interpretation of +life, a richer imagination and a finer sense of beauty. The common is +everywhere, but it is not necessarily great or beautiful or noble. It may +have its elements of pathos and tragedy, its touches of beauty and its +motives of heroism. It has in it also the promise of better things to be. +That is the true poetry, the true fiction, which brings out this promise so +that we know it, so that it moves us to better deeds and enchants us with +music of purer living. The world is bad enough without dragging to the +light all its evils and discords; let us rather know what promise it +contains of the better. In one word, the real oppresses and enthralls; the +ideal liberates, and brings us to ourselves. + +Genius redeems every fault. It must be taken for what it is, must not be +criticised, is to be used to the highest ends. Only when genius unites +itself to false methods and checks itself by false theories, has the critic +a right to complain. Genius, obedient to its own laws, accepts every fact +life presents, and lifts each one to be an instrument for the enlargement +of man's life. When it deliberately strikes out all that is not human, +however, from man's experience, denies the realty of that impression and +that conviction which comes from other than material sources, it cripples +and denies itself. + + + + +XX. + + +THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT. + +It must be remembered that George Eliot does not use the novel merely for +the purpose of inculcating certain doctrines, and that her genius for +artistic creation is of a very high order. In dealing with her as a thinker +and as a moral and religious teacher, she is to be regarded, first of all, +as a poet and an artist. Her ethics are subordinate to her art; her +religion is subsidiary to her genius. That she always deliberately set +about the task of introducing her positivism into the substance of her +novels is not to be supposed. This would be to imply a forgetfulness on her +part of her own methods, and a prostration of art to purposes she would +have scorned to adopt. This is evidently true, however, that certain +features of the positive and the evolution philosophy had so thoroughly +approved themselves to her mind as to cause them to be accepted as a +completely satisfactory explanation of the world, so far as any explanation +is possible. So heartily were they received, so fully did they become +incorporated with the substance of her thinking, that she viewed all human +experiences in their light. They had ceased to be theory and speculation +with her. When she thought about the world, when she observed the acts of +men, the positivist explanation was at once applied, and instinctively. + +That she did teach positivism is unfortunately true, so far as her literary +touch and expression is concerned. That philosophy affects all her books +with its subtly insinuating flavor, and it gives meaning and bias to most +of them. They thus gain in definiteness of purpose, in moral vigor, in +minutely faithful study of some phases of human experience, and in a +massive impression of thoughtfulness which her work creates. At the same +time, they undoubtedly lose in value as studies of life; in free range of +expression for her genius, her poetry and her art; and in that spiritual +vision which looks forward with keen gazing eyes of hope and confident +inquiry. + +Her teaching, like most teaching, is a mingled good and evil. In more than +one direction her ethical and religious influence was most wholesome and +effective. She brought into clear light a few great facts, and made them +the more conspicuous by the strong emphasis she gave them. This is, in the +main, the method of all teaching and of all progress. Development seldom +proceeds in a direct line, but rather, so far as man is concerned, by +forcible emphasis laid on some great fact which has been previously +neglected. The idealism of a previous age had shown the value of certain +facts and tendencies in human nature, but it had exaggerated some faculties +and capacities of man, as well as neglected others. In consequence, our own +time swings to the other extreme, and cannot have too much of evolution and +positivism. + +Idealism is in human nature, and will give itself expression. Positivism is +also a result of our experience and of our study of the universe, both +material and mental; it is a result of the desire for definite knowledge. +As a re-action against the excesses of idealism it is a powerful leaven, +and it brings into necessary prominence those facts which are neglected by +the opposite philosophy. It takes account of facts, and scorns mysticism; +and it thus appeals to a deep-seated bias of the time. + +George Eliot's books have an interest as an attempt at an interpretation +of life from its more practical and realistic side, and not less as a +re-action against the influences of very nearly all the great literary +minds of the earlier half of the century in England. Under the lead of +Coleridge and Wordsworth, and influenced by German thought and literature, +a remarkable movement was then developed in English literature. The outcome +of that movement has been surpassed only by that of the age of Shakspere. +Freshness of thought, love of nature, profound humanitarian convictions, +and spontaneity wedded to great largeness of ideas, characterize this +period and its noble work. Such an age is almost invariably followed by an +age of re-action, criticism, realism and analysis. An instinctive demand +for a portrayal of the more positive side of life, and the influence of +science, have developed a new literary school. For doctrine it teaches +agnosticism, and in method it cares mainly for art and beauty of form. +Towards the development of the new school George Eliot has been a leading +influence, though her sympathies have not gone with all its tendencies and +results. + +If Wordsworth exaggerated the importance of the intuitive and personal, +George Eliot equally exaggerated the value of the historic and hereditary. +It was desirable, however, that the relations of life to the past should be +brought out more distinctly by a literary development of their relations to +the present, and that the influence of social heredity should be seen as +affecting life on all sides. Tradition is a large and persistent element in +the better life of the race, while the past certainly has a powerful +influence over the present. This fact was neglected by Wordsworth, and +especially is it neglected by the intuitive philosophies. They ignore the +lessons of the past, and assume that a new and perfect world is to be +evolved from the depths of consciousness. That to think a better world is +to create a better world, they seem to take for granted, while the fact is +that the truer life is the result of a painful and long-continued struggle +against adverse conditions. What has been, persists in remaining, and the +past, with all its narrowness and prejudices, continues to influence men +more powerfully than does clear thought or regard for the truth. Emotion +and sentiment cling about what has become sacred with age. Channels for +thought and activity having once been made, it is very difficult to abandon +them for untried paths approved even by reason. + +The historic view is one of much importance, and is likely to be overlooked +by the poets and novelists. It is also ignored by the radicals in morals +and religion. Much which George Eliot says on this subject is of great +value, and may be heeded with the utmost profit. Her words of wisdom, +however, lose much of their value because they utterly ignore those +spontaneous and supernatural elements of man's higher life which lift it +quite out of the region of dependence on history. + +There is something to be said in behalf of George Eliot's attitude towards +religion, which caused her to hold it in reverence, even when rejecting the +objective validity of its dogmas. Yet much more is to be said for that +other attitude, which is faithful to the law of reason, and believes that +reason is competent to say some truer and larger word on a subject of such +vital importance and such constant interest to man. That both reason and +tradition are to be listened to reverently is true, but George Eliot so +zealously espoused the cause of tradition as to give it an undue +prominence. Her lesson was needed, however, and we may be all the better +able to profit by it because she was so much an enthusiast in proclaiming +its value. The even poise of perfect truth is no more to be had from her +pages than from those of others. + +The emphasis she laid on feeling and sentiment was a needed one, as a +counterpoise to the exaggerations of rationalism. Man does live in his +feelings more than in his reason. He is a being of sentiment, a creature of +impulse, his social life is one of the affections. In all the ranges of his +moral, religious and social life he is guided mainly by his emotions and +sentiments. It cannot be said, however, as George Eliot would have us say, +that these are human born and have no higher meaning. They are the +outgrowth of spiritual reality, as well as of human experience; they repeat +the foregleams and foresights of a + + "far-off divine event, + To which the whole creation moves." + +Life is enriched and flooded with light by the emotions, and feeling, true +and tender and pure, is as much the symbol of humanity as reason itself. It +was therefore well that some one should attempt to justify the emotional +life against the aspersions of those who have done it grave injustice. It +is true that man is not a being who wholly arrives at his method of life +through reason, but feeling lends quite as important aid. He does not only +think, but he has emotions as well; he not only weighs evidence, but he +acts by impulse. He is continually led by the emotions, sentiments and +impulses created for him by the life of ages past. Without emotion there +could be no art, no poetry and no music. Without emotion there would be no +religion and no spiritual life. Sentiment sweetens, beautifies and endears +all that is human and natural. + +Emotion and the affections, however, seem to be shorn of their highest +beauty and glory when they are restricted to a merely earthly origin and +compass of power. It is altogether impossible to believe that their own +impulse to look beyond the human is a delusion, and that they really have +nothing to report that is valid from beyond the little round which man +treads. To believe in the human beauty and glory of the feelings, and to +rejoice in their power to unite us to our kind, need imply no forgetfulness +of their demand for a wider expression and a higher communion. + +Her theory of the origin of feeling is not to be accepted. It means +something more than an inheritance of ancestral experience. It is the +result rather than the cause of reason, for reason has an influence she did +not acknowledge, and an original capacity which she never saw. Her view of +feeling was mainly theoretical, for she was led in her attitude towards the +facts of life, not by sentiment, but by reason. Hers was a thoughtful +rather than an impulsive mind, and given to logic more than to emotion. + +Her enthusiasm for altruism, her zeal for humanity, lends a delightful +feature to her books. It gives a glow and a consecration to her work, and +makes her as great a prophet as positivism is capable of creating. And it +is no idle power she awakens in her positivist faith in man. She shames +those who claim a broader and better faith. Zeal for man is no mean gospel, +as she gives life and meaning to it in her books. To live for others, too +many are not likely to do. She made altruism beautiful, she made it a +consecration and a religion. Those who cannot accept her agnosticism and +her positivism may learn much from her faith in man and from her enthusiasm +for humanity. No faith is worth much which does not lead to a truer and a +more helpful love of man. Any faith is good in so far as it makes us more +humane and sympathetic. In this regard, the radicalism of George Eliot was +a great advance on much of the free-thinking of our century. She desired to +build, not to destroy. She was no iconoclast, no hater of what other men +love and venerate. Her tendencies were all on the side of progress, good +order and social growth. + +Her conception of the organic social life of the race is one of great +value. It led her to believe in the possibility of a social organization in +the future based on science, and better capable of meeting all the wants of +mankind than the more personal and competitive methods have done. This +belief in the organic unity of the race is not necessarily positivist in +its character, for Hegel entertained it as fully as does Herbert Spencer. +The larger social life will come, however, as individuals are moved to lead +the way, and not alone as the result of a general evolutionary process. On +its mental side, her social theory is to be regarded with grave suspicions, +for it brings all minds to the same level. No mind of commanding influence +is to be found in her books. No powerful intellect gives greatness to any +of her plots. Her Felix Holt is not a man of original and positive thought. +We accept, but do not enthusiastically admire him. Deronda is a noble +character, but he in no sense represents the largest things of which a +social leader is capable. He disappoints and is weak, and he has no power +to create the highest kind of leadership. In other words, he is not a great +man. The world's reformers have been of another temper and mettle. He is no +Mazzini, no Luther. George Eliot's social theories loft no room for such +men. They were superfluous in her social system. The man not to be +explained by heredity and tradition had no place in her books; and no +genius, no great man, can ever be explained by heredity and tradition +alone. + +George Eliot evidently desired to destroy individualism as a social force. +The individual, according to her teaching, is to renounce himself for the +sake of the race. He is to live, not as a personal being, but as a member +of the social organization; to develop his altruistic nature, not to +perfect his personal character. The finer flavor of personality is brushed +mercilessly away by this method. + +Reason needs to be justified in opposition to her excessive praise of +feeling. Meanwhile, the capacity of man to live a life higher than that of +his social state is to be asserted. He is indeed a member of humanity, but +humanity does not absorb him to the cost of his personality. Life is strong +in those ages in which the individual is able to assert his own +personality, in opposition to what is imperfect and untrue in the life of +his time. This failure to recognize the worth and capacity of the +individual is a most serious defect in George Eliot's work, and mars it in +many directions. A very competent critic has shown how serious is the +limitation arising in this manner, and permeating her books with a false +conception of life. + +"So far as George Eliot's life is concerned," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, +"she was eager in her self-development, and as eager in her sympathies. +But it was a different matter in the main drift of her work. She lowered +the power of individualism. Nay, she did not believe in its having any +self-caused or God-caused existence. Few have individualized their +characters more than she did, and of these characters we have many distinct +types. But she individualized them with, I may say, almost the set purpose +of showing that their individualism was to be sacrificed to the general +welfare of the race. The more her characters cling to their individuality +the more they fail in reaching happiness or peace. If they are noble +characters, they are finally obliged, through their very nobility, to +surrender all their ideals, all their personal hopes, all the individual +ends they hoped to develop; and they reach peace finally only through utter +surrender of personality in humanity. The characters in her books who do +not do this, who cling to their individuality and maintain it, succeed in +life, for the most part, if they are strong; are broken to pieces if they +are weak; but in all cases, save one, are not the noble but the ignoble +characters. The whole of her books is a suppressed attack on individualism, +and an exaltation of self-renunciation as the only force of progress, as +the only ground of morality. I leave aside here, as apart from the moral +side of the subject, the view that individual power or weakness of any kind +is the consequence of the past, of race, of physical causes. What a man is +found to do is not affected by that, in her view.... No one can deny that +the morality is a lofty one, and, as far as it asserts self-renunciation, +entirely useful; we have with all our hearts to thank George Eliot for that +part of her work. But when sacrifice of self is made, in its last effort, +equivalent to the sacrifice of individuality, the doctrine of +self-renunciation is driven to a vicious extreme. It is not self-sacrifice +which is then demanded, it is suicide ... Fully accepted, it would reduce +the whole of the human race to hopelessness. That, indeed, is the last +result. A sad and fatal hopelessness of life broods over all the nobler +characters. All their early ideals are sacrificed, all their early joys +depart, all the pictures they formed are blotted out. They gain peace +through renunciation, after long failure; some happiness in yielding to the +inevitable, and harmonizing life with it; and some blessedness in doing all +they can for the progress of those who follow them, for the good of those +that are with them. Their self is conquered, not through ennoblement of +personality, but through annihilation of personality. And having +surrendered their separate personality, they then attain the fitting end, +silence forevermore. It is no wonder that no characters are so sad, that +none steep the reader in such hopelessness of joy, as the noble characters +of the later works of George Eliot. They want the mighty power, the +enkindling hopes, the resurrection of life, the joy and rapture which +deepens towards death and enables man to take up the ideals of youth +again." + +If too severe in some directions, this criticism is substantially sound. It +does not matter what theory of personality we adopt, in a philosophical +sense, if that theory upholds personal confidence and force of will. If it +does not do this, the whole result is evil. This lack of faith in +personality saddened all the work done by George Eliot. In theory a +believer in an ever-brightening future, and no pessimist, yet the outcome +of her work is dark with despondency and grief. + +Life is sad, hard and ascetic in her treatment of it. An ascetic tone runs +through all her work, the result of her theories of renunciation. The same +sternness and cheerlessness is to be seen in the poetry and painting of the +pre-Raphaelites. The joy, freshness and sunniness of Raphael is not to be +found in their work. Life is painful, puritanic and depressing to them. Old +age seems to be upon them, or the decadence of a people that has once been +great. Human nature does not need that this strain be put upon it. Life is +stronger when more assertive of itself. It has a right to assert itself in +defiance of mere rules, and only when it does so is it true and great. The +ascetic tone is one of the worst results of a scientific view of the world +as applied to literature; for it is thoroughly false both in fact and in +sentiment. The strong, hopeful, youthful look at life is the one which +literature demands, and because it is the nearest the heart and spirit of +life itself. The dead nation produces a dead literature. The age made +doubtful by an excess of science produces a literature burdened with +sadness and pain. Great and truthful as it may be, it lacks in power to +conquer the world. It shows, not the power of Homer, but the power of +Lucretius. + +Her altruism has its side of truth, but not all of the truth is in it. Any +system of thought which sees nothing beyond man is not likely to find that +which is most characteristic in man himself. He is to be fathomed, if +fathomed at all, by some other line than that of his own experience. If he +explains the universe, the universe is also necessary to explain him. Man +apart from the supersensuous is as little to be understood as man apart +from humanity. He belongs to a Universal Order quite as much as he belongs +to the human order. Man may be explained by evolution, but evolution is not +to be explained by anything in the nature of man. It requires some larger +field of vision to take note of that elemental law. Not less true is it +that mind does not come obediently under this method of explanation, that +it demands account of how matter is transformed into thought. The law of +thought needs to be solved after mind is evolved. + +There is occasion for surprise that a mind so acute and logical as George +Eliot's did not perceive that the evolution philosophy has failed to settle +any of the greater problems suggested by Kant. The studies of Darwin and +Spencer have certainly made it impossible longer to accept Locke's theory +of the origin of all knowledge in individual experience, but they have not +in any degree explained the process of thought or the origin of ideas. The +gulf between the physiological processes in the brain and thought has not +been bridged even by a rope walk. The total disparity of mind and matter +resists all efforts to reduce them to one. The utmost which the evolution +philosophy has so far done, is to attempt to prove that mind is a function +of matter or of the physiological process. This conclusion is as far as +possible from being that of the unity of mind and matter. + +That man is very ignorant, and that this world ought to demand the greater +share of his attention and energies, are propositions every reasonable +person is ready to accept. Granted their truth, all that is necessarily +true in agnosticism has been arrived at. It is a persistent refusal to see +what lies behind outward facts which gives agnosticism all its practical +justification. Art itself is a sufficient refutation of the assertion that +we know nothing of what lies behind the apparent. That we know something of +causes, every person who uses his own mind may be aware. At the same time, +the rejection of the doctrine of rights argues obedience to a theory, +rather than humble acceptance of the facts of history. That doctrine of +rights, so scorned by George Eliot, has wrought most of the great and +wholesome social changes of modern times. Her theory of duties can show no +historic results whatever. + +To separate George Eliot's theories from her genius it seems impossible +to do, but this it is necessary to do in order to give both their proper +place. All praise, her work demands on its side where genius is active. +It is as a thinker, as a theorizer, she is to be criticised and to be +declared wanting. Her work was crippled by her philosophy, or if not +crippled, then it was made less strong of limb and vigorous of body by that +same philosophy. It is true of her as of Wordsworth, that she grew prosy +because she tried to be philosophical. It is true of her as it is not true +of him, that her work lacks in the breadth which a large view of the world +gives. His was no provincial conception of nature or of man. Hers was so in +a most emphatic sense. The philosophy she adopted is not and cannot become +the philosophy of more than a small number of persons. In the nature of the +case it is doomed to be the faith of a few students and cultured people. +It can stir no common life, develop no historic movements, inaugurate no +reforms, nor give to life a diviner meaning. Whether it be true or +not,--and this need not here be asked,--this social and moral limitation of +its power is enough to condemn it for the purposes of literature. In so far +as George Eliot's work is artistic, poetic, moral and human, it is very +great, and no word too strong can be said in its praise. It is not too +excessive enthusiasm to call her, on the whole, the equal of any novelist. +Her genius is commanding and elemental. She has originality, strength of +purpose, and a profound insight into character. Yet her work is weakened by +its attachment to a narrow theory of life. Her philosophy is transitory in +its nature. It cannot hold its own, as developed by her, for any great +length of time. It has the elements of its own destruction in itself. The +curious may read her for her speculations; the many will read her for her +realism, her humanity and her genius. In truth, then, it would have been +better if her work had been inspired by great spiritual aims and +convictions. + + + + +XXI. + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY. + +As an aid to those who may wish to carry further the preceding study of +George Eliot, the following bibliography and lists of references have been +compiled. In their preparation constant use has been made of _Poole's Index +of Periodical Literature_, the bibliography contained in _The Manchester +Literary Club Papers_ for 1881, and a list of references published in +_The Literary World_ (Boston) for February 24, 1883. Numerous additions +have been made to these bibliographies, while the references have been +verified as far as possible. An occasional reference given in these lists +has not been discoverable, as that of the Manchester Club to the _London +Quarterly Review_ for January, 1874, for an article on "George Eliot and +Comtism," and Poole's reference to the same article in the _London +Quarterly_, 47:446. This will be found in the number for January 1877, +volume ninety-four. + + +1. WRITINGS. + +1846. _The Life of Jesus_, by Strauss. Translated from the fourth German + edition, 3 vols. Chapman Brothers, London. + +1852-3. Assistant editor of the Westminster Review. + +1852. The Westminster Review for January contained her notice of + Carlyle's Life of John Sterling. + + In the July number appeared her article on _The Lady Novelists_. + +1854. _The Essence of Christianity_, by Feuerbach. Translated from the + second German edition. John Chapman, London. + + The Westminster Review for October published her _Woman in France: + Madame de Sablé_. + + She wrote, it is supposed, occasionally for The Leader newspaper, + of which journal Lewes was the literary editor. None of her + contributions have been identified. [Footnote: There is a nearly + complete set of The Leader in the Boston Athenaeum Library.] + +1855. Westminster Review, October, _Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming_. + +1856. Westminster Review, January, _German Wit: Heinrich Heine_. July, + _The Natural History of German Life_. October, _Silly Novels by + Lady Novelists_. + +1857. Westminster Review, January, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness: + the Poet Young_. + + In Blackwood's Magazine for January and February appeared _The Sad + Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton_; in March, April, May and + June, _Mr. Gilfil's Love Story_; from July to December, _Janet's + Repentance_. In December these stories were published in two + volumes under the title of _Scenes of Clerical Life_, by George + Eliot. Edinburgh, Blackwood & Sons. Reprinted in Living Age from + April to December, 1857. + +1859. In February, _Adam Bede_ appeared in three volumes, Blackwoods. + + Blackwood's Magazine for July contained _The Lifted Veil_. + +1860. In April, _The Mill on the Floss_ was published in three volumes, + Blackwoods. + +1861. _Silas Marner_ in March, one volume, Blackwoods. + +1863. _Romola_ appeared in the Cornhill Magazine from July, 1862, to + July, 1863, and was illustrated. It was published in three volumes + in July; Smith, Elder & Co., London. + +1864. The Cornhill Magazine for July contained _Brother Jacob_, with + illustrations. + +1865. The Fortnightly Review for May 15 contained _The Influence of + Rationalism_, and a review of Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament. + +1866. In June, _Felix Holt_ was issued in three volumes, Blackwoods. + +1868. Blackwood's Magazine, January, contained an _Address to Workingmen, + by Felix Holt_. + + In June, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was published by Blackwoods. + +1869. Blackwood's Magazine for May printed _How Lisa Loved the King_. + + The Atlantic Monthly for August contained _Agatha_. + +1870. In Macmillan's Magazine for May, _The Legend of Jubal_. + +1871. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _Armgart_. + + Middlemarch was issued in twelve monthly numbers, beginning with + December, by Blackwoods. + +1874. _The Legend of Jubal and other Poems_ was published by Blackwoods. + It contained: _The Legend of Jubal_, _Agatha_, _Armgart_, _How Lisa + Loved the King_, _A Minor Prophet_, _Brother and Sister_, + _Stradivarius_, _Two Lovers_, _Arion_, _O May I Join the Choir + Invisible_. + +1876. _Daniel Deronda_ was issued in eight monthly parts, beginning in + February, by Blackwoods. + +1878. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _A College Breakfast Party_. + +1879. _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ was published in June by + Blackwoods. + + _The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems, Old and New_, was issued by + Blackwoods, containing, in addition to those in the first edition, + _A College Breakfast Party_, _Self and Life_, _Sweet Evenings Come + and Go_, _Love_, _The Death of Moses_. + + In Blackwood's cabinet edition of George Eliot's complete works, + _The Lifted Veil_ and _Brother Jacob_ are reprinted with _Silas + Marner_. + + After the death of Lewes she edited his _Study of Psychology_ and + his _Mind as a Function of the Organism_. + +1881. The Pall Mall Gazette of January 6 contained her letter to Sara + Hennell concerning the origin of _Adam Bede_. + + Three letters to Professor David Kaufmann appeared in the Athenaeum + of November 26, 1881. + + The following articles also contain sayings of George Eliot's, or + extracts from her letters: In the Contemporary Review, by "One who + knew her," on the Moral Influence of George Eliot; C. Kegan Paul + in Harper's Magazine; F.W.H. Myers in The Century; W.M.W. Call in + the Westminster Review, and a nephew of William Blackwood in + Blackwood's Magazine. + +1882. In Harper's Magazine for March, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps published + numerous extracts from George Eliot's letters under the title of + _Last Words from George Eliot_. + +1883. George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind,--London, W.H. Allen, and Boston, + Roberts Brothers,--contains extracts from several letters. + + The Essays of George Eliot, collected by Nathan Sheppard,--New + York, Funk & Wagnalls,--contains _Carlyle's Life of Sterling_, + _Woman in France_, _Evangelical Teaching_, _German Wit_, + _Natural History of German Life_, _Silly Novels by Lady + Novelists_, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness_, _The Influence + of Rationalism_, _The Grammar of Ornament_, _Felix Holt's Address + to Workingmen_. + + The Complete Essays of George Eliot, Boston, Estes & Lauriat, 1883, + in addition to the above, contains _The Lady Novelists, George + Foster, the German Naturalist, Weimar and its Celebrities_. + + +2. SELECTIONS, TRANSLATIONS AND PORTRAITS. + +Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse, Selected by Alexander +Main. Blackwoods, 1872. + +Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1878; enlarged +and with a biographical memoir prefixed, 1881. + +George Eliot Birthday Book. Blackwoods, 1878. + +George Eliot: Fragments et Pensées, extraits et traduits des ses Oeuvres, +par Ch. Ritter. Genève, Georges, 1879. + +Character Readings from George Eliot, selected and arranged by Nathan +Sheppard. New York, Harpers, 1882. + +The following translations have been published:-- + +_French_.--Adam Bede, by A. Durade; Mill on the Floss, by A. Durade; +Silas Marner, by Durade; Romola, by Durade; Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, +by E. Pasquet; Dorlcote Mill, by E.D. Forques in Revue des Deux Mondes, +June 15, 1860; The Lifted Veil, in Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1880. + +_Dutch_.--Felix Holt, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1867, and by P. Bruyn, +1873; Middlemarch, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1873; Adam Bede, by P. Bruyn, +1870; Mill on the Floss, by P. Bruyn, 1870; Romola, by P. Bruyn, 1870, +and by J.C. Van Deventer, 1864; Novelettes, by P. Bruyn, 1870. + +_German_.--Adam Bede, by J. Frese; Silas Marner, by J. Frese, 1861; +Mill on the Floss, by J. Frese, 1861; Romola, by A.V. Metzsch, 1864; +Middlemarch, by E. Lehmann, 1872-3; Daniel Deronda, by Strodtmann, 1876; +Felix Holt (no translator's name given), 1867. Der Gelüftche Schleier, +Bruder Jakob, by Lehmann. + +The portrait of George Eliot appearing as the frontispiece to this +volume is from that published in The Century for November, 1881. +Accompanying it was the following account of it and of other +portraits:-- + +"We have the pleasure of presenting to our readers an authentic portrait of +George Eliot, the only one by which it is likely that she will be known to +posterity. We are indebted for this privilege, as we shall presently +explain, to the kindness and courtesy of her husband, Mr. J.W. Cross, who +has allowed us to be the first to usher this beautiful work of art to the +world. In doing so, we believe it will interest readers of The Century +Magazine to learn, for the first time, the exact truth regarding the +portraits of George Eliot, and we have therefore obtained from the three +artists to whom, at different times in her life, she sat, some particulars +of those occasions. + +"Miss Evans passed the winter of 1849-50 at Geneva, in the house of M.F. +d'Albert Durade, the well-known Swiss water-color painter, who is also the +translator of the authorized French version of her works. At that time she +had, however, written nothing original, and had attracted no general +interest. While she stayed with M. Durade and his wife, the Swiss painter +amused himself by making a small portrait of her in oils--a head and +shoulders. This painting remains in the possession of M. Durade, who has +not merely refused to sell it, but will not allow it to be photographed or +reproduced in any form. He has, however, we understand, consented to make a +replica of it for Mr. Cross. We have not seen this interesting work, but we +hear that it is considered, by those who still remember the great writer as +she looked in her thirtieth year, to be remarkably faithful. M. Durade +recently exhibited this little picture for a few days at the Athénée in +Geneva, but has refused to allow it to be brought to London. + +"Ten years after this, in 1859, as the distinguished portrait-painter, Mr. +Samuel Laurence, was returning from America, he happened to meet with 'Adam +Bede,' then just published. He was so delighted with the book that he was +determined to know the author, and it was revealed to him that to do so he +had but to renew his old acquaintance with Mr. George Henry Lewes, whom he +had met years before at Leigh Hunt's. He made George Eliot's acquaintance, +and was charmed with her, and before long he asked leave to make a study of +her head. She assented without any affectation, and, in the early months of +1861, Mr. Lewes commissioned the painter to make a drawing of her. She gave +him repeated sittings in his studio at 6 Wells Street, London, and Mr. +Laurence looks back with great pleasure on the long conversations that +those occasions gave him with his vivacious sitter. The drawing was taken +front face, with the hair uncovered, worn in the fashion then prevalent, +and it was made in chalks. While it was proceeding, Mr. Laurence asked her +if he might exhibit it, when finished, at the Royal Academy, and she at +once consented. But when the time for sending in drew near, the artist +received a letter from Mr. Lewes absolutely withholding this consent, and a +certain strain, of which this was the first symptom, began to embarrass the +relations of the two gentlemen, until Mr. Lewes finally refused to take the +drawing at all. But before the summer was out, Mr. Langford, the reader of +Messrs. Blackwood of Edinburgh, who published George Eliot's works, called +on Mr. Laurence, and asked if he would consent to make a copy of the +drawing for the firm. The artist replied that he should be happy to sell +them the original, and accordingly it passed from his studio, in June, +1861, into the back parlor of Mr. Blackwood's shop, where it now hangs. +Like that of M. Durade, Mr. Laurence's portrait of George Eliot is not to +be in any way reproduced. + +"The remaining portrait is that which we reproduce with this number. It is +an elaborate chalk drawing, in black and white, with a slight touch of +color in the eyes, and was executed in the latter part of 1868 and the +early part of 1867, by Mr. Frederick W. Burton, at that time member of the +Society of Painters in Watercolors, and now director of the National +Gallery in London. George Eliot gave Mr. Burton many sittings in his studio +at Kensington, and the picture was eventually exhibited in the Royal +Academy, in 1867, as No. 735, 'The Author of "Adam Bede."' It passed into +Mr. Lewes's possession, was retained at his death by George Eliot, and is +now the property of Mr. J.W. Cross. In the spring of this year, Mr. Cross +came to the conclusion that--as the shop windows were likely to become +filled with spurious and hideous 'portraits' of George Eliot--it was +necessary to overcome the dislike felt by the family of the great novelist +to any publication of her features, to which in life she had been averse, +and he thereupon determined to record in a monumental way what he felt to +be the best existing likeness. Mr. Cross took the drawing over to M. Paul +Rajon, who is acknowledged to be the prince of modern etchers, and in +his retirement at Auvers-sur-Oise, the great French artist has produced +the beautiful etching which we have been permitted to reproduce in +engraving. For this permission, and for great courtesy and kindness under +circumstances the peculiar nature of which it is not necessary here to +specify, we have to tender our most sincere thanks to Mr. J.W. Cross and to +Mr. Burton. + +"These are regarded by her friends to be the only important portraits of +George Eliot which exist, but Mr. Cross possesses a very interesting black +silhouette, cut with scissors, when she was sixteen. In this profile, the +characteristics of the mature face are seen in the course of development. +There is also a photograph, the only one ever taken, dating from about +1850, the eyes of which are said to be exceedingly fine. As an impression +of later life, there should be mentioned a profile drawn in pencil by Mrs. +Alma Tadema, in March, 1877. Of all the portraits here alluded to, the one +we engrave is the only one at present destined for publication. It may be +added that there exist one or two other profile sketches, which, however, +are not approved by the friends of George Eliot." + + +3. BIOGRAPHICAL. + +Atlantic Monthly, 14:66, December, 1864, Kate Field on "English Authors in +Florence." Louise M. Alcott in the Independent for Nov. 1,1866. The Galaxy, +7:801, June, 1869, Justin McCarthy on "George Eliot and George Lewes;" +reprinted in "Modern Leaders," 1872 "Home Sketches in France and other +Papers," by the late Mrs. Henry M. Field, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1875, p. 208, +"The Author of Adam Bede in Her own Home." International Review, 10:447, +497, May and June, 1881, W. Fraser Rae. The Century. 23:55, with portrait, +F.W.H. Myers, reprinted in Essays: Modern, London, 1883; 23:47, "The +Portrait of George Eliot." The Nineteenth Century, 9:778, Edith Simcox. +Blackwood's Magazine February, 1881. Harper's Magazine, May, 1881, C. Kegan +Paul; reprinted in Biographical Sketches, London, 1883; March, 1882, +E.S. Phelps. Westminster Review, 116:154, July, 1881, W.M.W. Call, "George +Eliot: her Life and Writings." Le Livre, April 10, 1881, "Life in Geneva." +London Daily Graphic, 23:27, January 8, 1851, "Reminiscences of George +Eliot." Lippincott's Magazine, 31:510, May, 1883, J.A. Dickson, "An +Afternoon at Ashbourne." Inquirer, January, 1881, Dr. Sadler's address. +Pall Mall Gazette, December 30, 1880, "Early Life." London Daily News, +December, 30, 1880, account of her funeral. Eclectic Magazine, March, 1881, +account of her early life and of her funeral; April, A personal sketch. +"George Eliot," Mathilde Blind, 1883, W.H. Allen, London. "Pen pictures of +Modern Authors," Wm. Sheppard, 1882, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York. The +Congregationalist, May 28, 1879, Mrs. Annie Downs, "A Visit to George +Eliot." The Christian Leader, October 27,1881, Mrs. M.E. Bruce. + + +4. GENERAL CRITICISMS. + +Quarterly Review, 108:469. Macmillan's Magazine, 14:272, J. Morley; same, +Eclectic Magazine, 67:488; reprinted in "Critical Miscellanies," first +series. Atlantic Monthly, 18:479, H. James. Christian Examiner, 70:227, +I.M. Luyster. North British Review, 45:141, 197. H.H. Lancaster; reprinted +in "Essays and Reviews," Edinburgh, 1876. National Review, 11:191. Home and +Foreign Review, 3:522, Richard Simpson. Fraser's Magazine, 103:263, +February, 1881, T.E. Kebbel, "Village Life according to George Eliot;" +same, Living Age, 148:608. National Quarterly, 1:455, E.L. Wentworth. +Potter's American Monthly, 9:260, 334. British Quarterly Review, 45:141. +Catholic World, 17:775, J. McCarthy, "Comparison between George Eliot and +Fleurange." Canadian Monthly, 11:261, "Later Manner of George Eliot." +Dublin Review, 88:371. Southern Review (new style), 13:205, Mrs. S.B. +Herrick. R.H. Hutton, "Essays, Theological and Literary," 2d vol. 1871. +Contemporary Review, 20:403; same, Living Age, 115:109, Eclectic Magazine, +79:562, Professor E. Dowden; reprinted in "Studies of Literature." Atlantic +Monthly, 33:681, June, 1874, George P. Lathrop, "The Growth of the Novel." +A.C. Swinburne, "A Note on Charlotte Brontë," 1877. International Review, +7:17, July, 1879, Francis Maguire, Jr. Cornhill Magazine, 43:152, Leslie +Stephen, "Critical Study of George Eliot;" same, Living Age, 148:731, +Eclectic Magazine, 96:443. Month, 42:272. Every Saturday, 10:186. North +British Review, 33:165, "George Eliot and Hawthorne." Eclectic Magazine, +88:111, "George Eliot and George Sand." The Nation, 32:201, J. Bryce, +"George Eliot and Carlyle;" 31:456, W.C. Brownell. London Quarterly, +57:154. Blackwood's Magazine, 129:255; same, Living Age, 148:664; Eclectic +Magazine, 96:433. St. Paul's, 12:592, G.B. Smith. Living Age, 58:274; +148:318. Eclectic Magazine, 96:353. Southern Monthly, 14:65. Tinsley's +Monthly, 3:565. Victoria, 31:56. The Century, 23:619, February, 1882, +"George Eliot and Emerson." Library Magazine, 7:84, Nathan Sheppard, +"George Eliot's Analysis of Motives;" reprinted as an introduction to +George Eliot's Essays, Funk & Wagnalls, 1883. Macmillan's Magazine, 46:488, +October, 1882, Annie Matheson, "George Eliot's Children;" same, Living Age, +155:211. The Critic, January, 1881, Edward Eggleston; reprinted in Essays +from the Critic, 1881. Christian Union, February, 1881, Noah Porter. The +Independent, February 17, 1881, Mrs. Lippincott, "Three Great Women." A +History of English Prose Fiction from Sir Thomas Malory to George Eliot, +Bayard Tuckerman, New York, 1882. The English Novel and the Principle of +its Development, Sidney Lanier, New York, 1883. Modern Review, 2:399, +April, 1881, George Sarson, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." Literary +World (London), January, 1881, Peter Bayne Athenaeum, January 1, 1881:20. +The Academy, 19:27, January 8, 1881. Temps, December 26, 1880, Edmond +Scherer. Le Roman Naturaliste, Ferdinand Brunetère, 1883, has a chapter on +"English Naturalism: a Study of George Eliot." Études sur la Littérature +Contemporaine, E. Scherer, Paris, 1878. The Pen, 1880, Robert E. +Francillon. East and West: 1:203, June, 1881. Papers of the Manchester +Literary Club, 1881; Bibliography, Charles W. Sutton; "George Eliot as a +Poet," George Milner; "George Eliot as a Novelist," John Mortimer; "George +Eliot's Use of Dialect," William E.A. Axon. National Review, April, 1883, +"New School of Fiction." Merry England, May, 1883, C. Kegan Paul, "The +Rustic of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy." Blackwood's Magazine, April, +1883. Nineteenth Century, October, 1881, John Buskin on "Fiction: Fair and +Foul." + + +5. DISCUSSIONS OF HER TEACHINGS. + +Penn Monthly, 10:579, "The Art of George Eliot." Dublin Review, 89:433, +"Religion of George Eliot." Unitarian Review, 3:357, J.E. Carpenter, +"Religious Influence of George Eliot." "The Ethics of George Eliot's +Works," J.C. Brown, Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1879. Mind, 6:378, +July. 1881, "George Eliot's Art," James Sully. The Spectator, 52:751, +"George Eliot's Ideal Ethics;" same, Littell's Living Age, 142:123, July +12, 1879. Scribner's Magazine. 8:685, Wm. C. Wilkinson; reprinted in +"A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters," 1874. Westminster Review, +117:65, January, 1882, "George Eliot as a Moral Teacher." Contemporary +Review, 39:173, February, 1881, "Moral Influence of George Eliot;" same, +Living Age, 148:501. Unitarian Review, 16:125, 216, August and September, +1881, John A. Bellows, "Religious Tendency of George Eliot's Writings." +Atlantic Monthly, 51:243, February, 1883, M.L. Henry, "The Morality of +Thackeray and George Eliot." The Independent, March 24, 1883, Stopford A. +Brooke, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." "The Religion of Our +Literature," George MacCrie, London, 1875. "George Eliot and Judaism," +David Kaufmann, Blackwoods, 1878. + + +6. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. + +Atlantic Monthly, 1:890. + + +7. ADAM BEDE. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 85:490, April, 1859. Dublin Review, 47:33, November, +1859. Edinburgh Review, 110:223, July, 1859. Westminster Review, 71:486, +April, 1859. Athenaeum, February 26, 1859. Saturday Review, February 26, +1859:191 Atlantic Monthly, 4:521. Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. +"Seth Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors," chiefly by Himself. London: +Tallant & Co., 1859. "George Eliot in Derbyshire," London Society, 27:311, +439; 28:20, by Guy Roslyn (Joshua Hatton); reprinted in book form, London, +1876. + + +8. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 87:611, May, 1860. Dublin University Review, 57:192. +Macmillan's Magazine, 3:441. Westminster Review, 74:24, July, 1860. +Christian Examiner, 69:145, L.G. Ware. + + +9. SILAS MARNER. + +Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. Macmillan's Magazine, 4:305. +Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1861, C. Clarigny. + + +10. ROMOLA. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 116:72. Land We Love, 1:134. Westminster Review, +80:344, October, 1863. Christian Remembrancer, 52:445. Revue des Deux +Mondes, December, 1863, E.D. Forques. + + +11. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 100:94, July, 1866. Edinburgh Review, 124:435, +October, 1866; same, Living Age, 91:432. North American Review, 103:557, +July, 1866, A.G. Sedgwick. The Nation, 3:127, Henry James. Contemporary +Review, 3:51. Eclectic Review, 124:34. Chambers's Journal, 43:508. +Westminster Review, 86:200, July, 1866. + + +12. THE SPANISH GYPSY. + +Atlantic Monthly, 22:380, W.D. Howells. North American Review, 107:620, +October, 1868, Henry James. The Nation, 7:13, July 2, 1868, Henry James. +Edinburgh Review, 128:525. Westminster Review, 90:183, Macmillan's +Magazine, 18:281, J. Morley; same, Eclectic Magazine, 71:1276. Blackwood's +Magazine, 103:760. British Quarterly Review, 48:503, Fraser's Magazine, +78:468, J. Skelton. St. James's, 22:478. St. Paul's, 2:583. London +Quarterly, 31:160. Southern Review (new Style), 4:383, W.H. Browne. Every +Saturday, 6:1. + + +13. POEMS. + +Contemporary Review, 8:387, July 1868, Matthew Browne (W.B. Rands); same, +Every Saturday, 6:79. Every Saturday, 16:667, G.A. Simcox. The Argosy, +2:437, November, 1866, Matthew Browne. Saturday Review, 37:75. Macmillan's +Magazine, 22:1. North American Review, 119:484, Heary James. Atlantic +Monthly, 34:102, July, 1874, W.D. Howells. Harper's Magazine, 49:887. +Academy, 5:33, May 10, 1874, G.A. Simcox. Edinburgh Review, 128:523, +October, 1868. Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, 1881, p. 108, George +Milner. The Nation, 19:124. "Our Living Poets: an Essay in Criticism," +H. Buxton Forman, London, 1871. + + +14. MIDDLEMARCH. + +Quarterly Review, 134:336, April, 1873. Edinburgh Review, 137:246, January, +1873. Fortnightly Review, 19:142, Sidney Colvin. Blackwood's Magazine, +112:727; same, Living Age, 116:131; Eclectic Magazine, 80:215. The Nation, +16:60, 76, January, 1873, A.V. Dicey. North American Review, 116:432, +April, 1873, T.S. Perry. British Quarterly Review, 57:407, April, 1883. +London Quarterly Review, 40:99, April, 1873. Canadian Monthly, 3:549. Old +and New, 7:352, H.G. Spaulding. Southern Monthly, 12:373, W.H. Browne. +Atlantic Monthly, 31:490, A.G. Sedgwick. Catholic World, 17:775, September, +1873. Die Gegen-wart, 1874, Freidrich Speilhagen. + + +15. DANIEL DERONDA. + +Atlantic Monthly, 38:084, Henry James, December, 1876. North American +Review, 124:31, E.P. Whippie, January, 1877. Edinburgh Review, 144:442, +October, 1876. Fortnightly Review, 26:601, November, 1876, Sidney Colvin. +The Nation, 23:230, 245, October 12, 19, 1876, A.V. Dicey. British +Quarterly Review, 64:472. Eclectic Magazine, 87:657. International Review, +4:68, R.R. Bowker. The Western, 3:603, O.G. Garrison. Potter's American +Monthly, 8:75. Gentleman's Magazine (new style), 17:593, November, 1876, +J. Picciotto; 17:411, R.E. Francillon. Canadian Monthly, 9:250, 343; +10:362. Victoria, 28:227, A.S. Richardson. Temple Bar, 49:542, "Deronda's +Mother;" same, Living Age, 133:248; same, Eclectic Magazine, 88:751. +Macmillan's Magazine, 36:101, J. Jacobs, "Mordecai: a Protest against the +Critics, by a Jew;" same, Living Age, 134:112. Athenacum, 1876:160, 327, +461, 593, 762. Westminster Review, 106:280,574. Appleton's Journal (new +style), 3:274, September, 1877, Wirt Sikes. Deutsche Rundachau, February 7, +1877. Contemporary Review, 29:348, February, 1877, Edward Dowden, reprinted +in "Studies of Literature." + + +16. IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. + +Edinburgh Review, 150:557. Fortnightly Review, 32:144, G. Allen. +Westminster Review, 112:185, July, 1879. The Nation, 28:422, June 19, 1879, +G.E. Woodberry. Fraser's Magazine, 100:103. Canadian Monthly, 16.333. +Unitarian Review, 12:292, R.W. Boodle. + + + + +INDEX + + +A. + +Actions, +_Actors and Acting_ +_Adam Bede_ +_Adam Bede_, quoted +"Address to Workingmen," quoted +Agnosticism +Altruism +Analytic Method +_Animal Life, Studies in_ +"Amos Barton," quoted +_Aristotle_ +"Armgart," quoted +Art +Art, love of +Asceticism +Austen, Jane + +B. + +Blackwood, William +_Blackwood's Magazine_ +Blind, Mathilde quoted +Brabant Dr. +Bray Charles +Brontë Charlotte +Brookbank +"Brother and Sister" +"Brother Jacob" +Browning, Robert +Browning, Mrs. + +C. + +Call, W.M.W., quoted +Carlyle +Causes +"Choir Invisible" +Chapman, John +Characteristics, personal +Childhood, influences surrounding +Child Life +Christianity +"College Breakfast Party" +Colvin, Sidney +Combe, George +Comte +Conscience +Conversation +_Cornhill Magazine_ +Cosmopolitanism +Cowper +Criticism +Culture +Cumming, Dr. + +D. + +_Daniel Deronda_ +_Daniel Deronda_ quoted +Darwin +Death +Deeds +Dialect +Dickens, Charles +Dowden, Prof., quoted +Downs, Annie, quoted +Dramatic power +Duty + +E. + +Emerson +Environment +Essays +"Evangelical Teaching" +Evans, Christiana +Evans, Mrs. Elizabeth +Evans, Isaac +Evans, Robert +Evans, Mrs. Robert +Evil +Evolution Philosophy +Experience + +F. + +Familiar, influence of the +Feeling +Feeling for others +_Felix Holt_ +_Felix Holt_, quoted +Feuerbach +Fichte +Field, Kate, quoted +Fielding, Henry +Fields, Mrs., quoted +Foleshill +_Fortnightly Review_ + +G. + +Garth, Caleb +"German life, natural history of" +God +Goethe +_Goethe, Life of_ +Griff House + +H. + +Harrison, Frederic +Heine +Hennell, Charles +Hennell, Sara +Heredity +House +Howells, W.D. +Huge +Humor +Hutton, R.H., quoted + +I. + +Idealism +Imagination +Immortality +Immortality, subjective +Individuality +"Influence of Rationalism" +Inspiration +Intuition + +J. + +James, Henry +Jones, Owen +"Janet's Repentance," quoted + +K. + +Kant +Kaufmann, Prof. + +L. + +"Lady Novelists" +Law +_Leader_ newspaper +_Legend of Jubal_ +Letters, extracts from +Lewes, George Henry + born + school days + early studies + in Germany + _History of Philosophy_ + _Spanish Drama_ + _Ranthorpe_ + writes for Reviews + _Leader_ + _Philosophy of the Sciences_ + _Life of Goethe_, physiological studies + _Fortnightly Review_ + _Problems of Life and Mind_ + characteristics + death +Lewes, influence on George Eliot +Lewes, Marian Evans + born + parents + early reading + school in Nuneaton + school In Coventry + studying at home + moves to Foleshill + studies continued + early religious views + early scepticism + troubles with her family + finds friends + the Brays + the Hennells + drawn towards positivism + father dies + goes to continent + translates Strauss + Feuerbach + assistant editor of _Westminster Review_ + _Review_ contributor + marriage + studies in Germany + writes _Clerical Scenes_ + adopts name of "George Eliot" + again visits Germany + _Adam Bede_ + controversy about _Adam Bede_ + novel-writing + poems written + house + habits of study + description of person + receptions + summers in country + death of Lewes + marriage to John Walter Cross + death + literary traits +"Lifted Veil" +Liggins, Joseph +Lippincott, Mrs., quoted +Literary Methods +Literature defined +Locke +Love +Lucretius + +M. + +Marriage +Martineau, Harriet +Matter +Meliorism +_Middlemarch_ +_Middlemarch_, quoted +Midland England +Mill, J.S. +_Mill on the Floss_, +_Mill on the Floss_, quoted +"Minor Prophet" +Morality +Mordecai +Morley, John +"Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" +Music, Love of +Myers, F.W.H., quoted +Mysticism + +N. + +Nemesis, +Newdigate, Sir Roger +Novel-writing + +P. + +Past, the +Paul, Kegan, quoted +Pessimism +Philosophy, George Eliot's +Philosophy, Lewes's _History of_ +_Philosophy of the Sciences_ +_Physiology of Common Life_ +Plots +Poetry +Positivism +Prayer +Priory, The +_Problems of Life and Mind_ +Psychology + +R. + +_Ranthorpe_ +Realism +Reason +Receptions +Relativity, Moral +Religion +"Religion of Humanity" +Renaissance +Renunciation +Resignation +Retribution +Romanticism +_Romola_ +_Romola_, quoted +_Rose, Blanche and Violet_ +Ruskin + +S. + +Sadler, Dr., quoted +Sand, George +Satire +Savonarola +_Scenes of Clerical Life_ +Schelling +Scientific illustration +Scott +_Seaside Studies_ +"Self and Life" +Sex in literature +Shakspere +Shelley +_Silas Marner_ +"Silly Novels" +Simcox, Edith, quoted +Society +Social Organism +Sorrow +_Spanish Drama_ +_Spanish Gypsy_ +Speculation, Love of +_Spectator_ +Spencer, Herbert +Spinoza +Spiritual, the +"Stradivarius" +Strauss +Sterling, John +Sympathy +Sully, James, quoted +Supernatural +Swinburne, quoted + +T. + +Tennyson +Thackeray +_Theophrastus Such_ +_Theophrastus Such_, quoted +Times +Tradition + +W. + +_Waverley Novel_ +_Westminster Review_ +"Weimar and its Celebrities" +Whipple, E.P., quoted +Wieland +"Woman in France" +Woman, Literary +Wordsworth + +Y. + +Young, Edward + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ELIOT; 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** diff --git a/old/11680-8.zip b/old/11680-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2293fc8 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11680-8.zip diff --git a/old/11680.txt b/old/11680.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..71bfaad --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11680.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15821 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, +Writings & Philosophy, by George Willis Cooke + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy + +Author: George Willis Cooke + +Release Date: March 22, 2004 [eBook #11680] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ELIOT; A CRITICAL STUDY OF +HER LIFE, WRITINGS & PHILOSOPHY*** + + +E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Andrea Ball, and the +Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +GEORGE ELIOT: A CRITICAL STUDY OF HER LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY. + +BY + +GEORGE WILLIS COOKE + +AUTHOR OF "RALPH WALDO EMERSON: HIS LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY." + +1884 + + + + + + +PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. + + +The publication of a new edition of this work permits me to say that the +essay on "The Lady Novelists," quoted in the seventh chapter, was written +by George Henry Lewes. Its opinions, however, are substantially those of +George Eliot, and they will be found in harmony with her own words. +Confessing to the error, I yet venture to let the quotations, and the +comments on them, stand as at first made. The three poems mentioned on page +75, were among the latest of the productions of George Eliot's pen. + +It has been suggested to me that I have not done perfect justice to George +Henry Lewes, especially in what I say of his books on the Spanish drama and +the life of Goethe. I have carefully reconsidered what I wrote of him, and +find no occasion for any change of judgment, though two or three words +might properly give place to others of a more appreciative meaning. + +My book has met with much greater praise than I could have expected. Its +errors, I have no doubt, are quite numerous enough; and yet I venture to +think the main thought of the book is correct. + +MARCH, 1884. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +PREFACE + + I. EARLY LIFE + + II. TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR + + III. MARRIAGE + + IV. CAREER AS AN AUTHOR + + V. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS + + VI. LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES + + VII. THEORY OF THE NOVEL + + VIII. POETIC METHODS + + IX. PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE + + X. DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS + + XI. RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES + + XII. ETHICAL SPIRIT + + XIII. EARLIER NOVELS + + XIV. ROMOLA + + XV. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH + + XVI. DANIEL DERONDA + + XVII. THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS + +XVIII. LATER ESSAYS + + XIX. THE ANALYTIC METHOD + + XX. THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT + + XXI. BIBLIOGRAPHY + + + + + + +I. + + +EARLY LIFE. + +The poet and the novelist write largely out of personal experience, and +must give expression to the effects of their own history. What they have +seen and felt, gives shape and tone to what they write; that which is +nearest their own hearts is poured forth in their books. To ignore these +influences is to overlook a better part of what they write, and is often to +lose the explanation of many features of their work. Shakspere is one of +those who are of no time or place, whose words gain no added meaning in +view of what he was and how he lived; but it is not so with a great number +of the best and most inspiring writers. The era in which they lived, the +intellectual surroundings afforded them by their country and generation, +the subtle phases of sentiment and aspiration of their immediate time and +place, are all essential to a true appreciation of their books. It is so of +Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Hugo, Wordsworth, Emerson, and how many more! + +As we must know the eighteenth century in its social spirit, literary +tendencies, revolutionary aims, romantic aspirations, philosophy and +science, to know Goethe, so must we know the nineteenth century in its +scientific attainments, agnostic philosophy, realistic spirit and +humanitarian aims, in order to know George Eliot. She is a product of her +time, as Lessing, Goethe, Wordsworth and Byron were of theirs; a voice to +utter its purpose and meaning, as well as a trumpet-call to lead it on. As +Goethe came after Lessing, Herder and Kant, so George Eliot came after +Comte, Mill and Spencer. Her books are to be read in the light of their +speculations, and she embodied in literary forms what they uttered as +science or philosophy. + +Not only is a poet's mind affected by the tone of thought about him, but +his personal experiences and surroundings are likely to have a large +influence on what he writes. Scott was deeply affected by the romantic +atmosphere of his native land. Her birthplace and youthful surroundings had +a like effect on George Eliot. The Midland home, the plain village life, +the humble, toiling country folk, shaped for her the scenes and characters +about which she was to write. Some knowledge of her early home and the +influences amidst which her mind was formed, help largely to an +appreciation of her books and the views of life which she presents in them. + +The Midland region of England she has pictured with something of that +accuracy with which Scott described the Border. It is a country of historic +memories. Near by her childhood home was the forest of Arden and Astly +Castle, the home of Sir John Grey, whose widow, Elizabeth Woodville, became +the queen of Edward IV. This was also one of the homes of Henry Grey, Duke +of Suffolk, who was found in a hollow tree near by after his rebellion; and +the home, likewise, of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. In another direction +was Bosworth Field; and within twenty miles was Stratford-upon-Avon. The +ancient city of Coventry was not far distant. It was not these historic +regions which attracted her, however, so much as the pleasant country, the +common people, the quiet villages. With observant eyes she saw the world +about her as it was and she entered into the heart of its life, and has +painted it for us in a most sympathetic, appreciative spirit. The simple, +homely, unromantic life of middle England she has made immortal with her +wit, her satire, her fine description, and her keen love of all that is +human. She herself recognized the importance of her early surroundings. In +one of her letters she used these words: + + It is interesting, I think, to know whether a writer was born in a + central or border district--a condition which always has a strongly + determining influence. I was born in Warwickshire, but certain family + traditions connected with more northerly districts made these districts + a region of poetry to me in my early childhood. I was brought up in the + Church of England, and have never joined any other religious society, + but I have had close acquaintance with many Dissenters of various + sects, from Calvinistic Anabaptists to Unitarians. + +The influence of the surroundings of childhood upon character she has more +than once touched upon in her books. In the second chapter of _Theophrastus +Such_, she says,-- + + I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where + my affections were fledged. + +In the same essay she says,-- + + Our Midland plains have never lost their familiar expression and + conservative spirit for me. + +In _Daniel Deronda_ she most tenderly expresses the same deep conviction +concerning the soul's need of anchorage in some familiar and inspiring +scene, with which the memories of childhood may be delightfully associated. +Her own fond recollections lent force to whatever philosophical +significance such a theory may have had for her. + + A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where + it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for + the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, + for whatever will give that home a familiar, unmistakable difference + amidst the future widening of knowledge; a spot where the definiteness + of early knowledge may be inwrought with affection, and kindly + acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and monkeys, may + spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit + of the blood. + +Mary Ann Evans was born at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish of +Colton, Warwickshire, England, November 22, 1819. In after years she +adopted the abbreviated form of her name, and was known by her friends as +Marian. When she was six months old the family moved to Griff House, which +was situated half-way between Bedworth, a mining village, and the +manufacturing town of Nuneaton. In approaching Griff from Nuneaton, a +little valley, known as Griff Hollows, is passed, much resembling the "Red +Deeps" of _The Mill on the Floss_. On the right, a little beyond, is Griff +House, a comfortable and substantial dwelling surrounded by pleasant +gardens and lawns. + +Robert Evans, her father, was born at Ellaston, Staffordshire, of a +substantial family of mechanics and craftsmen. He was of massive build, +tall, wide-shouldered and strong, and his features were of a marked, +emphatic cast. He began life as a master carpenter, then became a forester, +and finally a land agent. He was induced to settle in Warwickshire by Sir +Roger Newdigate, his principal employer, and for the remainder of his life +he had charge of five large estates in the neighborhood. In this employment +he was successful, being respected and trusted to the fullest extent by his +employers, his name becoming a synonym for trustworthiness. Marian many +times sketched the main traits of her father's character, as in the love of +perfect work in "Stradivarius." He had Adam Bede's stalwart figure and +robust manhood. Caleb Garth, in _Middlemarch_, is in many ways a fine +portrait of him as to the nature of his employment, his delight in the +soil, and his honest, rugged character. + +Caleb was wont to say that "it's a fine thing to have the chance of getting +a bit of the country into good fettle, and putting men into the right way +with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building +done--that those who are living and those who come after will be the better +for. I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work +that is." Robert Evans, like Caleb Garth, "while faithfully serving his +employers enjoyed great popularity among their tenants. He was gentle but +of indomitable firmness; and while stern to the idle and unthrifty, he did +not press heavily on those who might be behindhand with their rent, owing +to ill luck or misfortune, on quarter days." + +While still living in Staffordshire, Robert Evans lost his first wife, by +whom he had a son and a daughter. His second wife, the mother of Marian, +was a Miss Pearson, a gentle, loving woman, and a notable housewife. She is +described in the Mrs. Hackit of "Amos Barton," whose industry, sharp +tongue, epigrammatic speech and marked character were taken from life. +Something of Mrs. Poyser also entered into her nature. She had three +children, Christiana, Isaac and Mary Ann. The house at Griff was situated +in a rich landscape, and was a large, commodious farm-house of red brick, +ivy-covered, and of two stories' height. At the back was a large garden, +and a farm-yard with barns and sheds. + +In the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and Sister," Marian has given +some account of her early life. She had the attachment there described for +her brother Isaac, and followed him about with the same persistence and +affection. The whole of that poem is autobiographical. The account of the +mother gives a delightful glimpse into Marian's child-life: + + Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, + Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, + Then with the benediction of her gaze + Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still + Across the homestead to the rookery elms, + Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, + So rich for us, we counted them as realms + With varied products. + +The early life of Marian Evans has, in many features of it, been very fully +described in the story of Maggie Tulliver. How far her own life is that of +Maggie may be seen by comparing the earlier chapters in _The Mill on the +Floss_ with the "Brother and Sister." The incident described in the poem, +of her brother leaving her in charge of the fishing-rod, is repeated in all +its main features in the experiences of Maggie. In the poem she describes +an encounter with a gipsy, which again recalls Maggie's encounter with some +persons of that race. The whole account of her childhood life with her +brother, her trust in him, their delight in the common pleasures of +childhood, and the impression made on her by the beauties of nature, +reappears in striking similarity in the description of the child-life of +Maggie and Tom. These elements of her early experience and observation of +life have been well described by one who knew her personally. This person +says that "Maggie Tulliver's childhood is clearly full of the most accurate +personal recollections." + +Marian Evans very early became an enthusiastic reader of the best books. In +an almanac she found a portion of one of the essays of Charles Lamb, and +remembered reading it with great delight. In her seventh year a copy +of _Waverley_ was loaned to her older sister. She became herself intensely +fascinated by it, and when it was returned before she had completed it she +was thrown into much distress. The story so possessed her that she began to +complete it in writing, according to her own conception. When this was +discovered, the book was again secured for her perusal. This incident she +has described in a sonnet, which appears as the motto to the fifty-seventh +chapter of _Middlemarch_. + + They numbered scarce eight summers when a name + Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there + As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame + At penetration of the quickening air: + His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, + Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor, + Making the little world their childhood knew + Large with a land of mountain, lake and scaur, + + And larger yet with wonder, love, belief, + Toward Walter Scott, who living far away + Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. + The book and they must part, but day by day, + In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran, + They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan. + +Not only was she a great reader, but she was also a diligent and even a +precocious student, learning easily and rapidly whatever she undertook to +acquire in the way of knowledge. + +She was first sent, with her brother Isaac, to a free school in the village +of Griff. Among her mates was William Jacques, the original of Bob Jakins +in _The Mill on the Floss_. When seven years old she went to a girls' +school at Nuneaton. Her schoolmates describe her as being then a "quiet, +reserved girl, with strongly lined, almost masculine features, and a +profusion of light hair worn in curls round her head." The abundance of +her curling hair caused her much trouble, and she once cut it off, as +Maggie Tulliver did, because it would not "lie straight." "One of her +school-fellows," we are told, "recalls that the first time she sat down to +the piano she astonished her companions by the knowledge of music she had +already acquired. She mastered her lessons with an ease which excited +wonder. She read with avidity. She joined very rarely in the sports of her +companions, and her diffidence and shrinking sensibility prevented her from +forming any close friendship among her school-fellows. When she stood up in +the class, her features, heavy in repose, were lighted by eager excitement, +which found further vent in nervous movements of her hands. At this school +Marian was well taught in English, with drawing, music, and some little +French." + +Leaving this school at the age of twelve, she went to that of the Misses +Franklin in Coventry, a large town a few miles distant. To the careful +training received there she was much indebted, and in after years often +spoke of it with the heartiest appreciation. One of her friends, Edith +Simcox, has given an account of this school and of Marian's studies +there. "Almost on the outskirts of the old town of Coventry, towards the +railway station, the house may still be seen, itself an old-fashioned +five-windowed, Queen Anne sort of dwelling, with a shell-shaped cornice +over the door, with an old timbered cottage facing it, and near adjoining +a quaint brick and timber building, with an oriel window thrown out upon +oak pillars. Between forty and fifty years ago, Methodist ladies kept the +school, and the name of 'little mamma,' given by her school-fellows, is +a proof that already something was to be seen of the maternal air which +characterized her in later years, and perhaps more especially in +intercourse with her own sex. Prayer meetings were in vogue among the +girls, following the example of their elders; and while taking, no doubt, +a leading part in them, she used to suffer much self-reproach about her +coldness and inability to be carried away with the same enthusiasm as +others. At the same time, nothing was farther from her nature than any +sceptical inclination, and she used to pounce with avidity upon any +approach to argumentative theology within her reach, carrying Paley's +_Evidences_ up to her bedroom, and devouring it as she lay upon the floor +alone." + +During the three years Marian attended this school she held aloof from the +other pupils, was grave and womanly in her deportment. She acquired Miss +Rebecca Franklin's slow and precise method of speaking, and to her diligent +training owed her life-long habit of giving a finished completeness to all +her sentences. It seems that her imagination was alive at this time, and +being slowly cultivated. She was in the habit of scribbling verses in her +books and elsewhere. + +A fellow-pupil during the time she was a member of this boarding-school has +given these reminiscences of Marian's life there: "She learned everything +with ease," says this person, "but was passionately devoted to music, and +became thoroughly accomplished as a pianist. Her masters always brought the +most difficult solos for her to play in public, and everywhere said she +might make a performer equal to any then upon the concert stage. She was +keenly susceptible to what she thought her lack of personal beauty, +frequently saying that she was not pleased with a single feature of her +face or figure. She was not especially noted as a writer, but so uncommon +was her intellectual power that we all thought her capable of any effort; +and so great was the charm of her conversation, that there was continual +strife among the girls as to which of them should walk with her. The +teachers had to settle it by making it depend upon alphabetical +succession." + +Leaving the school in Coventry at the age of fifteen, Marian continued her +studies at home. The year following, her mother died; and this event, as +she afterwards said, first made her acquainted with "the unspeakable grief +of a last parting." Soon after, her older sister and her brother were +married and left home. She alone remained with her father, and was for +several years his housekeeper. "He offered to get a housekeeper," says Miss +Blind, "as not the house only, but farm matters had to be looked after, and +he was always tenderly considerate of 'the little wench,' as he called her. +But his daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into +her own hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge +of her domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on +at the same time." Her experiences at this period have been made use of in +more than one of her characters. The dairy scenes in _Adam Bede_ are so +perfectly realistic because she was familiar with all the processes of +butter and cheese making. + +In 1841 her father gave up his business to his son and moved to Foleshill, +one mile from Coventry. A pleasant house and surroundings made the new +home, and her habits of thought and life became more exact and fastidious. +The frequent absence of her father gave her much time for reading, which +she eagerly improved. Books were more accessible, though her own library +was a good one. + +She zealously began and carried on a systematic course of studies, such as +gave her the most thorough results of culture. She took up Latin and Greek +with the head master of the Coventry grammar-school, and became familiar +with the classic literatures. French, German and Italian were read in all +the master-pieces of those languages. The Old Testament was also studied +in the original; at the same time she became a proficient player on the +piano, and obtained a thorough knowledge of music. During several years of +quiet and continuous study she laid the foundations of that accurate and +wide-reaching knowledge which was so notable a feature of her life and +work. It was a careful, systematic knowledge she acquired, such as entitled +her to rank as an educated person in the fullest sense. Her painstaking +thoroughness, and her energetic application, were as remarkable at this +time as in later years. Her knowledge was mainly self-acquired, but it was +in no sense superficial. It is difficult to see in what way it could have +been improved, even if the universities had been open to her. + +Her life and her studies at Coventry have been well described by one who +knew her. We are told that "in this somewhat more populous neighborhood she +soon became known as a person of more than common interest, and, moreover, +as a most devoted daughter and the excellent manager of her father's +household. There was perhaps little at first sight which betokened genius +in that quiet gentle-mannered girl, with pale grave face, naturally pensive +in expression: and ordinary acquaintances regarded her chiefly for the +kindness and sympathy that were never wanting to any. But to those with +whom, by some unspoken affinity, her soul could expand, her expressive gray +eyes would light up with intense meaning and humor, and the low, sweet +voice, with its peculiar mannerism of speaking--which by the way wore off +in after years--would give utterance to thoughts so rich and singular that +converse with Miss Evans, even in those days, made speech with other people +seem flat and common. Miss Evans was an exemplification of the fact that a +great genius is not an exceptional, capricious product of nature, but a +thing of slow, laborious growth, the fruit of industry and the general +culture of the faculties. At Foleshill, with ample means and leisure, her +real education began. She acquired French, German and Italian from Signor +Brezzi. An acquaintance with Hebrew was the result of her own unaided +efforts. From Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michaels, Coventry, +she received lessons in music, although it was her own fine musical sense +which made her in after years an admirable pianoforte player. Nothing once +learned escaped her marvellous memory; and her keen sympathy with all human +feelings, in which lay the secret of her power of discriminating character, +caused a constant fund of knowledge to flow into her treasure-house from +the social world about her." + +Marian Evans early showed an unusual interest in religious subjects. Her +parents belonged to the Established Church, while other members of the +family were zealous Methodists. Religion was a subject which occupied much +of their attention, and several of them were engaged in one way and another +in its inculcation. Marian was an attentive listener to the sermons +preached in the parish church, and at the age of twelve was teaching in a +Sunday school held in a cottage near her father's house. Up to the age of +eighteen she was a most devoted believer in Christianity, and her zeal was +so great that Evangelicalism came to represent her mode of thought and +feeling. She was a somewhat rigid Calvinist and full of pious enthusiasm. +After her removal to Coventry, where her reading was of a wider range and +her circle of friends increased, doubts gradually sprang up in her mind. In +a letter written to Miss Sara Hennell she gave a brief account of her +religious experiences at this period. In it she described an aunt, Mrs. +Elizabeth Evans, who was a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah +Morris in _Adam Bede_. + + There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident + in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family--few and far-between + visits of (to my childish feeling) strange uncles and aunts and cousins + from my father's far-off native country, and once a journey of my own, + as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William + (a rich builder) in Staffordshire--but _not_ my uncle and aunt Samuel, + so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I remember + of northerly relatives in my childhood. + + But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married and I was + mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in + which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived + in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate + state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he + persuaded her to return with him, telling her that _I_ should be very, + very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly + under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavoring to + shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some + consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New + Testament. I _was_ delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard + her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of + exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that I should find + sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--about sixty--and, I + believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little + woman, with bright, small, dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I + imagine, but was now gray--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a + totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will + believe--was not _simply_ physical; no difference is. She was a woman + of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I + have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the + exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this + vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and + quiet in her manners--very loving--and (what she must have been from + the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and the + love of man were fused together. There was nothing highly distinctive + in her religious conversation. I had had much intercourse with pious + Dissenters before; the only freshness I found, in our talk, came from + the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and + though _she left the society when women were no longer allowed to + preach_, and joined the New Wesleyans, she retained the character of + thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked + with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about + predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority + came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which + at the time I disapproved; it was not strictly a consequence of her + Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it, yet it + came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of + Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with + us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, + once greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had + taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. "But I hope the + good man's in heaven, for all that," said my uncle. "Oh, yes," said my + aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, "Mr. A's in + heaven--that's sure." This was at the time an offence to my stern, + ascetic, hard views--how beautiful it is to me now! + +One who has been permitted to read the letters of Marian Evans written to +this aunt, has given the following account of them, which throws much light +on her religious attitude at this period: "Most of the epistles are +addressed to my 'dear uncle and aunt,' and all reveal George Eliot's great +talents. The style is elegant and graceful, and the letters abound in +beautiful metaphor; but their most striking characteristic is the religious +tinge that pervades them all. Nearly every line denotes that George Eliot +was an earnest biblical student, and that she was, especially in the years +1839 and 1840, very anxious about her spiritual condition. In one of these +letters, written from Griff to Elizabeth Evans, in 1839, she says she is +living in a dry and thirsty land, and that she is looking forward with +pleasure to a visit to Wirksworth, and likens her aunt's companionship and +counsel to a spring of pure water, acceptable to her as is the well dug for +the traveller in the desert. That the most affectionate and loving +relationship existed between the eminent author and Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, +is apparent from this correspondence. The inmost secrets of George Eliot's +heart are laid bare in these letters to the famous Methodist preacher, who +was at that time her dearest friend. She is ever asking for advice and +spiritual guidance, and confesses her faults with a candor that is rendered +additionally attractive by reason of the polished language in which it is +clothed. When quite a girl, George Eliot was known as pious and clever; and +in the letters she wrote in 1839, when she was twenty years old, the +cleverness has grown and expanded, although she is not so sure about her +piety. She says that 'unstable as water thou shalt not excel,' seems to be +a description of her character, instead of the progress from strength to +strength that should be experienced by those who wish to stand in the +presence of God. In another letter she admits that she cannot give a good +account of her spiritual state, says that she has been surrounded by +worldly persons, and that love of human praise is one of her great +stumbling-blocks. But in a letter written in 1840 the uncertainty has gone +from her mind, and she writes that she has resolved in the strength of the +Lord to serve him evermore. In a later communication, however, she does not +appear so confident, and admits that she is obliged to strive against the +ambition that fills her heart, and that her fondness of worldly praise is a +great bar and hindrance to spiritual advancement. Still she thinks it is no +use sitting inactive with folded hands; and believing that the love of God +is the only thing to give real satisfaction to human beings, she hopes, +with his help, to obtain it. One of the letters is chiefly devoted to the +concern felt by Marian Evans at Elizabeth Evans' illness; and another, +written at Foleshill, betrays some humor amid the trouble that afflicts her +about her own future. Their outward circumstances, she writes, are all she +can desire; but she is not so certain about her spiritual state, although +she feels that it is the grace of God alone that can give the greatest +satisfaction. Then she goes on to speak of the preacher at Foleshill, with +whom she is not greatly pleased: 'We get the truth, but it is not +recommended by the mode of its delivery,' is how she writes of this divine; +yet she is charitable withal, and removes the sting by adding that more +good may sometimes be obtained from humble instruments than from the +highest privileges, and that she must examine her own heart rather than +speak unkindly of the preacher. Up to this period it is evident that Marian +Evans' views upon religion were orthodox, and that her life was passed in +ceaseless striving for the 'peace that passeth understanding;' but in 1843 +a letter was written to Elizabeth Evans by a relative in Griff, in which +Marian Evans is spoken of, and the change in her religious opinions +indicated. She writes that they are in great pain about Mary Ann; but the +last portion of the letter, dealing more fully with the subject, has +unfortunately got lost or destroyed. The close association of George Eliot +with Derbyshire, as well as her love for the quaint village of Wirksworth, +and its upright, honest, God-fearing people, breaks forth in more than one +of these communications." + +Partly as the result of her studies and partly as the result of contact +with other minds, Marian began to grow sceptical about the religious +beliefs she had entertained. This took place probably during her +twenty-third year, but the growth of the new ideas was slow at first. As +one of her friends has suggested, it was her eagerness for positive +knowledge which made her an unbeliever. She had no love of mere doubt, no +desire to disagree with accepted doctrines, but she was not content unless +she could get at the facts and reach what was just and reasonable. "It is +seldom," says this person, "that a mind of so much power is so free from +the impulse to dissent, and that not from too ready credulousness, but +rather because the consideration of doubtful points was habitually crowded +out, one may say, by the more ready and delighted acceptance of whatever +accredited facts and doctrines might be received unquestioningly. We can +imagine George Eliot in youth, burning to master all the wisdom and +learning of the world; we cannot imagine her failing to acquire any kind of +knowledge on the pretext that her teacher was in error about something else +than the matter in hand; and it is undoubtedly to this natural preference +for the positive side of things that we are indebted for the singular +breadth and completeness of her knowledge and culture. A mind like hers +must have preyed disastrously upon itself during the years of comparative +solitude in which she lived at Foleshill, had it not been for that +inexhaustible source of delight in every kind of intellectual acquisition. +Languages, music, literature, science and philosophy interested her alike; +it was early in this period that in the course of a walk with a friend she +paused and clasped her hands with a wild aspiration that she might live 'to +reconcile the philosophy of Locke and Kant!' Years afterward she remembered +the very turn of the road where she had spoken it." + +The spiritual struggles of Maggie Tulliver give a good picture of Marian +Evans' mental and spiritual experiences at this time. Her friends and +relatives were scandalized by her scepticism. Her father could not at all +sympathize with her changed religious attitude, and treated her harshly. +She refused to attend church, and this made the separation so wide that it +was proposed to break up the home. By the advice of friends she at last +consented to outwardly conform to her father's wishes, and a partial +reconciliation was effected. This alienation, however, had a profound +effect upon her mind. She slowly grew away from the intellectual basis +of her old beliefs, but, with Maggie, she found peace and strength in +self-renunciation, and in the cultivation of that inward trust which makes +the chief anchorage of strong natures. She bore this experience patiently, +and without any diminution of her affection; but she also found various +friends among the more cultivated people of Coventry, who could sympathize +with her in her studies and with her radical views in religion. These +persons gave her the encouragement she needed, the contact with other and +more matured minds which was so necessary to her mental development, and +that social contact with life which was so conducive to her health of mind. +In one family especially, that of Mr. Charles Bray, did she find the true, +and cordial, and appreciative friendship she desired. These friends +softened the growing discord with her own family, and gave her that devoted +regard and aid that would be of most service to her. "In Mr. Bray's +family," we are told by one who has written of this trying period of her +career, "she found sympathy with her ardent love of knowledge and with the +more enlightened views that had begun to supplant those under which (as she +described it) her spirit had been grievously burdened. Emerson, Froude, +George Combe, Robert Mackay, and many other men of mark, were at various +times guests at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill while Miss Evans was there +either as inmate or occasional visitor; and many a time might have been +seen, pacing up and down the lawn or grouped under an old acacia, men of +thought and research, discussing all things in heaven and earth, and +listening with marked attention when one gentle woman's voice was heard to +utter what they were quite sure had been well matured before the lips +opened. Few, if any, could feel themselves her superior in general +intelligence; and it was amusing one day to see the amazement of a certain +doctor, who, venturing on a quotation from Epictetus to an unassuming young +lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his Greek by his feminine +auditor. One rare characteristic belonged to her which gave a peculiar +charm to her conversation. She had no petty egotism, no spirit of +contradiction; she never talked for effect. A happy thought well expressed +filled her with delight; in a moment she would seize the thought and +improve upon it--so that common people began to feel themselves wise in her +presence; and perhaps years after she would remind them, to their pride and +surprise, of the good things they had said." + +She was an ardent reader of Emerson and other thinkers of his cast of +thought, and some traces of this early sympathy are to be seen in her +books. On his second visit to England Emerson spent a day or two at the +house of Charles Bray, with whose writings he had previously become +acquainted. Emerson was much impressed with the personality of Marian +Evans, and more than once said to Bray, "That young lady has a calm, +serious soul." When Emerson asked her somewhat suddenly, "What one book do +you like best?" she at once replied, "Rousseau's _Confessions_." She +cherished this acquaintance with Emerson, and held him in grateful +remembrance through life. + +The painful experiences of this period are undoubtedly reflected in another +of her autobiographic poems, that entitled "Self and Life." She speaks of +the profound influence the past had over her mind, and that her hands and +feet were still tiny when she began to know the historic thrill of contact +with other ages. She also makes Life say to Self, in regard to her pain and +sorrow: + + But all thy anguish and thy discontent + Was growth of mine, the elemental strife + Towards feeling manifold with vision blent + To wider thought: I was no vulgar life + That like the water-mirrored ape, + Not discerns the thing it sees, + Nor knows its own in others' shape, + Railing, scorning, at its ease. + Half man's truth must hidden lie + If unlit by sorrow's eye. + I by sorrow wrought in thee + Willing pain of ministry. + +The intellectual surroundings of Marian Evans at this time gave shape to +her whole after-life. There were now laid the foundations of her mode of +thinking, and her philosophic theories began to be formed. It was in the +home of one of her friends she learned to think for herself, and it was +there her positivist doctrines first appeared. Charles Bray was affected by +the transcendental movement, and was an ardent admirer of Newman, Emerson +and others among its leaders. This interest prepared him, as it has so many +other minds, for the acceptance of those speculative views which were built +up on the foundation of science when the transcendental movement began to +wane. The transcendental doctrines of unity, the oneness of mind and +matter, the evolution of all forms of life and being from the lowest, the +universal dominion of law and necessity, and the profound significance of +nature in its influence on man, as they were developed by Goethe, +Schelling, Carlyle and Emerson, gave direction to a new order of +speculation, which had its foundations in modern science. + +Bray was an ardent phrenologist, and in 1832 published a work on _The +Education of the Feelings_, based on phrenological principles. In 1841 +appeared his main work, _The Philosophy of Necessity_; this was followed +several years later by a somewhat similar work, _On Force, its Mental and +Moral Correlates_. His philosophy was summarized in a volume published in +1871, which was entitled _A Manual of Anthropology_. He also wrote +pamphlets on "Illusion and Delusion," "The Reign of Law," "Toleration," and +"Christianity." In his work on necessity he promulgated very many of those +ideas which have formed so prominent a part of the philosophy of George +Eliot. The dominion of law, the reign of necessity, experience as the +foundation of knowledge, humanity as an organism that develops a larger +life for man by the aid of experience and tradition,--these are among the +doctrines of the book. There is every reason for believing that in the +teachings of Charles Bray, Marian Evans found many of the main elements of +her philosophy, and with his aid her opinions were largely shaped. + +Mrs. Bray was also a woman of large intelligence, and of a mind freely +open to new theories. She wrote a _Physiology for Schools_ and a +school-book on _Duties to Animals_, which have been well received by the +public and used as text books in the schools of the Midland counties. In +1882 she published a little book on the _Elements of Morality_, consisting +of a series of easy lessons for Unitarian Sunday schools and for home +teaching. To the Brays, Marian Evans owed much in the way of sympathy, +culture and direct influence. Perhaps more than any other persons they gave +tone and direction to her mind. One who knew them has said, "Besides being +a practical as well as theoretical philanthropist, Mr. Bray was also a +courageous impugner of the dogmas which form the basis of the popular +theology. Mrs. Bray shared in this general largeness of thought, while +perhaps more in sympathy with the fairer aspects of Christianity." + +A brother and a sister of Mrs. Bray's, Charles C. Hennell and Sara S. +Hennell, also had a large influence on Marian Evans during this period. It +was Charles Hennell who induced her to translate Strauss, and it was Sara +Hennell to whom she wrote about her aunt after the publication of _Adam +Bede_. Hennell's _Inquiry concerning the origin of Christianity_ was +published in 1838, and appeared in a second edition in 1841. In the latter +year the book was read by Marian Evans, after a faithful perusal of the +Bible as a preparation for it, and quickly re-read, and with great interest +and delight. She then pronounced it "the most interesting book she had ever +read," dating from it a new birth to her mind. The book was translated into +German, Strauss writing a preface for it, and that interpreter of +Christianity praised it highly. Hennell rejected all supernaturalism and +the miraculous, regarding Christianity as a slow and natural development +out of Judaism, aided by Platonism and other outside influences. He finds +the sources of Jesus' teachings in the Jewish tendencies of the time, while +the cause of the supremacy of the man Jesus was laid in a long course of +events which had swelled to a crisis at the time of his appearance, and +bore him aloft to a height whence his personal qualities told with a power +derived from the accumulated force of many generations. Jesus was an +enthusiast who believed himself the predicted king of the Jews, and he was +a revolutionist expecting to establish an earthly kingdom for the supremacy +of Judaism. Jesus was largely influenced by the Essenes, but he rejected +their austerity. Hennell found a mixture of truth and error in the Gospels, +and believed that many mythical elements entered into the accounts given of +Jesus. A thorough rationalist, he claimed to accept the spiritual essence +of Christianity, and to value highly the moral teachings of Jesus. In a +later work on _Christian Theism_ he finds an argument for belief in God +mainly in nature. In his conclusions he is not far from F.W. Newman and +Theodore Parker; but he does not give the credit to intuition and the +religious faculty they do, though he is an earnest believer in God, and +inclined to accept Christianity as the highest expression of religion. + +Sara S. Hennell early published _An Essay on the Skeptical Tendency of +Butler's Analogy_, and a Baillie prize essay on _Christianity and +Infidelity: An Exposition of the Arguments on Both Sides_. A work of much +merit and thought appeared from her pen in 1860, under the title of +_Thoughts in Aid of Faith_. In this work she follows her brother, Strauss, +Feuerbach and Spencer in an interpretation of religion, which constantly +recalls the theories of George Eliot. In a series of more recent books she +has continued the same line of thought. The early and intimate friendship +of Marian Evans and Miss Hennell may explain this similarity of opinion, +and the beliefs they held in common were doubtless developed to a greater +or less extent even when the former lived in Coventry. + +Another friend of this period was a German scholar by the name of Brabant, +resident in England, a friend of Strauss, Paulus, Coleridge and Grote. +Grote described him as "a vigorous self-thinking intellect." A daughter of +Dr. Brabant first undertook the translation of Strauss, and she it was who +married Charles Hennell. After this marriage Miss Evans offered to take to +Dr. Brabant the place of his daughter, and did act as his housekeeper for +some months. + +Marian Evans was surrounded at the most impressible period of her life by +this group of intellectual, free-thinking people, who seem to have fully +indoctrinated her with their own opinions. None of them had rejected +Christianity or theism, but they were rationalists in spirit, and eager +students of philosophy and science. Here were laid the foundations of the +doctrines she afterwards held so strongly, and even during this period very +many of the theories presented in her books were fully developed. Here her +mind was thoroughly prepared for the teachings of Comte, Spencer and Lewes; +and her early instructors had gone so far in their lessons that the later +teachers had little to do more than to give system to her thoughts. + +It was essential to George Eliot's novel-writing that she was educated +amidst religious influences, and that she earnestly accepted the religious +teaching of her childhood. Not less important was her humble home and her +association with the common life of the people. Through all her work these +influences appear, coloring her thought, shaping her views of life, and +increasing her sympathies and affections. Her tender, enthusiastic love of +humble life never lost any of its quickening power. The faith of childhood +was lost, but its memory was left in a warm appreciation of all phases of +religious life and a heartfelt sympathy with all the sorrows and +aspirations of men. + +Her father's health becoming very poor, Marian spent the next two or three +years in the care of him. She read to him most of Scott's novels, devoting +several hours each day to this task. During this period she made a visit to +the Isle of Wight, and there read the novels of Richardson. Her father died +in 1849, and she was very much affected by this event. She grieved for him +overmuch, and could find no consolation. Her friends, the Brays, to divert +and relieve her mind, invited her to take a continental tour with them. +They travelled extensively in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Her +grief, however, was so excessive as to receive little relief, and her +friends began to fear the results. On their return to England they left her +at Geneva, where she remained for nearly a year. After some months in a +boarding-house near Geneva she became an inmate of the family of M. +d'Albert Durade, a Swiss water-color painter of some reputation, who +afterwards became the translator of her works into French. She devoted the +winter of 1849-50 to the study of French and its literature, to mathematics +and to reading. Her teacher in mathematics soon told her that she was able +to proceed without his aid. She read Rousseau and studied the French +socialists. M. Durade painted her portrait, making a remarkable picture. +The softness of the clear blue eyes, in which is expressed a profound depth +of thought, is one of its characteristics. M. Durade accompanied her to +England in the spring of 1850, and she went to live with her brother, where +she remained for a few months. The old family differences about religion +had alienated the brother and sister so far intellectually that she +accepted an invitation from the Brays to find a home with them. Her sadness +and grief continued, and her health was not good. Her fits of nervousness +and of tears were frequent, but her studies continued to occupy her mind. +She delighted to converse with Mr. Bray, and other persons of earnest +thought had their influence on her mind. Among these was George Dawson, the +famous preacher who cut himself loose from all denominations. + + + + +II. + + +TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR. + +It was while living at Foleshill, and amidst the intellectual influences of +awakening radicalism, that Marian Evans undertook her first literary labor. +This was the translation of the _Leben Jesu_ of David Strauss. A book so +daring in its interpretations of the origin of Christianity excited much +attention, and especially among those who had broken away from the old +religious beliefs. The work of translation was at first undertaken by Miss +Brabant, who soon married Charles Hennell. Then the task was taken up by +Marian Evans, who gave three years to it, renewing her Hebrew studies for +the purpose, and the book was published in 1846. The work was thoroughly +done, so much so that Strauss complimented the translator on its accuracy +and correctness of spirit. Concerning the translation the _Westminster +Review_ had this word of praise to offer: "We can testify that the +translator has achieved a very tough work with remarkable spirit and +fidelity. The author, though indeed a good writer, could hardly have spoken +better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently +fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both +languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological +criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another +critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the +German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the +English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the +original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought +and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the +present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of +preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, +combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which impart to +the volumes before us the air and the spirit of an original. A modest and +kindly care for his reader's convenience has induced the translator often +to supply the rendering into English of a Greek quotation when there was no +corresponding rendering into German in the original. Indeed, Strauss may +well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for this English +edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is _et +accurata et perspicua_." + +The book had a successful sale, but Marian Evans received only twenty +pounds, and twenty-five copies of the book, for her share of the +translation. A little later she translated Feuerbach's _Essence of +Christianity_, receiving fifty pounds for this labor. It was published in +1854, but the sale was small, and it proved a heavy loss to the publisher. +While translating Strauss she aided a friend interested in philosophical +studies (probably Charles Bray) by the translation, for his reading, of the +_De Deo_ of Spinoza. Some years later she completed a translation of the +more famous _Ethica_ of the same thinker. It was not published, probably +because there was at that time so little interest in Spinoza. + +The execution of such work as this, and all of it done in the most +creditable and accurate manner, indicates the thoroughness of Marian Evans' +scholarship. Though she doubtless was somewhat inclined to accept the +opinions she thus helped to diffuse, yet Miss Simcox tells us that "the +translation of Strauss and the translation of Spinoza were undertaken, not +by her own choice but at the call of friendship; in the first place to +complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the second to +make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly phrenologist +who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded translation as a work +that should be undertaken as a duty, to make accessible any book that +required to be read; and though undoubtedly she was satisfied that the +_Leben Jesu_ required to be read in England, it would be difficult to +imagine a temper more naturally antipathetic to her than that of its +author; and critics who talk about the 'Strauss and Feuerbach period' +should be careful to explain that the phrase covers no implication that +she was at anytime an admirer or a disciple of Strauss. There are extremes +not only too remote but too disparate to be included in the same life." + +Marian Evans did not become an admirer or disciple of Strauss, probably +because she preferred Charles Hennell's interpretation of Christianity, It +is certain, however, that she was greatly affected by Feuerbach, and that +his influence was ever after strongly marked in her thinking. The teachings +of Charles Bray and Charles Hennell had prepared her for the reception of +those of Feuerbach, and he in turn made her mind responsive to the more +systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to +regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had +shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made +ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of +the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. +According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images +corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the +outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these +subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary +product of its own activity. The mind necessarily believes in God, which is +man's way of conceiving his species and realizing to himself the perfect +type of his own nature. God does not exist, and yet he is a true picture of +man's soul, a necessary product of his feeling and consciousness. All +religious ideas are true subjectively, and Christianity especially +corresponds to the inward wants and aspirations of the soul. To Feuerbach +it is true as a poetic interpretation of feeling and sentiment, and to him +it gives the noblest and truest conception of what the soul needs for its +inward satisfaction. + +The influence of Feuerbach is to be seen in the profound interest which +Marian Evans ever took in the subject of religion. That influence alone +explains how it was possible for one who did not accept any religious +doctrines as true, who did not believe in God or immortality, and who +rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as +she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy +with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times +she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a +just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she +learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to +man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like +so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping +scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, +arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration, +revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed +most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by +its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation. Religion +was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger +realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of +feeling. To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to +rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true +interpretation of the soul's wants, at the same time that she totally +rejected it as fact and dogma. + +In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist +him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, Chapman had been the +publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the +way to the continent the year before. He was the publisher of a large +number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and +radical sentiment of the time. The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker, +Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note, +appeared on his list. The _Westminster Review_ was devoted to scientific +and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, +Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of +contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a +wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able +departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries. +Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in +writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide +reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the acquaintance of +a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women. Under this +influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of +the ablest among them. Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was +"distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which +have since made her known to all the world." We are told by another that +"her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and +the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression +on all who wore thrown into her society." + +Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of +his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors. She was +extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave +herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A +fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the _Review_ was held in Mr. +Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the +scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time. Harriet +Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the +London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke. She visited George Combe and +his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return. + +While assisting Mr. Chapman, Marian Evans contributed only one article, +beyond her editorial work, to the pages of the _Westminster Review_. The +work she did, almost wholly that of digesting and reviewing new books, +could have been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except +in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally, +however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of +current English literature for January, 1852. she had Carlyle's _Life of +Sterling_ in hand. Her notice of the book is highly appreciative of +Carlyle's genius, and full of cordial praise. This passage gives her idea +of a true biography: + + We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently + to the task of the biographer,--that when some great or good personage + dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of + letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds + of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the + inclination, to read, we could have a real "Life," setting forth + briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims and + achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has + for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) + the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on + the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the + conditions required for the perfection of life writing,--personal + intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the + depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes + characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect,--are + seldom found in combination. _The Life of Sterling_ is an instance of + this rare conjunction. Its comparatively tame scenes and incidents + gather picturesqueness and interest under the rich lights of Carlyle's + mind. We are told neither too little nor too much; the facts noted, the + letters selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest + conception of what Sterling was and what he did; and though the book + speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind of + scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose. + +The earliest of the regular articles, and the only one printed while she +was the associate editor of the _Review_, is on "The Lady Novelists." It +appeared in the number for July, 1852, and contained a striking discussion +of woman's place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that +field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of +the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her +treatment of Jane Austen and George Sand, praising as well as criticising +with insight and fine discrimination. At the outset she defines literature +as an expression of the emotions, and gives a remarkably clear and original +description of its functions. + +Her editorial connection with the _Westminster Review_ continued for about +two years, until the end of 1853. For the next three years she was a +contributor to its pages, where there appeared "Woman in France: Madame de +Sable," in October, 1854; "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," October, +1855; "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," January, 1856; "The Natural History of +German Life," July, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856; +and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two +other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little +value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its +Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these +articles are still as great as when they were first published. This will +justify the publication here of numerous extracts from their most salient +and important paragraphs. As indicating her literary judgment, and her +capacity for incisive characterization and clear, trenchant criticism, +reference may be made to the essay on Heine, which is one of the finest +pieces of critical writing the century has produced. + + Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age; no echo, but a + real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth + studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us + in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic + wand of his fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art--who + sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous + rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his + mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose + literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the + possibilities of German prose; and--in spite of all charges against + him, true as well as false--a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and + brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering + man, who, with all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to + endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an + intellectual interest. It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight + in the other scale--that Heine's magnificent powers have often served + only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so + that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but + have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the + precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and + personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly + been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness, + all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings + of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of + exquisite poetry, of wit, humor and just thought. It is apparently too + often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions + committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the + advantage of being himself a man of _no_ genius, so that those + transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; _he_, forsooth, never + lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse + allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the + temptation that lies in transcendent power.... + + In Heine's hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, + becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, + brilliant; it is German in an _allotropic_ condition. No dreary, + labyrinthine sentences in which you find "no end in wandering mazes + lost;" no chains of adjectives in linked harshness long drawn out; no + digressions thrown in as parentheses; but crystalline definiteness and + clearness, fine and varied rhythm, and all that delicate precision, + all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest + order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty + in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was + pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant + does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in + prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm + development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign + to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to + the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects. + Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates + between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and + daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness, + tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet. + +The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and +humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds +is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only +nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of +European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found +both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany, +having a flavor and a spirit quite his own. + +Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological +character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling +with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her +entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes +unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The +terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr. +Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends +each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds +in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a +perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection +of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their +minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that +Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or +1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare +the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen +psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as +accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the +circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education, +the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they +lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with +those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by +whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places +of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was +because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before +it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them. +In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no +deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism. +She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their +purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so +unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into +character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere. + + Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is + not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity--no + indication of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual + communion with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of + justification, and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an + experience. He insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith, + as labors to be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely represents + them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with divine + love. He is at home in the external, the polemical, the historical, the + circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and practical. The + great majority of his published sermons are occupied with argument or + philippic against Romanists and unbelievers, with vindications of the + Bible, with the political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism + of public events; and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual and + practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of fringe in a + hurried sentence or two at the end. He revels in the demonstration that + the Pope is the Man of Sin; he is copious on the downfall of the + Ottoman empire; he appears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story + which tends to show how he abashed an "infidel;" it is a favorite + exercise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the earth + is to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce + being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, Puseyites + and infidels are given over to gnashing of teeth. But of really + spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a + manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of sympathy with that + yearning over the lost and erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, + and prompted the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them," of the gentler + fruits of the Spirit, and the peace of God which passeth + understanding--of all this, we find little trace in Dr. Cumming's + discourses. + +Even more severe is her account of the poet Young. She speaks of him as "a +remarkable individual of the species _divine_." This is her account of his +life: + + He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his + metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if + you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a + psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last + Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic + applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After + spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a + hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a + parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with + fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his + imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general + mendicancy business to a particular branch; in other words, he has + determined on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking + orders," with the prospect of a good living and an advantageous + matrimonial connection. And no man can be better fitted for an + Established Church. He personifies completely her nice balance of + temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the + momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for + immortal life and for "livings;" he has a vivid attachment to patrons + in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with + something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly + things; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his + meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are + not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man + believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire + for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never + forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the + King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar + than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among + the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, + and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it + were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers it would be wise + and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven + apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. + Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is + to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and + frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and + skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and + exalting the next; and by this double process you get the + Christian--"the highest style of man." With all this, our new-made + divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the + worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of + Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes and + objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, + in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and + jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive; for this divine is Edward + Young, the future author of _Night Thoughts_. + +She says, "One of the most striking characteristics of Young is his +_radical insincerity as a poetic artist_." + + Indeed, we remember no mind in poetic literature that seems to have + absorbed less of the beauty and the healthy breath of the common + landscape than Young's. His images, often grand and finely presented, + lie almost entirely within that circle of observation which would be + familiar to a man who lived in town, hung about the theatres, read the + newspaper, and went home often by moon and star light. There is no + natural object nearer than the moon that seems to have any strong + attraction for him, and even to the moon he chiefly appeals for + patronage, and "pays his court" to her.... He describes nothing so well + as a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail over nothing more + familiar than the day of judgment and an imaginary journey among the + stars.... The adherence to abstractions, or to the personification of + abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the _want of genuine + emotion_. He sees Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists + and storms of earth: he sees Religion coming down from the skies, with + this world in her left hand and the other world in her right; but we + never find him dwelling on virtue or religion as it really exists--in + the emotions of a man dressed in an ordinary coat, and seated by his + fireside of an evening, with his hand resting on the head of his little + daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish ends, in the internal + triumph of justice and pity over personal resentment, in all the + sublime self-renunciation and sweet charities which are found in the + details of ordinary life. + +In these essays there are various indications of her religious opinions, +and those of a decided character. In that on Dr. Cumming, she has this word +to say of the rationalistic conception of the Bible: + + He seems to be ignorant, or he chooses to ignore the fact, that there + is a large body of eminently instructed and earnest men who regard the + Hebrew and Christian scriptures as a series of historical documents, to + be dealt with according to the rules of historical criticism, and that + an equally large number of men, who are not historical critics, find + the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the scriptures, opposed to + their profoundest moral convictions. + +This statement is suggestive of her position on religious subjects: + + The best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system, + believe that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the saving but + the educating of men's souls, the creating within them of holy + dispositions, the subduing of egoistical pretensions, and the perpetual + enhancing of the desire that the will of God--a will synonymous with + goodness and truth--may be done on earth. But what relation to all this + has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of the Christian in + the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show, of which Satan is + the wild beast in the shape of a great red dragon, and two thirds of + mankind the victims--the whole provided and got up by God for the + edification of the saints? + +She calls Dr. Cumming's teachings "the natural crop of a human mind where +the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic beliefs." +Then she deals with that belief in this trenchant fashion: + + Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids the complete + prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as religious systems have + been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and + though dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth: + build walls around the living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar + have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the + sap. But next to the hatred of the enemies of God which is the + principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more + obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a + reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the + sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in + proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into activity by + their proper objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly + impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as it is compassion that + speaks through the eyes when we soothe, and moves the arm when we + succor, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the soothing or the succor be + given because another being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to + be one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of + self-interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in producing an + action, but they presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and + conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the actions of accessory + motives will be excluded. + +In writing of Young she says,-- + + The God of the _Night Thoughts_ is simply Young himself "writ large"--a + didactic poet, who "lectures" mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of + mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven, and + expects the tribute of inexhaustible applause. Young has no conception + of religion as anything else than egoism turned heavenward; and he does + not merely imply this, he insists on it. + +She contrasts Young with Cowper, preferring the latter because he dwells +more on the things of a common and simple life. + + In Young we have the type of that deficient human sympathy, that + impiety toward the present and the visible, which flies for its + motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague and + unknown: in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which + cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its + reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. + +This warm human sympathy is all she cares for in religion. + + See how a lovely, sympathetic nature manifests itself in spite of creed + and circumstance! Where is the poem that surpasses the _Task_ in the + genuine love it breathes, at once toward inanimate and animate + existence--in truthfulness of perception and sincerity of + presentation--in the calm gladness that springs from a delight in + objects for their own sake, without self-reference--in divine sympathy + with the lowliest pleasures, with the most shortlived capacity for + pain? Here is no railing at the earth's "melancholy map," but the + happiest lingering over her simplest scenes with all the fond + minuteness that belongs to love; no pompous rhetoric about the + inferiority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their behalf against + man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, and a sense of enlarged happiness + from their companionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about human misery + and human virtue, but that close and vivid presentation of particular + deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How + Cowper's exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of morning sunlight + on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every detail and investing + every detail with beauty! No object is too small to prompt his song-- + not the sooty film on the bars, or the spoutless teapot holding a bit + of mignonette that serves to cheer the dingy town lodging with a "hint + that nature lives;" and yet his song is never trivial, for he is alive + to small objects, not because his mind is narrow, but because his + glance is clear and his heart is large. + +Her contributions to the _Westminster Review_ indicate that Marian Evans +had read much and well, and that she was possessed of a thoroughly +cultivated mind and much learning. To their preparation she gave herself +diligently, writing slowly, after a careful study of her subject and much +thought devoted to a faithful thinking out of all its parts. It has been +many times suggested that these articles gave indication only of learning +and studious effort. They certainly give strong hint of these, but also of +much more. That on human life shows how much she had thought, and how +thoroughly and philosophically, on one of the largest problems; while the +one on Heine indicates her penetrating literary judgment and her capacity +for analysis and interpretation. These essays are not mere compilations, +mere digests of learned information; they are studies of large subjects +done in a large and inspiring manner. Her essays on the poet Young and Dr. +Cumming, and the two on lady novelists, as well as that on Heine, show many +indications of that subtle power and that true genius which were displayed +in her later work. There was genius displayed in these articles, without +doubt, and genius of a high order. It was genius not as yet aware of +itself, and not yet at the height of its power and capable of its truest +expression, but genius nevertheless. Many of the most striking +characteristics of her novel-writing were shown in these essays. Here was +the same love of common human life; the same interest in its humbler forms +and expressions; the like penetrating analysis and subtle portrayal of +character; a psychological method of the same probing and comprehensive +nature. Her main philosophical ideas were indicated here, though not given +that clear and incisive expression they afterwards received. When she wrote +of the natural history of German life she indicated in the very title of +her essay one of her main theories, and her conception of man as a social +being was brought out in it. These essays fully indicate that her opinions +were already formed, that the leading ideas she was to give expression to +in her novels had been arrived at by diligent study and thought, and that +she had equipped herself with ample reasons for the acceptance of the +opinions she held. Their chief defect is in their occasional arrogance of +expression, as if the writer had not yet wholly escaped the superior airs +of the young woman elated with the greatness of her knowledge, and a +certain rudeness and vehemence of statement not seen later. It is a defect +that is not very prominent, but one that is apparent enough to mar some of +the best of these pages. It was one she never wholly outgrew, though in her +novels her large information was usually so managed and subordinated as to +give little annoyance to the intelligent reader. + +It must be quite evident to any reader of her _Westminster Review_ +contributions, that Marian Evans would never have attained to any such high +literary eminence as an essayist as that which she has secured as a +novelist. Readable as are her essays,--and the five just named are +certainly worthy of a place in her complete works,--yet they are not of the +highest order. She could attain the highest range of her power only when +something far more subtile and intrinsic was concerned. That this is true +may be seen in these essays; for even here she writes the best only when +she has human motives, feelings and aspirations to weigh and explain. That +she could dissect and explain the inner man they made apparent enough; but +her genius demanded also the opportunity to create, to build up a life of +high beauty and purpose from materials of its own construction. Her +_Review_ articles gave her a high place in the eyes of her friends, and +their chief value seems to have been, that they caused these friends to see +that she could do other and better work, and led them to induce her to +apply her genius in a direction more congenial to its capacity. + + + + +III. + + +MARRIAGE. + +In 1853 Marian Evans became the wife of George Henry Lewes. He had married +at an early ago a woman possessed of many charms of person. They went to +live in a large house at Kensington with five other young couples, keeping +house on a co-operative arrangement, with many attractions of social +entertainment therewith. One result was the desertion of her home by Mrs. +Lewes in connection with one of the men into whose company she was +constantly thrown by this manner of life. She soon repented, and Lewes +forgave her, receiving her back to his home. A second time, however, she +left him. His having condoned her fault made it impossible for him to +secure a divorce according to the laws of England at that time. He seems to +have done what he could to retain her faithful devotion to her marriage +relations, so long as that seemed possible. + +When Lewes and Marian Evans met, on her going to live in London, and after +his wife had deserted him, there sprang up a strong attachment between +them, As they could not be legally married, she agreed to live with him +without that formality. + +It is to be said of this affair that George Eliot was very far from looking +at such a problem as Goethe or, George Sand would have looked at it, from +the position of personal inclination. Yet we are told by Miss Blind that +she early entertained liberal views in regard to divorce, believing that +greater freedom in this respect is desirable. There could have been no +passionate individualistic defiance of law in her case, however. No one has +insisted more strongly than she on the importance and the sanctity of the +social regulations in regard to the union of the sexes. That her marriage +was a true one in all but the legal form, that she was faithful to its +every social obligation, has been abundantly shown. She was a most faithful +wife to Lewes, and the devoted mother of his three children by the previous +marriage, while she found in him that strong, self-reliant helpmate she +needed. + +Her marriage under these circumstances required no little individualism of +purpose, and some defiance of social obligations. Her intimate friends were +unable to comprehend her conduct, and she was alienated from most of them. +Especially her friends in Coventry were annoyed at such a marriage, and +were not reconciled with her for a long time, and not until they saw that +she had acted with a conscientious purpose. She was excluded from society +by this act, and her marriage was interpreted as a gross violation of +social morality. To a sensitive nature, as hers assuredly was, and to one +who so much valued the confidence of her friends as she did, such exclusion +must have been a serious cross. She freely elected her own course in life, +however, and she never seems to have complained at the results it brought +her. That it saddened her mind seems probable, but there is no outward +evidence that she accepted her lot in a bitter or complaining spirit. No +one could have written of love and marriage in so high and pure a spirit as +everywhere appears in her books with whom passion was in any degree a +controlling influence. In _Adam Bede_ her own conception of wedded love is +expressed out of the innermost convictions and impulses of her own heart, +when she exclaims,-- + + What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they + are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on + each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be + one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the + last parting. + +In _Felix Holt_ there is a passage on this subject which must have come +directly from her own experience, and it gives us a true insight into the +spirit in which she accepted the distrust of friends and the coldness of +the world which her marriage brought her. + + A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, + and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not + to be had when and how she will: to know that high initiation, she must + often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and + watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes all things easy; + it makes us choose what is difficult. + +Throughout her novels she exalts marriage, never casts any slur upon it, +treats it as one of the most sacred of all human relations. She makes it +appear as a sacrament, not of the Church, but of the sublime fellowship of +humanity. It is pure, holy, a binding tie, a sacred obligation, as it +appears in her books. When Romola is leaving Florence and her husband, her +love dead and all that made her life seem worthy gone with it, she meets +Savonarola, who bids her return to her home and its duties. What the great +prophet-priest says on this occasion we have every reason to believe +expressed the true sentiments of George Eliot herself. He proclaims, what +she doubtless thoroughly believed, that marriage is something far more than +mere affection, more than love; that its obligation holds when all love is +gone; that its obligation is so sacred and binding as to call for the +fullest measure of renunciation and personal humiliation. As throwing light +on George Eliot's manner of looking at this subject, the whole chapter +which describes the meeting of Romola and Savonarola deserves to be read. +That portion of it in which Savonarola gives his views of marriage may here +be reproduced, not as giving the doctrine of the Church, but as presenting +the positivist conception of marriage as interpreted by George Eliot. + + His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life, which + made it seem impossible toiler that she could go on her way as if she + had not heard it; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she must + take, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. And the instinctive + shrinking from a return to her husband brought doubts. She turned away + her eyes from Fra Girolamo, and stood for a minute or two with her + hands hanging clasped before her, like a statue. At last she spoke, as + if the words were being wrung from her, still looking on the ground. + + "My husband--he is not--my love is gone!" + + "My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Marriage is not + carnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads you + to! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all the + obligations of your place and name. That would not have been if you had + learned that it is a sacramental vow, from which none but God can + release you. My daughter, your life is not as a grain of sand, to be + blown by the winds; it is as flesh and blood, that dies if it be + sundered. Your husband is not a malefactor?" + + Romola flushed and started. "Heaven forbid! No; I accuse him of + nothing." + + "I did not suppose he was a malefactor. I meant that if he were a + malefactor your place would be in the prison beside him. My daughter, + if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You + may say, 'I will forsake my husband,' but you cannot cease to be a + wife." + + "Yet if--oh, how could I bear--" Romola had involuntarily begun to say + something which she sought to banish from her mind again. + + "Make your marriage sorrows an offering, too, my daughter: an offering + to the great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease. + The end is sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is + beginning, and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our + blessedness to die for it: to die daily by the crucifixion of our + selfish will--to die at last by laying our bodies on the altar. My + daughter, you are a child of Florence; fulfil the duties of that great + inheritance. Live for Florence--for your own people, whom God is + preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron + is sharp--I know, I know--it rends the tender flesh. The draught is + bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup--there is the + vision which makes all life below it dross forever. Come, my daughter, + come back to your place!" [Footnote: Chapter XL.] + +Again, when Dorothea goes to see Rosamond to intercede in Dr. Lydgate's +behalf with his wife, we have an expression of the sacredness of marriage, +and the renunciation it demands of all that is opposed to its trust and +helpfulness. Dorothea says,-- + + "Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful + in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved some one else better + than--than those we were married to, it would be of no use"--poor + Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language + brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or + getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very + dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us + like a murder--and everything else is gone. And then our husband--if he + loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in + his life--" + +If Marian Evans rejected the sanctions which society has imposed on the +love of man and woman in the legal forms of marriage, it was not in a +wilful and passionate spirit. There are reasons for believing that she was +somewhat touched in her youth with the individualistic theories of the +time, which made so many men and women of genius reject the restraints +imposed by society, as in the case of Goethe, Heine, George Sand, Shelley +and many another; yet she does not appear to have been to more than a very +limited extent influenced by such considerations in regard to her own +marriage. The matter for surprise is, that one who regarded all human +traditions, ceremonies and social obligations as sacred, should have +consented to act in so individualistic a manner. She makes Rufus Lyon +say--and it is her own opinion--that "the right to rebellion is the right +to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness." Her +marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. +She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to +this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and +personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she +was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be +seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the _Westminster +Review_, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the +tone of his books was not "immaculate," and that it was "strangely at +variance, with that sound and lofty morality which ought to form the basis +of every education." She also speaks of the philosophy of that day as "the +delusive though plausible theory that no license of tone, or warmth of +coloring, could injure any really healthy and high-toned mind." In the +article on "Woman in France," she touches on similar theories. As this +article was written just at the time of her marriage, one passage in it may +have a personal interest, and shows her conception of a marriage such as +her own, based on intellectual interest rather than on passionate love. She +is speaking of + + the laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage tie. + Heaven forbid [she adds] that we should enter on a defence of French + morals, most of all in relation to marriage! But it is undeniable that + unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, grounded only on + inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more + intelligent sympathy with men, and to heighten and complicate their + share in the political drama. The quiescence and security of the + conjugal relation are, doubtless, favorable to the manifestation of the + highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard + of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the + faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object--to convert + indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness + into perspicuity. + +Her conception of marriage may have been affected by that presented by +Feuerbach in his _Essence of Christianity_. In words translated into +English by herself, Feuerbach says, "that alone is a religious marriage +which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of +marriage--love." Again, he says that marriage is only sacred when it is an +inward attraction confirmed by social and personal obligations; "for a +marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the +voluntary, contented self-restriction of love--in short, a marriage which +is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing--is +not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage." As a moral +and social obligation, marriage is to be held sacred; its sacredness grows +out of its profound human elements of helpfulness, nurture and emotional +satisfaction, while its obligation rises from its primary social +functions. It does not consist in any legal form, but in compliance with +deep moral and social responsibilities. Some such conception of marriage +as this she seems to have accepted, which found its obligation in the +satisfaction it gives to the inner nature, and in the fulfilment of social +responsibilities. The influence of Compte may also have been felt in the +case of both Lewes and Marian Evans; they saw in the marriage form a +fulfilment of human, not of legal, requirements. + +While there is no doubt they would both gladly have accepted the legal +form had that been possible, yet they were sufficiently out of sympathy +with the conventionalities of society to cause them to disregard that form +when it could not be complied with. They regarded themselves, however, as +married, and bound by all the ties and requirements which marriage +imposes. They proclaimed themselves to their friends as husband and wife, +and they were so accepted by those who knew them. In her letters to +literary correspondents she always mentioned Lewes as "my husband." The +laws of most civilized nations recognize these very conditions, and +regard the acceptance of the marriage relation before the world as a +sufficient form. + +Those who have written of this marriage, bear testimony to its devotion +and beauty. The author of the account of her life and writings in the +_Westminster Review_, an early and intimate friend, says the "union was +from the first regarded by themselves as a true marriage, as an alliance +of a sacred kind, having a binding and permanent character. When the fact +of the union was first made known to a few intimate friends, it was +accompanied with the assurance that its permanence was already irrevocably +decreed. The marriage of true hearts for a quarter of a century has +demonstrated the sincerity of the intention. 'The social sanction,' said +Mr. Lewes once in our hearing, 'is always desirable.' There are cases in +which it is not always to be had. Such a ratification of the sacrament of +affection was regarded as a sufficient warrant, under the circumstances of +the case, for entrance on the most sacred engagement of life. There was +with her no misgiving, no hesitation, no looking back, no regret; but +always the unostentatious assertion of quiet, matronly dignity, the most +queenly expression and unconscious affirmation of the 'divine right' of +the wedded wife. We have heard her own oral testimony to the enduring +happiness of this union, and can, as privileged witnesses, corroborate it. +As a necessary element in this happiness she practically included the +enjoyment inseparable from the spontaneous reciprocation of home +affection, meeting with an almost maternal love the filial devotion of Mr. +Lewes's sons, proffering all tender service in illness, giving and +receiving all friendly confidence in her own hour of sorrowful +bereavement, and crowning with a final act of generous love and +forethought the acceptance of parental responsibilities in the +affectionate distribution of property, the visible result of years of the +intellectual toil whose invisible issues are endless." + +Their marriage helped both to a more perfect work and to a truer life. She +gave poise and purpose to the "versatile, high-strung, somewhat wayward +nature" of her husband, and she "restrained, raised, ennobled, and +purified" his life and thought. He stimulated and directed her genius life +into its true channel, cared for her business interests with untiring +faithfulness, made it possible for her to pursue her work without burdens +and distractions, and gave her the inspiration of a noble affection and a +cheerful home. Miss Edith Simcox speaks of "the perfect union between +these two," which, she says, "lent half its charm to all the worship paid +at the shrine of George Eliot." She herself, Miss Simcox proceeds to say, +"has spoken somewhere of the element of almost natural tenderness in a +man's protecting love: this patient, unwearying care for which no trifles +are too small, watched over her own life; he stood between her and the +world, her relieved her from all those minor cares which chafe and fret +the artist's soul; he wrote her letters; in a word, he so smoothed the +course of her outer life as to leave all her powers free to do what she +alone could do for the world and for the many who looked to her for help +and guidance. No doubt this devotion brought its own reward; but we are +exacting for our idols and do not care to have even a generous error to +condone, and therefore we are glad to know that, great as his reward was, +it was no greater than was merited by the most perfect love that ever +crowned a woman's life." Mr. Kegan Paul also writes of the mutual +helpfulness and harmony of purpose which grew out of this marriage. "Mr. +Lewes's character attained a stability and pose in which it had been +somewhat lacking, and the quiet of an orderly and beautiful home enabled +him to concentrate himself more and more on works demanding sustained +intellectual effort, while Mrs. Lewes's intensely feminine nature found +the strong man on whom to lean in the daily business of life, for which +she was physically and intellectually unfitted. Her own somewhat sombre +cast of thought was cheered, enlivened and diversified by the vivacity and +versatility which characterized Mr. Lewes, and made him seem less like an +Englishman than a very agreeable foreigner." + +This marriage presents one of the curious ethical problems of literature. +In this case approval and condemnation are alike difficult. Her own +teaching condemns it; her own life approves it. We could wish it had not +been, for the sake of what is purest and best; and yet it is not difficult +to see that its effects were in many ways beneficial to her. That it was +ethically wrong there is no doubt. That it was condemned by her own +teaching is so plain as to cause doubt about how she could herself approve +it. + +Lewes had a brilliant and versatile mind. He was not a profound thinker, +but he had keen literary tastes, a vigorous interest in science, and a +remarkable alertness of intellect. His gifts were varied rather than deep; +literary rather than philosophical. As a companion, he had a wonderful +charm and magnetism; he was a graceful talker, a marvellous story-teller, +and a wit seldom rivalled. His intimate friend, Anthony Trollope, says, +"There was never a man so pleasant as he with whom to sit and talk vague +literary gossip over a cup of coffee and a cigar." By the same friend we +are told that no man related a story as he did. "No one could say that he +was handsome. The long bushy hair, and the thin cheeks, and the heavy +mustache, joined as they were, alas! almost always to a look of sickness, +were not attributes of beauty. But there was a brilliance in his eye which +was not to be tamed by any sickness, by any suffering, which overcame all +other feeling on looking at him." + +George Henry Lewes was born in London, April 18, 1817. His grandfather was +a well-known comedian. His education was received in a very desultory +manner. He was at school for a time in Jersey, and also in Brittany, where +he acquired a thorough command of French. Later he attended a famous school +in Greenwich, kept by a Dr. Burney. After leaving school he went into a +notary's office, and then he became a clerk to a Russia merchant. His mind +was, however, attracted to scientific and philosophic studies, and he +betrayed little interest either in the law or in commercial pursuits. Then +he took up the study of medicine, giving thorough attention to anatomy and +physiology. It is said that his horror of the dissecting-room was so great +as to cause him to abandon the purpose to become a physician. All this time +his mind was steadily drawn to philosophy, and he gave as much time to it +as he could. The bent, of his mind was early developed, and in 1836, when +only nineteen, he had projected a treatise on the philosophy of mind, in +which he proposed to give a physiological interpretation to the doctrines +of Reid, Stewart and Brown. At the age of twenty he gave a course of +lectures on this subject; and to this line of thought he held ever after. +One of the influences which led to his departure from a strict +interpretation of the Scotch metaphysicians was the influence of Spinoza. +As indicating the eagerness with which he pursued his studies in all +directions, and the earnestness of his purpose at so early an age, his own +account of a club he attended at this time [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, +April 1,1866, introductory to the article on Spinoza.] may be mentioned. In +this account he describes a Jew by the name of Cohen, who first introduced +him to the study of Spinoza, and who has mistakenly been supposed to be the +original of Mordecai in _Daniel Deronda_. + +The sixth member of this club, who "studied anatomy and many other things, +with vast aspirations, and no very definite career before him," was Lewes +himself, in all probability. His eager desire for knowledge took him to +Germany in 1838, where he remained for two years in the same desultory +study of many subjects. He became thoroughly acquainted with the German +language and life, and gave much attention to German literature and +philosophy. On his return to England, Lewes entered upon his literary +career, which was remarkable for its versatility and productiveness. In +1841 he wrote "The Noble Heart," a three-act tragedy, published in 1852. +His studies of Spinoza found expression in one of the first essays on the +subject published in England. In 1843, he published in the _Westminster +Review_ his conclusions on that thinker. His essay was reprinted in a +separate form, attracting much attention, and in 1846 was incorporated into +a larger work, the result of his studies in Germany and of his interest in +philosophy. In 1845, at the age of twenty-nine, he published a history of +philosophy, in which he undertook to criticise all metaphysical systems +from the inductive and scientific point of view. This work was his +_Biographical History of Philosophy_. It appeared in four small volumes in +Knight's weekly series of popular books devoted to the diffusion of +knowledge among the people. Lewes touched a popular demand in this book, +reaching the wants of many readers. He continued through many years to +elaborate his studies on these subjects and to re-work his materials. New +and enlarged editions, each time making the book substantially a new one, +were published in 1857, in 1867 and in 1871. No solid book of the century +has sold better; and it has been translated into several continental +languages. + +Lewes did not confine himself to philosophy. Other and very different +subjects also attracted his attention. His mind ranged in many directions, +and his flexible genius found subjects of interest on all sides. In 1846 he +published a little book on _The Spanish Drama: Lope de Vega and Calderon_, +a slight affair, full of his peculiar prejudices, and devoted mainly to an +unsympathetic criticism. The following year he gave to the world an +ambitious novel, _Ranthorpe_. It seems to have been well read in its day, +was translated into German and reprinted on the continent by Tauchnitz. The +plot is well conceived, but the story is rapidly told, full of incident and +tragedy, and there is a subtle air of unreality about it. The experiences +of a poet are unfolded in a romantic form, and the attempt is made to show +what is the true purpose and spirit in which literature can be successfully +pursued. To this end there is a discussion running through the book on the +various phases of the literary life, much in the manner of Fielding. +_Ranthorpe_ would now be regarded as a very dull novel, and it is crude, +full of the sensational, with little analysis of character and much action. + +It was read, however, by Charlotte Bronte with great interest, and she +wrote of it to the author in these words: "In reading _Ranthorpe_ I have +read a new book--not a reprint--not a reflection of any other book, but _a +new book_. I did not know such books were written now. It is very different +to any of the popular works of fiction; it fills the mind with fresh +knowledge. Your experience and your convictions are made the reader's; and +to an author, at least, they have a value and an interest quite unusual." +In 1848, Lewes published another novel of a very different kind--_Rose, +Blanche and Violet_. This was a society novel, intended to reach the minds +of the ordinary novel-readers, but was not so successful as the first. It +has little plot or incident, but has much freshness of thought and +originality of style. + +The same year appeared his _Life of Robespierre_, the result of original +investigations, and based largely on unpublished correspondence. Without +any sympathy of opinion with Robespierre, and without any purpose of +vindicating his character, Lewes told the true story of his life, and +showed wherein he had been grossly misrepresented. The book was one of +much interest, though it lacked in true historic insight and was clumsily +written. While these works were appearing, Lewes was a voluminous +contributor to the periodical literature of the day. He wrote, at this +time and later, for the _Edinburgh Review_, the _Foreign Quarterly_, +_British Quarterly_, _Westminster Review_, _Fraser's Magazine_, +_Blackwood's Magazine_, _Cornhill Monthly_, _Saturday Review_, in the +_Classical Museum_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Atlas_ and various other +periodicals, and on a great variety of subjects. His work of this kind was +increased when in 1849 he became the literary editor of _The Leader_ +newspaper, a weekly journal of radical thought and politics. His +versatility, freshness of thought and vigor of expression made this +department of _The Leader_ of great interest. His reviews of books were +always good, and his literary articles piquant and forcible. In the first +volume he published a story called _The Apprenticeship of Life_. In April, +1852, he began in its columns a series of eighteen articles on Comte's +Positive Philosophy. In connection with the second article of this series +he asked for subscriptions in aid of Comte, and in the third reported that +three workingmen had sent in money. These subscriptions were continued +while the articles were in progress, and amounted to a considerable sum. In +1854 these essays were republished in Bohn's _Scientific Library_ under the +title of _Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences_. The _Leader_ was ably +conducted, but it was radical and outspoken, and did not receive the +support it deserved. In 1854 his connection with it came to an end. + +While connected with _The Leader_, Lewes had turned his attention to +Goethe, and made a thorough study of his life and opinions. After spending +many months in Weimar, and as a result of his studies in Germany, he +published in 1855 his _Life and Works of Goethe_. It was carefully +re-written in 1873, and the substance of it was given in an abbreviated +and more popular form a few years later. This has usually been accepted +as the best book about Goethe written in English. Mr. Anthony Trollope +expresses the usual opinion when he says, "As a critical biography of +one of the great heroes of literature it is almost perfect. It is short, +easily understood by common readers, singularly graphic, exhaustive, and +altogether devoted to the subject." On the other hand, Bayard Taylor +said that "Lewes's entertaining apology hardly deserves the name of a +biography." It is an opinionated book, controversial, egotistic, and +unnecessarily critical. It was written less with the purpose of +interpreting Goethe to the English reader than of giving expression +to Lewes's own views on many subjects. His chapters on Goethe's science +and on his realism are marked by an extreme dogmatism. The poetic and +religious side of Goethe's nature he was incapable of understanding, and +always misrepresents, as he did that side of his nature which allied Goethe +with Schiller and the other idealists. Lewes was always polemical, had some +theory to champion, some battle to fight. He did not write for the sake of +the subject, but because the subject afforded an arena of battle for the +theories to the advocacy of which he gave his life. + +With the completion of his _Life of Goethe_, Lewes turned his attention +more than ever to physiological studies, though he had continued to give +them much attention in the midst of his other pursuits. In 1858 appeared +his _Seaside Studies_, in which he recorded the results of his original +investigations at Ilfracombe, Tenby, Scilly Isles and Jersey. This volume +is written in a plain descriptive style, containing many interesting +accounts of scenery and adventure, explanations of the methods of study of +animal life at the seashore, how experiments are carried on, the results of +these special studies, and much of controversy with other observers. It +combines science and description in a happy manner. Another result of his +physiological studies was a paper "On the Spinal Cord as a Centre of +Sensation and Volition," read before the British Association for the +Advancement of Science, in 1858. This was followed the next year by three +published addresses on "The Nervous System," in which he presented those +theories which were more carefully developed in his latest work, where he +gave a systematic account of his philosophy. From this time on to his death +the greater part of his energies were given to these studies, and to the +building up of a philosophy based on physiology. A popular work, in which +many of his theories are unfolded, and marked throughout by his peculiar +ideas in regard to the relations of body and mind, was published in 1858. +This was his _Physiology of Common Life_, a work of great value, and +written in a simple, comprehensive style, suited to the wants of the +general reader. In the first volume he wrote of hunger and thirst, food and +drink, digestion, structure and uses of the blood, circulation of the +blood, respiration and suffocation, and why we are warm and how we keep so. +The second treats of feeling and thinking, the mind and the brain, our +senses and sensations, sleep and dreams, the qualities we inherit from our +parents, and life and death. In 1860 he printed in _The Cornhill Magazine_ +a series of six papers on animal life. They were reprinted in book form in +1861, under the title of _Studies in Animal Life_. More strictly scientific +than his _Seaside Studies_, they were even more popular in style, and +intended for the general reader. While these books were being published he +was at work on a more strictly scientific task, and one intended for the +thoughtful and philosophic reader. This was his _Aristotle: a Chapter from +the History of Science, including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific +Writings_, which was completed early in 1862, but not published until 1864. +As in his previous works, Lewes is here mainly concerned with an exposition +of his theories of the inductive method, and he judges Aristotle from this +somewhat narrow position. He refuses Aristotle a place among scientific +observers, but says he gave a great impulse towards scientific study, while +in intellectual force he was a giant. The book contains no recognition of +Aristotle's value as a philosopher; indeed his metaphysics are treated with +entire distrust or indifference. His fame is pronounced to be justifiably +colossal, but it is said he did not lay the basis of any physical science. +It is a work of controversy rather than of unbiassed exposition, and its +method is dry and difficult. + +Early in the year 1865, a few literary men in London conceived the project +of a new review, which should avoid what they conceived to be the errors of +the old ones. It was to be eclectic in its doctrinal position, contain only +the best literature, all articles were to be signed by the author's name, +and it was to be published by a joint-stock company. Lewes was invited to +become the editor of this new periodical, and after much urging he +consented. The first number of _The Fortnightly Review_ was published May +15,1865, It proved a financial failure, and was soon sold to a publishing +firm. The eclectic theory was abandoned, and the _Review_ became an +agnostic and radical organ under the management of its second editor, John +Morley. Lewes edited six volumes, when, in 1867, he was obliged, on account +of his health, to resign his position. He made the _Review_ an independent +and able exponent of current thought, and he kept it up to a very high +standard of literary excellence. His own contributions were among the best +things it contained, and give a good indication of the wide range of his +talent. In the first volume he published papers on "The Heart and the +Brain," and on the poetry of Robert Buchanan, as well as a series of four +very able and valuable papers on "The Principles of Success in Literature." +In the second volume he wrote about "Mr. Grote's Plato." In the third he +dealt with "Victor Hugo's Latest Poems," "Criticism in relation to Novels," +and "Auguste Comte." In this volume he began a series of essays entitled +"Causeries," in which he treated, in a light vein, of the passing topics of +the day. He wrote of Spinoza in the fourth volume, and of "Comte and Mill" +in the sixth, contributing nothing to the fifth. After Morley became the +editor, in the ninth and tenth volumes, he published three papers on +Darwin's hypothesis, and in 1878 there was a paper of his on the "Dread and +Dislike of Science." He also had a criticism of Dickens in the July number +of 1872, full of his subtle power of analysis and literary insight. + +Lewes in early life had a strong inclination to become an actor, and he did +go on the stage for a short time. He wrote and translated several plays, +one of his adaptations becoming very popular. He wrote dramatic criticisms +for the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and other journals, during many years. In 1875, +a volume of these papers was published with the title, _On Actors and the +Art of Acting_. It treated in a pleasant way, and with keen insight, of +Edmund Kean, Charles Kean, Rachel, Macready, Fan-en, Charles Matthews, +Frederic Lemaitre, the two Keeleys, Shakspere as actor and critic, natural +acting, foreign actors on our stage, the drama of Paris in 1865, Germany in +1867, and Spain in 1867, and of his first impressions of Salvini. Another +piece of work done by him was the furnishing, in 1867, of an explanatory +text to accompany Kaulbach's _Female Characters of Goethe_. + +The last years of Lewes's life were devoted to the preparation of a +systematic exposition of his physiological philosophy. As early as the year +1858, he was at work on the nervous system, and, soon after, his studies +took a systematic shape. In his series of volumes on the _Problems of Life +and Mind_ he gave to the world a new theory of the mind and of knowledge. +In the first two volumes, published in 1874, and entitled _The Foundations +of a Creed_, he developed his views on the methods of philosophic research. +These were followed in 1877 by a third volume, on _The Physical Basis of +Life_. After his death his wife edited two small volumes on Psychology, +which included all the writing he left in a form ready for publication. His +work was left incomplete, but its publication had gone far enough to show +the methods to be followed and the main conclusions to be reached. + +Concerning the work done by Lewes in philosophy, there will be much +difference of opinion. He did much through his various expositions to make +the public familiar with the inductive methods of inquiry and with the +conclusions of positive thought. He made his books readable, and even +popular, giving philosophy an exposition suited to the wants of the general +reader. At the same time, he was polemical and dogmatic, and more concerned +to be clever than to be exact in his interpretation. Into the meanings of +some of the greatest thinkers he had little clear insight, and he is seldom +to be implicitly trusted as an expositor of those whose systems were in any +way opposed to his own. His limitations have been well defined by Ribot, in +his _Contemporary English Psychology_. + +"Mr. Lewes lacks the vocation of the scholar, which, indeed, is generally +wanting in original minds. His history resembles rather that of Hegel than +that of Ritter. His review of the labors of philosophers is rather occupied +with that which they have thought, than with their comparative importance. +He judges rather than expounds; his history is fastidious and critical. It +is the work of a clear, precise and elegant mind, always that of a writer, +often witty, measured, possessing no taste for declamation, avoiding +exclusive solutions, and making its interest profitable to the reader whom +he forces to think." Ribot speaks of the work again as being original but +dogmatic and critical. He says it belongs to that class of books which make +history a pretext for conflict. "The author is less occupied with the +exposition of facts than he is with his method of warfare; he thinks less +of being exact than of being clever.... He has evidently no taste, or, if +we prefer so to put it, he has not the virtue necessary to face these +formidable folios, these undigested texts of scholastic learning, which the +historian of philosophy ought to penetrate, however repulsive to his +positive and lucid mind." + +On the other hand, Mr. Frederic Harrison has described the great success of +the _Biographical History of Philosophy_, and made it apparent what are its +chief merits. "This astonishing work was designed to be popular, to be +readable, to be intelligible. It was all of these in a singular degree. It +has proved to be the most popular account of philosophy of our time; it has +been republished, enlarged, and almost re-written, and each re-issue has +found new readers. It did what hardly any previous book on philosophy ever +did--it made philosophy readable, reasonable, lively, almost as exciting as +a good novel. Learners who had been tortured over dismal homilies on the +pantheism of Spinoza, and yet more dismal expositions of the pan-nihilism +of Hegel, seized with eagerness upon a little book which gave an intense +reality to Spinoza and his thoughts, which threw Hegel's contradictories +into epigrams, and made the course of philosophic thought unfold itself +naturally with all the life and coherence of a well-considered plot.... +There can be no possible doubt as to the success of this method. Men to +whom philosophy has been a wearisome swaying backward and forward of +meaningless phrases, found something which they could remember and +understand.... For a generation this 'entirely popular' book saturated the +minds of the younger readers. It has done as much as any book, perhaps-more +than any, to give the key to the prevalent thought of our time about the +metaphysical problems.... That such a book should have had such a triumph +was a singular literary fact. The opinions frankly expressed as to +theology, metaphysics, and many established orthodoxies; its conclusion, +glowing in every page, that metaphysics, as Danton said of the Revolution, +was devouring its own children, and led to self-annihilation; its +proclamation of Comte as the legitimate issue of all previous philosophy +and positive philosophy as its ultimate _irenicon_--all this, one might +think, would have condemned such a book from its birth. The orthodoxies +frowned; the professors sneered; the owls of metaphysic hooted from the +gloom of their various jungles; but the public read, the younger students +adopted it, the world learned from it the positive method; it held its +ground because it made clear what no one else had made clear--what +philosophy meant, and why philosophers differed so violently." + +This extravagant praise becomes even absurd when the writer gravely says +that this book "had simply killed metaphysic." A popular style and method +gave the book success, along with the fact that the temper of the time made +such a statement acceptable. It cleverly indicated the weak places in the +metaphysical methods, and it presented the advantages of the inductive +method with great eloquence and ingenuity. Its satire, and its contempt for +the more spiritualistic systems, also helped to make it readable. + +His later work, in which he develops his own positive conclusions, has the +merit of being one of the best expositions yet made of the philosophy of +evolution. In view, however, of his unqualified condemnation of the +theories of metaphysicians, his system is one of singular audacity of +speculation. Not even Schelling or Hegel has gone beyond him in theorizing, +or exceeded him in the ground traversed beyond the limits of demonstration. +He who had held up all speculative systems to scorn, distanced those he had +condemned, and showed how easy it is to take theory for fact. Metaphysic +has not had in its whole history a greater illustration of the daring of +speculation than in the case of Lewes's theory of the relations of the +subjective and objective. He interprets matter and mind, motion and +feeling, objective and subjective, as simply the outer and inner, the +concave and convex, sides of one and the same reality. Mind is the same as +matter, except that it is viewed from a different aspect. In this opinion +he resembles Schelling more than any other thinker, as he does in some +other of his speculations. As a monist, his conclusions are similar to +those of the leading German transcendentalists. Indeed, the evolution +philosophy he expounds is, in some of its aspects, but a development of the +identity philosophy of Schelling. In its monism, its theory of the +development of mind out of matter, and its conception of law, they are one +and the same. The evolution differs from the identity philosophy mainly in +its more scientific interpretation of the influence of heredity and the +social environment. The one is undoubtedly an outgrowth from the other, +while the audacious nights of speculation indulged in by Lewes rival +anything attempted even by Schelling. + +Lewes was one of the earliest English disciples of Auguste Comte, and he +probably did more than any other person to introduce the opinions of that +thinker to English students. He was a zealous and yet not a blind disciple, +rejecting for the most part the later speculations of Comte. Comte's +theories of social and religious construction were repugnant to Lewes's +mind, but his positive methods and his entire rejection of theology were +acceptable. Comte's positivism was the foundation of his own philosophy, +and he did little more than to expand and more carefully work out the +system of his predecessor. In psychology he went beyond Comte, through his +physiological studies, and by the adoption of the methods and results of +evolution. His discovery of the sociological factors of mind was a real +advance on his master. + +George Eliot's connection with Lewes had much to do with the +after-development of her mind. An affinity of intellectual purpose +and conviction drew them together. She found her philosophical theories +confirmed by his, and both together labored for the propagation of +that positivism in which they so heartily believed. Their lives and +influence are inseparably united. There was an almost entire unanimity of +intellectual conviction between them, and his books are in many ways the +best interpreters of the ethical and philosophical meanings of her novels. +Her thorough interest in his studies, and her comprehension of them, is +manifest on many of her pages. Her enthusiastic acceptance of positivism in +that spirit in which it is presented by Lewes, is apparent throughout all +her work. Their marriage was a companionship and a friendship. They lived +in each other, were mutual helpers, and each depended much on--the advice +and counsel of the other. Miss Mathilde Blind has pointed out how +thoroughly identical are their views of realism in art, and on many other +subjects they were as harmonious. They did not echo each other, but there +was an intimate affinity of intellectual apprehension and purpose. + +Immediately after their marriage, Lewes and his wife went to Germany, and +they spent a quiet year of study in Berlin, Munich and Weimar. Here he +re-wrote and completed his _Life of Goethe_. On their return to England +they took a house in Blandford Square, and began then to make that home +which was soon destined to have so much interest and attraction. A good +part of the year 1858 was also spent on the continent in study and travel. +Three months were passed in Munich, six weeks in Dresden, while Salzburg, +Vienna and Prague were also visited. The continent was again visited in the +summer of 1865, and a trip was taken through Normandy, Brittany and +Touraine. Other visits preceded and followed, including a study of Florence +in preparation for the writing of _Romola_, and a tour in Spain in 1867 to +secure local coloring for _The Spanish Gypsy_. In 1865, the house in +Blandford Square was abandoned for "The Priory," a commodious and pleasant +house on the North Bank, St. John's Wood. It was here Mr. and Mrs. Lewes +lived until his death. + + + + +IV. + + +CAREER AS AN AUTHOR. + +Until she was thirty-six years old Mrs. Lewes had given no hint that she +was likely to become a great novelist. She had shown evidence of large +learning and critical ability, but not of decided capacity for imaginative +or poetic creation. The critic and the creator are seldom combined in one +person; and while she might have been expected to become a philosophical +writer of large reputation, there was little promise that she would become +a great novelist. Before she began the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, she had +written but very little of an original character. She was not drawn +irresistibly to the career for which she was best fitted, and others had to +discover her gift and urge her to its use. Mr. Lewes saw that the person +who could write so admirably of what a novel ought to be, and who could so +skilfully point out the defects in the lady novelists of the day, was +herself capable of writing much better ones than those she criticised. It +was at his suggestion, and through his encouragement, she made her first +attempt at novel-writing. Her love of learning, her relish for literary and +philosophical studies, led her to believe that she could accomplish the +largest results in the line of the work she had already begun. Yet Lewes +had learned from her conversational powers, from her keen appreciation of +the dramatic elements of daily life, and from her fine humor and sarcasm, +that other work was within the range of her powers. Reluctantly she +consented to turn aside from the results of scholarship she had hoped to +accomplish, and with many doubts concerning her ability to become a writer +of fiction. The history of the publication of her first work, _Scenes +of Clerical Life_, has been fully told, and is helpful towards an +understanding of her career as an author. + +In the autumn of 1856, William Blackwood received from Lewes a short story +bearing--the title of "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," which he +sent as the work of an anonymous friend. His nephew has described the +results that followed on the reception of this novel by Blackwood, and its +publication in _Blackwood's Magazine_. "The story was offered as the first +instalment of a series; and though the editor pronounced that 'Amos' would +'do,' he wished to satisfy himself that it was no chance hit, and requested +a sight of the other tales before coming to a decision. Criticisms on the +plot and studies of character in 'Amos Barton' were frankly put forward, +and the editor wound up his letter by saying,' If the author is a new +writer, I beg to congratulate him on being worthy of the honors of print +and pay. I shall be very glad to hear from him or you soon.' At this time +the remaining _Scenes of Clerical Life_ were unwritten, and the criticisms +upon 'Amos' had rather a disheartening effect upon the author, which the +editor hastened to remove as soon as he became sensible of them, by +offering to accept the tale. He wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'If you think it would +stimulate the author to go on with the other tales, I shall publish 'Amos' +at once;' expressing also his 'sanguineness' that he would be able to +approve of the contributions to follow, as 'Amos' gave indications of +great freshness of style. Some natural curiosity had been expressed as +to the unknown writer, and a hint had been thrown out that he was 'a +clergyman,'--a device which, since it has the great sanction of Sir Walter +Scott, we must regard as perfectly consistent with the ethics of anonymous +literature. + +"'Amos Barton' occupied the first place in the magazine for January, 1857, +and was completed in the following number. By that time 'Mr. Gilfil's Love +Story' was ready, and the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ appeared month by +month, until they ended with 'Janet's Repentance' in November of that year. +As fresh instalments of the manuscript were received, the editor's +conviction of the power, and even genius, of his new contributor steadily +increased. In his first letter to the author after the appearance of 'Amos +Barton,' he wrote, 'It is a long time since I have read anything so fresh, +so humorous and so touching. The style is capital, conveying so much in so +few words.' In another letter, addressed 'My dear Amos,' for lack of any +more distinct appellation, the editor remarks, 'I forgot whether I told you +or Lewes that I had shown part of the MS. to Thackeray. He was staying with +me, and having been out at dinner, came in about eleven o'clock, when I had +just finished reading it. I said to him, 'Do you know that I think I have +lighted upon a new author who is uncommonly like a first-class passenger?' +I showed him a page or two--I think the passage where the curate returns +home and Milly is first introduced. He would not pronounce whether it came +up to my ideas, but remarked afterwards that he would have liked to have +read more, which I thought a good sign.' + +"From the first the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ arrested public attention. +Critics were, however, by no means unanimous as to their merits. They +had so much individuality--stood so far apart from the standards of +contemporary fiction--that there was considerable difficulty in applying +the usual tests in their case. The terse, condensed style, the exactitude +of expression, and the constant use of illustration, naturally suggested to +some the notion that the new writer must be a man of science relaxing +himself in the walks of fiction. The editor's own suspicions had once been +directed towards Professor Owen by a similarity of handwriting. Guesses +were freely hazarded as to the author's personality, and among other +conjectures was one that Lord Lyttoll, whose 'Caxton' novels were about +the same period delighting the readers of this magazine, had again struck +a new vein of fiction. Probably Dickens was among the first to divine that +the author must be a woman; but the reasons upon which he based this +opinion might readily have been met by equally cogent deductions from the +_Scenes_ that the writer must be of the male sex. Dickens, on the +conclusion of the _Scenes_, wrote a letter of most generous appreciation, +which, when sent through the editor, afforded the unknown author very +hearty gratification. + +"While 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' was passing through the magazine, the +editor was informed that he was to know the author as 'George Eliot.' It +was at this time, then, that a name so famous in our literature was +invented. We have no reason to suppose that it had been thought of when the +series was commenced. It was probably assumed from the impossibility of a +nameless shadow maintaining frequent communication with the editor of a +magazine; possibly the recollection of George Sand entered into the idea; +but the designation was euphonious and impressive. + +"Before the conclusion of the _Scenes_, Mr. Blackwood felt satisfied that +he had to do with a master mind, and that a great career as a novelist lay +open to George Eliot; and his frequent communications urged her warmly to +persevere in her efforts. When 'Janet's Repentance' was drawing to a close, +and arrangements were being made for re-issuing the sketches as a separate +publication, he wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'George Eliot is too diffident of his +own powers and prospects of success. Very few men, indeed, have more reason +to be satisfied as far as the experiment has gone. The following should be +a practical cheerer,'--and then he proceeded to say how the Messrs, +Blackwood had seen reason to make a large increase in the forthcoming +reprint of the _Scenes_. The volumes did not appear until after the New +Year of 1858; and their success was such that the editor was able, before +the end of the month, to write as follows to Lewes: 'George Eliot has +fairly achieved a literary reputation among judges, and the public must +follow, although it may take time. Dickens's letter was very handsome, and +truly kind. I sent him an extract from George Eliot's letter to me, and I +have a note from him, saying that 'he has been much interested by it,' and +that 'it has given him the greatest pleasure.' Dickens adheres to his +theory that the writer must be a woman.' To George Eliot herself he wrote +in February, 1858, 'You will recollect, when we proposed to reprint, my +impression was that the series had not lasted long enough in the magazine +to give you a hold on the general public, although long enough to make your +literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases, a very long time often +elapses between the two stages of reputation, the literary and the public. +Your progress will be _sure_, if not so quick as we could wish.'" + +The success of the _Clerical Scenes_ determined the literary career of Mrs. +Lewes. She began at once an elaborate novel, which was largely written in +Germany. It was sent to Blackwood for publication, and his nephew has given +a full account of the reception of the manuscript and the details of giving +the work to the public. + +"_Adam Bede_ was begun almost as soon as the _Scenes_ were finished, and +had already made considerable progress before their appearance in the +reprint. In February, 1858, the editor, writing to Mr. Lewes, says, 'I am +delighted to hear from George Eliot that I might soon hope to see something +like a volume of the new tale. I am very sanguine.' In a few weeks after, +the manuscript of the opening chapters of _Adam Bede_ was put into his +hands, and he writes thus to Lewes after the first perusal: 'Tell George +Eliot that I think _Adam Bede_ all right--most lifelike and real. I shall +read the MS. quietly over again before writing in detail about it.... For +the first reading it did not signify how many things I had to think of; I +would have hurried through it with eager pleasure. I write this note to +allay all anxiety on the part of George Eliot as to my appreciation of the +merits of this most promising opening of a picture of life. In spite of all +injunctions, I began _Adam Bede_ in the railway, and felt very savage when +the waning light stopped me as we neared the Scottish border.' A few weeks +later, when he had received further chapters, and had reperused the +manuscript from the beginning, Mr. Blackwood wrote to George Eliot, 'The +story is altogether very novel, and I cannot recollect anything at all like +it. I find myself constantly thinking of the characters as real personages, +which is a capital sign.' After he had read yet a little further he +remarks, 'There is an atmosphere of genuine religion and purity that fears +no evil, about the whole opening of the story.' George Eliot made an +expedition to Germany in the spring of 1858, and the bulk of the second +volume was sent home from Munich. Acknowledging the receipt of the +manuscript, the editor wrote to Lewes, 'There can be no mistake about the +merits, and I am not sure whether I expressed myself sufficiently warmly. +But you know that I am not equal to the _abandon_ of expression which +distinguishes the large-hearted school of critics.' Adam Bede was completed +in the end of October, 1858, and Mr. Blackwood read the conclusion at once, +and sent his opinions. He says, 'I am happy to tell you that I think it is +capital.--I never saw such wonderful efforts worked out by such a +succession of simple and yet delicate and minute touches. Hetty's night in +the fields is marvellous. I positively shuddered for her, poor creature; +and I do not think the most thoughtless lad could read that terrible +picture of her feelings and hopeless misery without being deeply moved. +Adam going to support her at the trial is a noble touch. You really make +him a gentleman by that act. It is like giving him his spurs. The way poor +Hetty leans upon and clings to Dinah is beautiful. Mr. Irwine is always +good; so are the Poysers, lifelike as possible. Dinah is a very striking +and original character, always perfectly supported, and never obtrusive in +her piety. Very early in the book I took it into my head that it would be +'borne in upon her' to fall in love with Adam. Arthur is the least +satisfactory character, but he is true too. The picture of his happy, +complacent feelings before the bombshell bursts upon him is very good.' + +"_Adam Bede_ was published in the last week of January, 1859. The author +was desirous on this occasion to test her strength by appealing directly to +the public; and the editor, though quite prepared to accept _Adam Bede_ for +the magazine, willingly gratified her. Sending George Eliot an early copy, +before _Adam Bede_ had reached the public, he says, 'Whatever the +subscription may be, I am confident of success--great success. The book is +so novel and so true, that the whole story remains in my mind like a +succession of incidents in the lives of people I know. _Adam Bede_ can +certainly never come under the class of popular agreeable stories; but +those who love power, real humor, and true natural description, will stand +by the sturdy carpenter and the living groups you have painted in and about +Hayslope.' + +"_Adam Bede_ did not immediately command that signal success which, looking +back to it now, we might have expected for it. As the editor had warned the +author, the Scenes had secured for her a reputation with the higher order +of readers and with men of letters, but had not established her popularity +with the public in general. The reviewers, too, were somewhat divided. Many +of them recognized the merits of the work, but more committed the blunder +of endeavoring to fix the position of the book by contrasting the author +with the popular novelists of the time, and by endeavoring to determine +from which of them she had drawn her inspiration. In 1859 a review of _Adam +Bede_ from the pen of one of the oldest and ablest of our contributors was +published in this magazine, and on its appearance George Eliot wrote the +editor, 'I should like you to convey my gratitude to your reviewer. I see +well he is a man whose experience and study enabled him to relish parts of +my book which I should despair of seeing recognized by critics in London +back drawing-rooms. He has gratified me keenly by laying his fingers on +passages which I wrote either from strong feeling or from intimate +knowledge, but which I had prepared myself to find passed over by +reviewers.' Soon after, _The Times_ followed with an appreciative notice of +the book which sounded its real merits, and did justice to the author's +originality of genius; and by the month of April the book was steadily +running through a second edition. Readers were beginning to realize that +the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ was not a mere chance success, but the work +of a writer capable of greater and better things." + +It was Mrs. Lewes's desire not to be known to the public in her own +personality, hence her adoption of a _nom de plume_. She shrank from the +consequences of a literary fame, had none of George Sand's love of +notoriety or desire to impress herself upon the world. It was her hope that +George Eliot and Mrs. Lewes would lead distinct lives so far as either was +known outside her own household; that the two should not be joined together +even in the minds of her most intimate friends. When her friend, the editor +of the _Westminster Review_, detected the authorship of _Adam Bede_, and +wrote to her in its praise, congratulating her on the success she had +attained, Lewes wrote to him denying positively that Mrs. Lewes was the +author. Charles Dickens also saw through the disguise, and wrote to the +publisher declaring his opinion that _Adam Bede_ was written by a woman. +When this was denied, he still persisted in his conviction, detecting the +womanly insight into character, her failure adequately to portray men, +while of women "she seemed to know their very hearts." + +The vividness with which scenes and persons about her childhood home were +depicted, speedily led to the breaking of this disguise. One of her +school-fellows, as soon as she had read _Adam Bede_, said, "George Eliot +is Marian Evans;" but others were only confident that the author must be +some Nuncaton resident, and began to look about them for the author. Some +portions of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ had already been discovered to +have a very strong local coloring, and now there was much curiosity as to +the personality of the writer. A dilapidated gentleman of the neighborhood, +who had run through with a fortune at Cambridge, was selected for the +honor. While the _Scenes_ were being published, an Isle of Man newspaper +attributed the authorship to this man, whose name was Liggins, but he at +once repudiated it. On the appearance of _Adam Bede_ this claim was again +put forward, and a local clergyman became the medium of its announcement +to the public. The London _Times_ printed the following letter in its issue +of April 15, 1859: "Sir,--The author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam +Bede_ is Mr. Joseph Liggins, of Nuncaton, Warwickshire. You may easily +satisfy yourself of my correctness by inquiring of any one in that +neighborhood. Mr. Liggins himself and the characters whom he paints are +as familiar there as the twin spires of Coventry.--Yours obediently, +H. ANDERS, Rector of Kirkby." + +The next day the following was printed by the same paper:-- + + Sir,--The Rev. H. Anders has with questionable delicacy and + unquestionable inaccuracy assured the world through your columns that + the author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam Bede_ is Mr. Joseph + Liggins, of Nuncaton. I beg distinctly to deny that statement. I + declare on my honor that that gentleman never saw a line of those works + until they were printed, nor had he any knowledge of them whatever. + Allow me to ask whether the act of publishing a book deprives a man of + all claim to the courtesies usual among gentlemen? If not, the attempt + to pry into what is obviously meant to be withheld--my name--and to + publish the rumors which such prying may give rise to, seems to me + quite indefensible, still more so to state these rumors as ascertained + facts. I am, sir. Yours, &c., GEORGE ELIOT. + +Liggins found his ardent supporters, and he explained the letter +repudiating the authorship of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ as being +written to further his own interests. He obtained money on the plea that he +was being deprived of his rights, by showing portions of a manuscript which +he had copied from the printed book. Neighboring clergymen zealously +espoused his cause, and a warm controversy raged for a little time +concerning his claim. Very curiously, it became a question of high and low +church, his own fellow-believers defending Liggins with zeal, while the +other party easily detected his imposition. Finally, Blackwood published a +letter in _The Times_ denying his claims, accompanied by one from George +Eliot expressing entire satisfaction with her publisher. A consequence of +this discussion was, that the real name of the author was soon known to the +public. + +The curiosity excited about the authorship of _Adam Bede_, the Liggins +controversy, and the fresh, original character of the book itself, soon +drew attention to its merits. It was referred to in a Parliamentary debate, +and it became the general topic of literary conversation. Its success was +soon assured, and it was not long before it was recognized that a new +novelist of the first order had appeared. + +It is as amusing as interesting now to look back upon the reception given +to _Adam Bede_ by the critics. It is not every critic who can detect a +great writer in his first unheralded book, and some very stupid blunders +were made in regard to this one. It was reviewed in _The Spectator_ for +February 12, 1859, in this unappreciative manner: "George Eliot's +three-volume novel of _Adam Bede_ is a story of humble life, where +religious conscientiousness is the main characteristic of the hero and +heroine, as well as of some of the other persons. Its literary feature +partakes, we fear, too much of that Northern trait which, by minutely +describing things and delineating individuals as matters of substantive +importance in themselves, rather than as subordinate to general interest, +has a tendency to induce a feeling of sluggishness in the reader." + +Not all the critics were so blundering as this one, however, and in the +middle of April, _The Times_ said there was no mistake about the character +of _Adam Bede_, that it was a first-rate novel, and that its author would +take rank at once among the masters of the craft. In April, also, +_Blackwood's Magazine_ gave the book a hearty welcome. The natural, genuine +descriptions of village life were commended, and the boot was praised for +its "hearty, manly sympathy with weakness, not inconsistent with hatred of +vice." Throughout this notice the author is spoken of as "Mr. Eliot." The +critic of the _Westminster Review_, in an appreciative and favorable +notice, expressed a doubt if the author could be a man. He cited Hetty as +proof that only a woman could have written the book, and said this +character could "only be delineated as it is by an author combining the +intense feelings and sympathies of a woman with the conceptive power of +artistic genius." The woman theory was pronounced to be beset with serious +difficulties, however, and the notice concluded with these words: "But +while pronouncing no decisive opinion on this point, we may remark that the +union of the best qualities of the masculine and feminine intellect is as +rare as it is admirable; that it is a distinguishing characteristic of the +most gifted artists and poets, and that to ascribe it to the author of +_Adam Bede_ is to accord the highest praise we can bestow." + +With the writing of _Adam Bede_, George Eliot accepted her career as a +novelist, and henceforth her life was devoted to literary creation. Even +before _Adam Bede_ was completed, her attention was directed to Savonarola +as the subject for a novel. Though this subject was in her mind, yet it was +not made use of until later. As soon as _Adam Bede_ was completed, she at +once began another novel of English life, and drawn even more fully than +its predecessors from her own experience. Of this new work a greater +portion of the manuscript was in the hands of the publishers with the +beginning of 1860. She called it _Sister Maggie_, from the name of the +leading character. This title did not please the publisher, and on the 6th +of January, Blackwood wrote to her suggesting that it be called _The Mill +on the Floss_. This title was accepted by George Eliot, and the new work +appeared in three volumes at the beginning of April, 1860. + +In July, 1859, there appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ a short story from +George Eliot bearing the title of "The Lifted Veil." This was followed by +another, in 1864, called "Brother Jacob." Both were printed anonymously and +are the only short stories she wrote after the _Clerical Scenes_. They +attracted attention, but were not reprinted until 1880, when they appeared +in the volume with _Silas Marner_, in Blackwood's "cabinet edition" of her +works. In March, 1861, _Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe_, her only +one-volume novel, was given to the public by Blackwood. + +Having carefully studied the life and surroundings of Savonarola, she now +took up this subject, and embodied it in her _Romola_. This novel appeared +in the _Cornhill Magazine_ from July, 1862, to July, 1863. It has been +reported that it was offered to Blackwood for publication, who rejected it +because it was not likely to be popular with the public. The probable +reason of its publication in the _Cornhill Magazine_ was that a large sum +was paid for its first appearance in that periodical. In a letter written +July 5, 1862, Lewes gave the true explanation. "My main object in +persuading her to consent to serial publication was not the unheard-of +magnificence of the offer, but the advantage to such a work of being read +slowly and deliberately, instead of being galloped through in three +volumes. I think it quite unique, and so will the public when it gets over +the first feeling of surprise and disappointment at the book not being +English and like its predecessor." The success it met with while under way +in the pages of the magazine may be seen from a letter written by Lewes on +December 18. "Marian lives entirely in the fifteenth century, and is much +cheered every now and then by hearing indirectly how her book is +appreciated by the higher class of minds, and some of the highest, though +it is not, and cannot be, popular. In Florence we hear they are wild with +delight and surprise at such a work being executed by a foreigner, as if an +Italian had ever done anything of the kind." _Romola_ was illustrated in +the _Cornhill Magazine_, and on its completion was reprinted by Smith, +Elder & Co., the publishers of that periodical. + +The success of _Romola_ was such as to lead George Eliot to begin on +another historical subject, though she was probably induced to do this much +more by its fitness to her purposes than by the public reception of the +novel. This time she gave her work a poetical and dramatic form. _The +Spanish Gypsy_ was written in the winter of 1864-5, but was laid aside for +more thorough study of the subject and for careful revision. She had +previously, in 1863, written a short story in verse, founded on the pages +of Bocaccio, entitled "How Lisa Loved the King." Probably other poems had +also been written, but poetry had not occupied much of her attention. As a +school-girl, and even after she had gone to London, she had written verses. +Among these earlier attempts, it may not be unsafe to conjecture, may have +been the undated poems which she has published in connection with _The +Legend of Jubal_. These are "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and go, +Love," and "The Death of Moses." + +After laying aside _The Spanish Gypsy_ she began on another novel of +English life, and _Felix Holt: the Radical_ was printed in three volumes by +Blackwood, in June, 1866. Shortly after, she printed in _Blackwood's +Magazine_--an "Address to workmen, by Felix Holt," in which she gave some +wholesome and admirable advice to the operative classes who had been +enfranchised by the Reform Bill. In the same magazine, "How Lisa Loved the +King" was printed in May, 1869. This was the last of her contributions to +its pages. Its publisher gave her many encouragements in her literary +career, and was devoted to her interests. After his death she gave +expression to her appreciation of his valuable aid in reaching the public, +through a letter addressed to his successor. + + I feel that his death was an irreparable loss to my mental life for + nowhere else is it possible that I can find the same long-tried + genuineness of sympathy and unmixed impartial gladness in anything I + might happen to do well. To have had a publisher who was in the fullest + sense of the word a gentleman, and at the same time a man of excellent + moral judgment, has been an invaluable stimulus and comfort to me. Your + uncle had retained that fruit of experience which makes a man of the + world, as opposed to the narrow man of literature. He judged well of + writing, because he had learned to judge well of men and things, not + merely through quickness of observation and insight, but with the + illumination of a heart in the right place--a thorough integrity and + rare tenderness of feeling. + +After a visit to Spain in the summer of 1867, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was +re-written and published by Blackwood, in June, 1868. During several years, +at this period of her life, her pen was busy with poetical subjects. "A +Minor Prophet" was written in 1865, "Two Lovers" in 1866, and "Oh may I +join the Choir Invisible" in 1867. "Agatha" was written in 1868, and was +published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for August, 1869. _The Legend of Jubal_ +was written in 1869 and was printed in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for May, +1870. In 1869 were also written the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and +Sister." "Armgart" was written in 1870, and appeared in _Macmillan's +Magazine_ in July, 1871. "Arion" and "Stradivarius" were written in 1873. +"A College Breakfast Party" was written in April, 1874, and was printed in +_Macmillan's Magazine_ for July, 1878. _The Legend of Jubal and other +Poems_ was published by Blackwood in 1874, and contained all the poems just +named, except the last. A new edition was published in 1879 as _The Legend +of Jubal and other Poems, Old and New_. The "new" poems in this edition are +"The College Breakfast Party," "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and +go, Love," and "The Death of Moses." + +To the longer of these poetical studies succeeded another novel of English +Life. _Middlemarch: a Study of Provincial Life_ was printed in twelve +monthly parts by Blackwood, beginning in December, 1871. Five years later, +_Daniel Deronda_ was printed in eight monthly parts by the same publisher, +beginning with February, 1876. This method of publication was probably +adopted for the same reason assigned by Lewes for the serial appearance of +_Romola_. Both novels attracted much attention, and were eagerly devoured +and discussed as the successive numbers appeared, the first because of its +remarkable character as a study of English life, the other because of its +peculiar ideas, and its defence of the Jewish race. Her last book, +_Impressions of Theophrastus Such_, a series of essays on moral and +literary subjects, written the year before, was published by Blackwood in +June, 1879. Its reception by the public was somewhat unfavorable, and it +added nothing of immediate enlargement to her reputation. + +Of miscellaneous writing George Eliot did but very little. While Mr. Lewes +was the editor of _The Leader_ newspaper, from 1849 to 1854, she was an +occasional contributor of anonymous articles to its columns. When he +founded _The Fortnightly Review_ she contributed to its first number, +published in May, 1865, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in +which she reviewed Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_. These occasional +efforts of her pen, together with the two short stories and the poems +already mentioned, constituted all her work outside her series of great +novels. She concentrated her efforts as few authors have done; and having +found, albeit slowly and reluctantly, what she could best accomplish, she +seldom strayed aside. When her pen had found its proper place it was not +often idle; and though she did not write rapidly, yet she continued +steadily at her work and accomplished much. Within twenty years she wrote +eight great works of fiction, including _The Spanish Gypsy_; works that are +destined to an immortality of fame. From almost entire obscurity her name +appeared, with the publication of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, to attract +attention among a few most appreciative readers, and it was destined then +to rise suddenly to the highest place of literary reputation with the +publication of _Adam Bede_. Her genius blazed clearly out upon the world in +the fulness of its powers, and each new work added to her fame, and +revealed some new capacity in the delineation of character. Her literary +career shows throughout the steady triumph of genius and of persistent +labor. + + + + +V. + + +PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. + +The home of Mrs. Lewes during the later years of her life was in one of the +London suburbs, near Regent's Park, in what is known as St. John's Wood, at +number 21, North Bank Street. This locality was not too far from the city +for the enjoyment and the use of its advantages, while it was out of the +noise and the smoke. The houses stand far apart, are surrounded with trees +and lawns, while all is quiet and beautiful. The square, unpretentious +house in which the Leweses lived was surrounded by a fine garden and green +turf, while flowers were abundant. A high wall shut it out from the street. +Within, all was refinement and good taste; there were flowers in the +windows, the furniture was plain and substantial, while quiet simplicity +reigned supreme. The house had two stories and a basement. On the first +floor were two drawing-rooms, a small reception room, a dining-room and Mr. +Lewes's study. These rooms were decorated by Owen Jones, their artist +friend. The second floor contained the study of George Eliot, which was a +plain room, not large. Its two front windows looked into the garden, and +there were book-cases around the walls, and a neat writing-desk. All things +about the house indicated simple tastes, moderate needs, and a plain method +of life. + +Mrs. Lewes usually went into her study at eight o'clock in the morning, and +remained there at work until one. If the weather was fine, she rode out in +the afternoon, or she walked in Regent's Park with Mr. Lewes. In case the +weather did not permit her going out, she returned again to her study in +the afternoon. The affairs of her household were so arranged that she could +give herself uninterruptedly to her work. The kitchen was in the basement, +a housekeeper had entire charge of the management of the house, and Mrs. +Lewes was carefully guarded from all outside interruptions. She very seldom +went into society, and she received but few visitors, except on Sunday +afternoons. Her letters were written by Mr. Lewes, with the exception of +those to personal friends or an occasional outside correspondent; and all +the details of the publication of her books and the management of her +business affairs were in his hands. The immediate success of her novels +made them profitable to the publisher, and she was paid comparatively large +sums for them. + +Her evenings were spent by Mrs. Lewes at home, in reading and singing, +unless she went to the theatre, as she often did. She walked much, often +visiting the zoological gardens, and she had a great liking for all kinds +of small animals. She greatly enjoyed travelling. Music was her passion, +and art her delight. She preferred the realistic painters, and she never +tired of the collections she often visited in London. + +The health of Mrs. Lewes was never good. She was a constant sufferer, was +nervous, excitable and low-spirited. Only by the utmost care and husbanding +of her powers was she enabled to accomplish her work. In a note to one of +her correspondents she has given some hint of the almost chronic languor +and bodily weakness from which she suffered. + + The weather, our ailments, and various other causes, have made us put + off our flight from one week to another, but now we are really + fluttering our wings and making a dust about us. I wish we had seen you + oftener. I was placidly looking forward to your staying in England + another year or more, and gave way to my general languor about seeing + friends in these last months, which have been too full of small bodily + miseries for me to feel that I had much space to give to pleasanter + occupation. + +Only those who knew her long and well can fitly describe such a woman as +Mrs. Lewes. Personal intimacy gives a color to the words used, and a +meaning to the delicate shades of expression, that can be had in no other +way. One of her friends has described her as being of "the middle height, +the head large, the brow ample, the lower face massive; the eyes gray, +lighting up from time to time with a sympathetic glow; the countenance +sensitive, spiritual, with 'mind and music breathing' from it; the general +demeanor composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but +somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving evenly, as it were +in a monotone, though now and then rising, with a sort of quiet eagerness, +into a higher note." The same writer speaks of the close-fitting flow of +her robe, and the luxuriant mass of light-brown hair hanging low on both +sides of her head, as marked characteristics of her costume. Her features +were very plain and large, too large for anything like beauty, but strongly +impressive by their very massiveness. More than one of her friends has +spoken of her resemblance to Savonarola, perhaps suggested by her +description of that monk-prophet in _Romola_. Mr. Kegan Paul finds that she +also resembled Dante and Cardinal Newman, and that these four were of the +same spiritual family, with a curious interdependence of likeness. All +these persons have "the same straight wall of brow; the droop of the +powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion kept resolutely +under control; a square jaw, which would make the face stern were it not +counteracted by the sweet smile of lips and eye." Her friends say that no +portrait does her justice, that her massive we features could not be +portrayed. "The mere shape of the head," says Kegan Paul, "would be the +despair of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely +be possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to the +frame, of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her, +although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that, after all, she +was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow and brain." + +An account of her personal traits has been given by Mrs. Lippincott. "She +impressed me," says this writer, "at first as exceedingly plain, with the +massive character of her features, her aggressive jaw and evasive blue +eyes. But as she grew interested and earnest in conversation, a great light +flashed over or out of her face, till it seemed transfigured, while the +sweetness of her rare smile was something quite indescribable. But she +seemed to me to the last lofty and cold. I felt that her head was among the +stars--the stars of a wintry night." Another American, Miss Kate Field, in +writing of the English authors to be seen in Florence half a dozen years +after George Eliot began her career, was the first to give an account of +this new literary star. "She is a woman of large frame and fair Saxon +coloring. In heaviness of jaw and height of cheek-bone she greatly +resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, +judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and +amiable, while her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In +conversation Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining, and her interest in young +writers is a trait which immediately takes captive all persons of this +class. We shall not forget with what kindness and earnestness she addressed +a young girl who had just begun to handle a pen, how frankly she related +her own literary experience, and how gently she _suggested_ advice. True +genius is always allied to humility; and in seeing Mrs. Lewes do the work +of a good Samaritan so unobtrusively, we learned to respect the woman as +much as we had ever admired the writer. 'For years,' said she to us, 'I +wrote reviews because I knew too little of humanity.'" + +These sketches by persons who only met her casually have an interest in the +illustration of her character; and they may be added to by still another +account, written by Mrs. Annie Downs, also an American, in 1879, and +describing a visit to George Eliot two years before her death. "Tall, +slender, with a grace most un-English, her face, instead of beauty, +possessed a sweet benignity, and at times flashed into absolute brilliancy. +She was older than I had imagined, for her hair, once fair, was gray, and +unmistakable lines of care and thought were on the low, broad brow. But +although a pang pierced my heart as I recognized that most of her life was +behind her, so intensely did I feel her personality that in a moment I lost +sight of her age; it was like standing soul to soul, and beyond the reach +of time. Dressed in black velvet, with point lace on her hair, and repeated +at throat and wrists, she made me think at once of Romola and Dorothea +Brooke. She talked of Agassiz, of his museum at Cambridge, of the great +natural-history collections at Naples, of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures, +and with enthusiasm of Mr. Furnival's Shakspere and Chaucer classes at the +Working Men's College... She had quaint etchings of some of the monkeys at +the zoological gardens, and told me she was more interested in them than +any of the other animals, they exhibit traits so distinctly human. She +declared, while her husband and friends laughingly teased her for the +assertion, that she had seen a sick monkey, parched with fever, absolutely +refuse the water he longed for, until the keeper had handed it to a friend +who was suffering more than he. As an illustration of their quickness, she +told me, in a very dramatic manner, of a nurse who shook two of her little +charges for some childish misdemeanor while in the monkey house. No one +noticed the monkeys looking at her, but pretty soon every old monkey in the +house began shaking her children, and kept up the process until the little +monkeys had to be removed for fear their heads would be shaken off. I felt +no incongruity between her conversation and her books. She talked as she +wrote; in descriptive passages, with the same sort of humor, and the same +manner of linking events by analogy and inference. The walls were covered +with pictures. I remember Guido's Aurora, Michael Angelo's prophets, +Raphael's sibyls, while all about were sketches, landscapes and crayon +drawings, gifts from the most famous living painters, many of whom are +friends of the house. A grand piano, opened and covered with music, +indicated recent and continual use." + +One of her intimate friends says that "in every line of her face there was +powder, and about her jaw and mouth a prodigious massiveness, which might +well have inspired awe had it not been tempered by the most gracious smile +which ever lighted up human features, and was ever ready to convert what +otherwise might have been terror into fascination!" We are told that "an +extraordinary delicacy pervaded her whole being. She seemed to live upon +air, and the rest of her body was as light and fragile as her countenance +and intellect were massive." One of the results of this large brain and +fragile body was, that she was never vigorous in health. Only her quiet, +simple life, and avoidance of all excitement in regular work, enabled her +to accomplish so much as she did. Her conversation was rich and attractive. +She talked much as she wrote, was a good listener, never obtruded her +opinions, and always had a noble moral purpose in her words. + +An American lady has given an interesting account of her home and of her +conversation. "No one," says Mrs. Field, "who had ever seen her could +mistake the large head (her brain must be heavier than most men's) covered +with a mass of rich auburn hair. At first I thought her tall; for one could +not think that such a head could rest on an ordinary woman's shoulders. +But, as she rose up, her figure appeared of but medium height. She received +us very kindly. In seeing, for the first time, one to whom we owed so many +happy hours, it was impossible to feel towards her as a stranger. All +distance was removed by her courtesy. Her manners are very sweet, because +very simple and free from affectation. To me her welcome was the more +grateful as that of one woman to another. There is a sort of free-masonry +among women, by which they understand at once those with whom they have any +intellectual sympathy. A few words, and all reserve was gone. 'Come, sit by +me on this sofa,' she said; and instantly, seated side by side, we were +deep in conversation. It is in such intimacy one feels the magnetism of a +large mind informed by a true woman's heart; then, as the soul shines +through the face, one perceives its intellectual beauty. No portrait can +give the full expression of the eye any more than of the voice. Looking +into that clear, calm eye, one sees a transparent nature, a soul of +goodness and truth, an impression which is deepened as you listen to her +soft and gentle tones. A low voice is said to be an excellent thing in a +woman. It is a special charm of the most finely cultured English ladies. +But never did a sweeter voice fascinate a listener,--so soft and low that +one must almost bend to hear. You can imagine what it was thus to sit for +an hour beside this gifted woman and hear talk of questions interesting to +the women of England and America. But I should do her great injustice if I +gave the impression that there was in her conversation any attempt at +display. There is no wish to shine. She is above that affectation of +brilliancy which is often mere flippancy. Nor does she seek to attract +homage and admiration. On the contrary, she is very averse to speak of +herself, or even to hear the heartfelt praise of others. She does not +engross the conversation, but is more eager to listen than to talk. She has +that delicate tact--which is one of the fine arts among women--to make +others talk, suggesting topics the most rich and fruitful, and by a word +drawing the conversation into a channel where it may flow with broad, free +current. Thus she makes you forget the celebrated author, and think only of +the refined and highly cultivated woman. You do not feel awed by her +genius, but only quickened by it, as something that calls out all that is +better and truer. While there is no attempt to impress you with her +intellectual superiority, you naturally feel elevated into a higher sphere. +The conversation of itself floats upward into a region above the +commonplace. The small-talk of ordinary society would seem an impertinence. +There is a singular earnestness about her, as if those mild eyes looked +deep into the great, sad, awful truths of existence. To her, life is a +serious reality, and the gift of genius a grave responsibility." + +Mrs. Lewes was in the habit for many years of receiving her friends on +Sunday afternoons from two to six o'clock. These gatherings came to be +among the most memorable features of London literary life. A large number +of persons, both men and women, attended her receptions, and among them +many who were well known to the scientific or literary world. Especially +were young men of aspiring minds drawn hither and given a larger +comprehension of life. She had no political or fashionable connections, +says Mr. F.W.H. Myers, "but nearly all who were most eminent in art, +science, literature, philanthropy, might be met from time to time at her +Sunday-afternoon receptions. There were many women, too, drawn often from +among very different traditions of thought and belief, by the unfeigned +goodness which they recognized in Mrs. Lewes's look and speech, and +sometimes illumining with some fair young face a _salon_ whose grave talk +needed the grace which they could bestow. And there was sure to be a +considerable admixture of men not as yet famous,--probably never to be +so,--but whom some indication of studies earnestly pursued, of sincere +effort for the good of their fellow-men, had recommended to 'that +hopeful interest which'--to quote a letter of her own--'the elder mind, +dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to those +younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.' +It was Mr. Lewes who on these occasions contributed the cheerful +_bonhomie_, the observant readiness, which are necessary for the facing of +any social group. Mrs. Lewes's manner had a grave simplicity, which rose in +closer converse into an almost pathetic anxiety to give of her best--to +establish a genuine human relation between herself and her interlocutor--to +utter words which should remain as an active influence for good in the +hearts of those who heard them. To some of her literary admirers, this +serious tone was distasteful; they were inclined to resent the prominence +given to moral ideas in a quarter from which they preferred to look merely +for intellectual refreshment. Mrs. Lewes's humor, though fed from a deep +perception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, except in intimate +moments, any buoyant or contagious quality, and in all her talk--full of +matter and wisdom, and exquisitely worded as it was--there was the same +pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was more welcome to those +whose object was distinctively to _learn_ from her, than to those who +merely wished to pass an idle and brilliant hour. To her, these mixed +receptions were a great effort. Her mind did not move easily from one +individuality to another, and when she afterward thought that she had +failed to understand some difficulty which had been laid before her,--had +spoken the wrong word to some expectant heart,--she would suffer from +almost morbid accesses of self-reproach." A further idea of these +conversations may be gathered from Mr. Kegan Paul's account. "When London +was full," he says, "the little drawing-room in St. John's Wood was now and +then crowded to overflowing with those who were glad to give their best of +conversation, of information, and sometimes of music, always to listen with +eager attention to whatever their hostess might say, when all that she said +was worth hearing. Without a trace of pedantry, she led the conversation to +some great and lofty strain. Of herself and her works she never spoke; of +the works and thoughts of others she spoke with reverence, and sometimes +even too great tolerance. But these afternoons had the highest pleasure +when London was empty, or the day was wet, and only a few friends were +present, so that her conversation assumed a more sustained tone than was +possible when the rooms were full of shifting groups. It was then that, +without any premeditation, her sentences fell as fully formed, as wise, as +weighty, as epigrammatic, as any to be found in her books. Always ready, +but never rapid, her talk was not only good in itself, but it encouraged +the same in others, since she was an excellent listener, and eager to +hear." + +At these gatherings the most noted of the English disciples of Comte were +to be found, and among them Frederic Harrison, Prof. E.S. Beesley, Dr. +Congrove, the director of the London Church of Humanity, and Prof. W.K. +Clifford. The English positivists were represented by Herbert Spencer, +Prof. T.H. Huxley and Moncure D. Conway. The realistic school of poets and +artists came in the persons of its most representative men. Dante Rosetti +and Millais, Tourguenief and Burne Jones, DuMaurier and Dr. Hueffner +illustrated most of its phases. The great world of general literature sent +Sir Arthur Helps, Sir Theodore Martin, Anthony Trollope, C.G. Leland, +Justin McCarthy, Frederic Myers, Prof. Mark Pattison and many another. The +rarer guests included Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. It was no +inconsiderable influence which could draw together such a company and hold +it together for many years. Of the part played in these gatherings by the +hosts, Miss Mathilde Blind has given an account. Lewes acted "as a social +cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the fascination of his manners, +diffused that general sense of ease and _abandon_ so requisite to foster an +harmonious flow of conversation. He was inimitable as a _raconteur_, and +Thackeray, Trollope and Arthur Helps were fond of quoting some of the +stories which he would dramatize in the telling. One of the images which, +on these occasions, recurs oftenest to George Eliot's friends is that of +the frail-looking woman who would sit with her chair drawn close to the +fire, and whose winning womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one +who had the privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with +its strongly marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life +than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves +more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of +expression, especially softening the too prominent under lip and massive +jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with gray, whose smooth bands made a kind +of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with lappets of +rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her gray-blue +eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute sensitiveness as +her long, thin, beautifully shaped hands. She had a pleasant laugh and +smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely sympathetic in quality; +it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang or played before more than +one or two friends. Though her conversation was perfectly easy, each +sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed, as the style of her +published works." + +Among the persons who gathered at The Priory on Sunday afternoons there +came to be a considerable number of those who were Mrs. Lewes's devoted +disciples. They hung upon her words, they accepted her views of life, her +philosophy became theirs. That she would have admitted such discipleship +existed there is no reason to believe, and it is certain she did not +attempt to bring it about or even desire it. So great, however, was her +power of intellect, so noble her personal influence, it was impossible that +ardent young natures could refrain from devotion to such genius and speedy +acceptance of its teachings. The richness of her moral and intellectual +nature aided largely in this heroine worship, but she impressed herself on +other minds because she was so much an individual, because her personality +was of a kind to command reverence and devotion. It was not merely young +and impulsive natures who were thus attracted and inspired, for Edith +Simcox says that "men and women, old friends and new, persons of her own +age and of another generation, the married and the single, impulsive +lovers and hard-headed philosophers, nay, even some who elsewhere might +have passed for cynics, all classes alike yielded to the attractive force +of this rare character, in which tenderness and strength were blended +together, and as it were transfused with something that was all her +own--the genius of sweet goodness." Perhaps her influence was so great on +those it reached because it demanded high and noble life and thought of her +disciples. Her moral ideal was a high one, and she had literary and +artistic standards that demanded all the effort of both genius and talent, +while her culture was such as to be exacting in its requirements. So we +find Miss Simcox saying that Mrs. Lewes, in her friendships, "had the +unconscious exactingness of a full nature. She was intolerant of a vacuum +in the mind or character, and she was indifferent to admiration that did +not seem to have its root in fundamental agreement with those principles +she held to be most 'necessary to salvation.' Where this sympathy existed, +her generous affection was given to a fellow-believer, a fellow-laborer, +with singularly little reference to the fact that such full sympathy was +never unattended with profound love and reverence for herself as a living +witness to the truth and power of the principles thus shared. To love her +was a strenuous pleasure; for in spite of the tenderness for all human +weakness that was natural to her, and the scrupulous charity of her overt +judgments, the fact remained that her natural standard was ruthlessly out +of reach, and it was a painful discipline for her friends to feel that she +was compelled to lower it to suit their infirmities. The intense humility +of her self-appreciation, and the unfeigned readiness with which she would +even herself with any sinner who sought her counsel, had the same effect +upon those who would compare what she condemned in herself with what she +tolerated in them. And at the same time, no doubt, this total absence of +self-sufficiency had something to do with the passionate tenderness with +which commonplace people dared to cherish their immortal friend." + +As has already been suggested, her womanliness is a more prominent +characteristic of Mrs. Lewes's mind than its great intellectual power. Her +sympathy was keen and most sensitive, her modesty and humility were almost +excessive, and her tenderness of nature was a woman's own. She gave her +sympathy readily and freely to the humble and unfavored. She had no taint +of intellectual aristocracy, says one of her friends. Faithful, devoted +love; the sacredness of simple duties and plain work; earnest help of other +souls,--these were among the daily lessons of her life and teaching. "How +strong was the current of her sympathy in the direction of all humble +effort," exclaims one of her friends, "how reluctantly she checked +presumption! The most ordinary and uninteresting of her friends must feel +that had they known nothing of her but her rapid insight into and quick +response to their inmost feelings she would still have been a memorable +personality to them. This sympathy was extended to the sorrows most unlike +anything she could ever by any possibility have known--the failures of life +obtained as large a share of her compassion as its sorrows. The wish to +console and cheer was indeed rooted in the most vital part of her nature." +Another of her friends has said that "she possessed to a marvellous degree +the divine gifts of charity, and of attracting moral outcasts to herself, +whose devils she cast out, if I may be permitted the expression, by +shutting her eyes to their existence. In her presence you felt wrapped +round by an all-embracing atmosphere of sympathy and readiness to make the +least of all your short comings, and the most of any good which might be in +you. But great as was her personality, she shrank with horror from +intruding it upon you, and, in general society, her exquisitely melodious +voice was, unhappily for the outside circles, too seldom raised beyond the +pitch of something not much above a whisper. Of the rich vein of humor +which runs through George Eliot's works there was comparatively little +trace in her conversation, which seldom descended from the grave to the +gay. But although she rarely indulged in conversational levity herself, she +was most tolerant of it, and even encouraged its ebullition, in others, +joining heartily in any mirth which might be going on." + +She made her younger admirers feel the deeper influence of her great +personality by inspiring them with the largest moral purposes. To awaken +and to arouse the moral nature seems always to have been her purpose, and +to lead it to the highest attainable results. Earnest young minds never +"failed to feel in her presence that they were for the time, at all events, +raised into a higher moral level, and none ever left her without feeling +inspired with a stronger sense of duty, and positively under the obligation +of striving to live up to a higher standard of life." Hence her personal +influence was considerable, though she led the close life of a student, and +did not go into general society at all. This high moral earnestness made +her a prophet to her friends, as in her books it made her a great moral +teacher to the world at large. Those who had the privilege of an intimate +acquaintance with Mrs. Lewes have pronounced the woman greater than her +books. She was not only a great writer but a great woman. Human nature in +its largest capacities was represented in her, for she rose above the +limitations of sex; and she is thought of less as a great woman than as a +large human personality. Hers was a massive nature, emphatic, individual, +many-sided. Genius of a very high order, though not the highest, was hers, +while she was possessed of a broad culture and great learning. Seldom does +genius carry with it talents so varied and well-trained or a culture so +full and thorough. And her culture was of that kind which entered into +every fibre of her nature and became a part of her own personality. It was +thoroughly digested and absorbed into good healthy red blood, and became a +quickened, sustained motive to the largest efforts. How vital this love of +culture was, may be seen when we are told that "she possessed in an eminent +degree that power which has led to success in so many directions, of +keeping her mind unceasingly at the stretch without conscious fatigue. She +would cease to ponder or to read when other duties called her, but never +because she herself felt tired. Even in so complex an effort as a visit to +a picture gallery implies, she could continue for hours at the same pitch +of earnest interest, and outweary strong men. Nor was this a mere habit of +passive reception. In the intervals between her successive compositions her +mind was always fusing and combining its fresh stores." + +She had culture, moral power and earnestness in a high degree, warmth of +sympathy and sensitiveness to all beauty, but she had no saintliness. +Profound as was her reverence for moral purity, and lofty as was her moral +purpose, she was not a saint, and holiness was not a characteristic of her +nature. This clear and high sense of moral truth everywhere appears in her +life and thought. "For the lessons most imperatively needed by the mass of +men, the lessons of deliberate kindness, of careful truth, of unwavering +endeavor,--for these plain themes one could not ask a more convincing +teacher than she. Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with +the bent of her soul. The deeply lined face, the too marked and massive +features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way +was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed entirely from within. +Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external +harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined +themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to +speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave +appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence +of a wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice which best revealed her, a +voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her +uttered words with the mystery of a world that must remain untold. And then +again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion +would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in +unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not +one to be soon forgotten. It has not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls +to whose childlike confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was +the look of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks are laid, +and which finds in their accomplishment its only imagination of joy." + +Another side of her influence on persons is expressed by the representative +of that publishing house which gave her books to the world. "In addition to +the spell which bound the world to her by her genius, she had a personal +power of drawing to herself, in ties of sympathy and kindly feeling, all +who came under her influence. She never oppressed any one by her talents; +she never allowed any one to be sensible of the depth and variety of her +scholarship; she knew, as few know, how to draw forth the views and +feelings of her visitors, and to make their sympathies her own. There was a +charm in her personal character which of itself was sufficient to +conciliate deep and lasting regard. Every one who entered her society left +it impressed with the conviction that they had been under the influence of +a sympathy and tenderness not less remarkable than the force of her mental +power.... Her deep and catholic love for humanity in its broadest and best +sense, which was in itself the strongest quickening motive of her genius, +will maintain her influence in the future as in the present." + +Hers was a somewhat sensitive, shrinking nature, with no self-assumption, +and without the taint of egotism. She had a modest estimate of her own +great literary creations, and shrank from all mention of them and from the +homage paid to her as an author. After the publication of _Romola_ she was +one day reading French to a girl companion in the garden of a Swiss hotel, +when a lady drew near to listen to the silvery tones of her voice. Noticing +this, she said, "Do you understand?" The lady answered, "I do not care for +the matter; I only came to listen to your voice." "Do you like it?" was +then inquired. When the lady expressed the pleasure it gave her, Mrs. Lewes +took her hand and warmly said, "I thank you. I would rather you would +compliment my voice than my _Romola_." [Footnote: This story is not +authenticated; it may be taken for what it is worth, though it appears to +be characteristic.] + +It has been truly said of her that above all novelists, with the exception +of Goethe, she was supreme in culture. She had a passion for knowledge, and +zeal in the pursuit of learning. She was a lover of books, but not a +scholar in the technical and exact sense. Delighting in literature, art, +music, and all that appeals to the imagination, rather than in mere +information, yet she was a thinker of original powers, with a keen +appreciation of philosophy, and ability to tread its most difficult paths +with firm step. She had an intimate acquaintance with the literatures of +Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and she was well read in the classics of +Greece and Rome. She was "competently acquainted" with the different +systems of philosophy, and she had mastered their problems while thinking +out her own conclusions. Having no professional knowledge of the sciences, +she was a diligent reader of scientific books, and was familiar with all +the bearings of science on philosophy and religion. Her books show an +intimate knowledge of modern thought in many of its phases, as it bears +upon physical, economic, historical and intellectual science. With all her +learning, however, she retained a woman's sympathy with life, beauty and +poetry. Her knowledge was never dry and technical, but warm and imaginative +with genius and poetry. [Footnote: Her scholarly habits, and her realistic +tendencies, usually made George Eliot very painstaking and accurate, but an +occasional slip of pen or memory is to be noted in her books. In +Theophrastus Such she credited to the Apologia of Plato what is really +contained in the Phaedo. The motto to chapter seventeen of Daniel Deronda +was quoted, in the first edition, as from In Memoriam instead of Locksley +Hall. In an early chapter of Felix Holt she made the parson preach from the +words, "Break up the fallow ground of your hearts." The words of scripture +are, "Break up your fallow ground." In Adam Bede a clergyman is made to +take the words of the Prayer Book, "In the midst of life we are in death," +for his text.] + +Her culture may be compared with Mrs. Browning's, who was also an extensive +reader and widely informed. The poet as well as the novelist acquired her +learning because of her thirst for knowledge, and mainly by her own +efforts; but she preferred the classics to science, and literature to +philosophy. Mrs. Browning was the wiser, George Eliot the more learned. The +writings of Mrs. Browning are less affected by her information than George +Eliot's; and this is true because she was of a more poetical temperament, +because her imagination was more brilliant and creative. + +Mrs. Lewes was an enthusiastic lover of art, and especially of music. She +never tired in her interest in beholding fine paintings, and music was the +continual delight of her life. She was a tireless frequenter of picture +galleries, and every fine musical entertainment in London was sure to find +her, in company with Mr. Lewes, an enthusiastic listener. Good acting also +claimed not a little of her interest, and she carefully studied even the +details of the dramatic art, so that she was able to give a critical +appreciation to the acting she enjoyed. Indeed, she had given to her mind +that rounded fulness of attainment, and developed all her faculties +with that due proportion, which Fichte so earnestly preached as the +characteristic of true culture. "Her character," says Edith Simcox, "seemed +to include every possibility of action and emotion; no human passion was +wanting in her nature, there were no blanks or negations; and the +marvellous thing was to see how, in this wealth of impulses and desires, +there was no crash of internal discord, no painful collisions with other +human interests outside; how, in all her life, passions of volcanic +strength were harnessed in the service of those nearest her, and so +inspired by the permanent instinct of devotion to her kind, that it seemed +as if it were by her own choice they spent themselves there only where +their force was welcome. Her very being was a protest against the opposing +and yet cognate heresies that half the normal human passions must be +strangled in the quest of virtue, and that the attainment of virtue is a +dull and undesirable end, seeing that it implies the sacrifice of most that +makes life interesting." She had her own temptations and her imperfections. +With these she struggled bravely, and set herself to the hard task of +correction and discipline. Her culture was not merely one of books, but it +was also one of moral discipline and of strenuous spiritual subjection. It +was one of stern moral requirements and duties, as well as one of large +sympathy with all that is natural and beautiful. + +It was a quiet life of continuous study and authorship which Mrs. Lewes led +in The Priory, and it was varied from year to year only by her visits to +the continent and by her summer residence in Surrey. One of her summer +retreats, at the village of Shotter Mill, has been described, as well as +her life there. The most picturesque house in the place is known as +Brookbank, and here she spent a summer, that of 1871. It is described as +"an old two-storied cottage, the front of the house being half-covered with +trailing rose-trees. The rooms are low but pleasant, and furnished in a +simple, comfortable manner. We have often endeavored," says the writer of +this account, "to glean some information regarding George Eliot's life at +Shotter Mill, but she and Mr. Lewes lived in such seclusion that there was +very little to be told. They seldom crossed their threshold during the day, +but wandered over the commons and hills after sundown. They were very +anxious to lodge at the picturesque old farm, ten minutes' walk beyond +Brookbank, but all available room was then occupied. However, George Eliot +would often visit the farmer's wife, and, sitting on a grassy bank just +beside the kitchen door, would discuss the growth of fruit and the quality +of butter in a manner so quiet and simple the good country folks were +astonished, expecting very different conversation from the great novelist. +The farmer was employed to drive them two or three times a week. They +occasionally visited Tennyson, whose home is only three miles distant, +though a rather tedious drive, since it is up hill nearly all the way. +George Eliot did not enjoy the ride much, for the farmer told us that, +'withal her being such a mighty clever body,--she were very nervous in a +carriage--allays wanted to go on a smooth road, and seemed dreadful feared +of being thrown out.' George Eliot was writing _Middlemarch_ during her +summer at Brookbank, and the term for which they had the cottage expired +before they wished to return to London. The Squire was away at the time, so +they procured permission to use his house during the remainder of the +visit. In speaking of them he said, 'I visited Mr. and Mrs. Lewes several +times before they went back to town, and found the authoress a very +agreeable woman, both in manner and appearance; but her mind was evidently +completely absorbed in her work; she seemed to have no time for anything +but writing from morning till night. Her hand could hardly convey her +thoughts to paper fast enough. It was an exceptionally hot summer, and yet +through it all Mrs. Lewes would have artificial heat placed at her feet to +keep up the circulation. Why, one broiling day I came home worn out, +longing for a gray sky and a cool breeze, and on going into the garden I +found her sitting there, her head just shaded by a deodara on the lawn, +writing away as usual. I expostulated with her for letting the midday sun +pour down on her like that. 'Oh,' she replied, 'I like it. To-day is the +first time I have felt warm this summer.' So I said no more, and went my +way.' And thus nearly all we could learn about George Eliot was that she +loved to bask in the sun and liked green peas. She visited some of the +cottagers, but only those living in secluded places, who knew nothing of +her. Just such people as these she used in her graphic and realistic +sketches of peasant life. With regard to the surrounding country, George +Eliot said that it pleased her more than any she knew of in England." + +In these summer retreats she continued steadily at her work, and she +greatly delighted in the quiet and rest. Other summers were spent at +Witley, in the same county, where the fine scenery, lovely drives and +wide-reaching views from the hill-tops were to her a perpetual delight. +At this place a house was bought, and there was a project of giving up the +London residence and of visiting the city only for occasional relaxation. +This project was not carried out, for soon after their return from Witley +in the autumn of 1878, Mr. Lewes was taken ill, and died in November. His +death was a great blow to Mrs. Lewes, and he was deeply mourned, so much so +as to seriously impair her health. The state of her mind at this trying +period is well indicated in a letter written to Prof. David Kaufmann. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, +April 17, '79. + +MY DEAR SIR,--Your kind letter has touched me very deeply. I confess that +my mind has more than once gone out to you as one from whom I should like +to have some sign of sympathy with my loss. But you were rightly inspired +in waiting till now, for during many weeks I was unable even to listen to +the letters which my generous friends were continually sending me. Now, at +last, I am eagerly interested in every communication that springs out of an +acquaintance with my husband and taskworks. + +I thank you for telling me about the Hungarian translation of his History +of Philosophy, but what would I not have given if the volumes could have +come a few days before his death; for his mind was perfectly clear, and he +would have felt some joy in that sign of his work being effective. I do not +know whether you enter into the comfort I feel that he never knew he was +dying, and fell gently asleep after ten days of illness in which the +suffering was comparatively mild..... + +One of the last things he did at his desk was to despatch a manuscript of +mine to the publishers. The book (not a story and not bulky) is to appear +near the end of May, and as it contains some words I wanted to say about +the Jews, I will order a copy to be sent to you. + +I hope that your labors have gone on uninterruptedly for the benefit of +others, in spite of public troubles. The aspect of affairs with us is +grevious--industry languishing, and the best part of our nation indignant +at our having been betrayed into an unjustifiable war (in South Africa). + +I have been occupied in editing my husband's MSS., so far as they are left +in sufficient completeness to be prepared for publication without the +obtrusion of another mind instead of his. A brief volume on _The Study of +Psychology_ will appear immediately, and a further volume of psychological +studies will follow in the autumn. But his work was cut short while he +still thought of it as the happy occupation of far-stretching months. Once +more let me thank you for remembering me in my sorrow, and believe me + +Yours with high regard, +M.E. LEWES. + +Writing to a friend soon after Lewes's death, who had also lost her +husband, she said,-- + + There is but one refuge--the having much to do. Nothing can make the + burden to be patiently borne, except the gradual adaptation of your + soul to the new conditions. + +The much to do she partly found in editing the uncompleted _Problems +of Life and Mind_, and in establishing a studentship for original +investigation in physiology, known as "The George Henry Lewes Studentship." +Its value is about two hundred pounds, and it is open to both sexes. These +labors enabled her to do honor to one she had trusted through many years, +whose name and fame she greatly revered, and to recover the even poise of +her life. She carefully managed the business affairs he had left in her +hands, and she provided for his children. + +A year and a half after the death of Lewes, May 6, 1880, she was married at +the church of St. George's, Hanover Square, to John Walter Cross, the +senior partner in a London banking firm, whom she had first met in 1867, +and who had been a greatly valued friend both to herself and Lewes. Though +much younger than herself, he had many qualities to recommend him to her +regard. A visit to the continent after this ceremony lasted for several +months, a considerable portion of the time being spent in Venice. On their +return to London in the autumn after spending a happy summer in Surrey, +they went to live in the house of Mr. Cross at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The +old habits of her life were taken up, her studies were resumed, a new novel +was begun, her friends came as usual on Sunday afternoons, and many years +of work seemed before her, for her health had greatly improved. On Friday, +December 17, 1880, she attended the presentation of the _Agamemnon_ of +Aeschylus, in the original Greek, with the accompaniments of the ancient +theatre, by the undergraduates of Balliol College, Oxford. She was very +enthusiastic about this revival of ancient art, and planned to read anew +all the Greek dramatists with her husband. The next day she attended a +popular concert at St. James Hall, and listened with her usual intense +interest. Sitting in a draught, she caught cold, but that evening she +played through much of the music she had heard in the afternoon. The next +day she was not so well as usual, yet she met her friends in the afternoon. +On Monday her larynx was slightly affected, and a physician was called, but +no danger was apprehended. Yet her malady gained rapidly. On Tuesday night +she was in a dangerous condition, and on Wednesday the pericardium was +found to be seriously diseased. Towards midnight of that day, December 22, +after a period of unconsciousness, she quietly passed away. She was buried +on the 29th, in the unconsecrated portion of Highgate Cemetery, by the side +of George Henry Lewes. The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Dr. +Sadler, a radical Unitarian minister, who spoke of her great genius, and +quoted her own words about a future life in the life of humanity. His +address contained many references to her personal characteristics, such as +could only come from an intimate friend. He said,-- + +"To those who are present it is given to think of the gentleness, and +delicate womanly grace and charm, which were combined with 'that breadth of +culture and universality of power which,' as one has expressed it, 'have +made her known to all the world.' To those who are present it is given to +know the diffidence and self-distrust which, notwithstanding all her public +fame, needed individual sympathy and encouragement to prevent her from +feeling too keenly how far the results of her labors fell below the +standard she had set before her. To those who are present too it may be +given--though there is so large a number to whom it is not given--to +understand how a nature may be profoundly devout, and yet unable to accept +a great deal of what is usually held as religious belief. No intellectual +difficulties or uncertainties, no sense of mental incapacity to climb the +heights of infinitude, could take from her the piety of the affections or +'the beliefs which were the mother-tongue of her soul.' I cannot doubt that +she spoke out of the fulness of her own heart when she put into the lips of +another the words, 'May not a man silence his awe or his love and take to +finding reasons which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than any +reasons to be found!' How patiently she toiled to render her work in all +its details as little imperfect as might be! How green she kept the +remembrance of all those companions to whom she felt that she owed a +moulding and elevating influence, especially in her old home, and of him +who was its head, her father! How her heart glowed with a desire to help to +make a heaven on earth, to be a 'cup of strength' to others, and when her +own days on earth should have closed, to have a place among those + + "'Immortal dead who still live on + In minds made better by their presence; live + In pulses stirred to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn + For miserable aims that end with sell; + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues.' + +"How she thus yearned 'to join the choir invisible, whose music is the +gladness of the world!' All this is known to those who had the privilege of +being near her." + +The address was preceded by a simple burial service, and was followed by a +prayer, all being given in the chapel of the cemetery. The coffin, covered +with the finest floral tributes, was then borne to the grave, where the +burial service was completed, and was followed by a prayer and the +benediction. Although the day was a disagreeable one and rain was falling, +the chapel was crowded, and many not being able to gain admittance stood +about the open grave. Beside her personal friends and her family there were +present many persons noted for their literary or scientific attainments, On +the lid of the coffin was this inscription: + + MARY ANN CROSS. + ("George Eliot") + Born 22d Nov., 1819; died 22d Dec., 1880. + + Quilla fonte + Che spande di parlay si largo flume. + +[Footnote: From Dante, and has been rendered into English thus: + + That fountain + Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech.] + + +The novel which had been begun was left a mere fragment, and in accordance +with what it was thought would have been her wish, was destroyed by her +family. Perhaps it was better that her dislike of unfinished work should be +so respected. + + + + +VI. + + +LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES. + +George Eliot was a painstaking, laborious writer. She did not proceed +rapidly, so carefully did she elaborate her pages. Her subjects were +thoroughly studied before the pen was taken in hand, patiently thought out, +planned with much care, and all available helps secured that could be had. +She threw her whole life into her work, became a part of the scenes she was +depicting; her life was absorbed until the work of writing became a painful +process both to body and mind. "Her beautifully written manuscript," says +her publisher, "free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately +and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the +inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any +of her facts or impressions from second hand; and thus, in spite of the +number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in +her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the +work's sake which she makes prominent characteristics of Adam Bede and +Stradivarius." + +When a book was completed, so intense had been her application and the +absorption of her life in her work, a period of despondency followed. When +a correspondent praised _Middlemarch_, and expressed a hope that even a +greater work might follow, she replied, "As to the 'great novel' which +remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future +books." Again, she wrote of the depression which succeeded the completion +of each of her works,-- + + Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I + can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The + responsibility of writing grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as + the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is + difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into + imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really + needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to + one's self to do it. + +Owing probably somewhat to this tendency to take a despondent view +concerning her own work, and to distrust of the leadings of her own +genius, was her habit of never reading the criticisms made on her books. +She adopted this rule, she tells one correspondent, "as a necessary +preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying her +power of writing." To another, who had written her in appreciation of her +books, she wrote this note, in which she alludes to the same habit of +shunning criticism: + + +MY DEAR MISS WELLINGTON,--The signs of your sympathy sent to me across the +wide water have touched me with the more effect because you imply that you +are young. I care supremely that my writing should be some help and +stimulus to those who have probably a long life before them. + +Mr. Lewes does not let me read criticisms on my writings. He always reads +them himself, and gives me occasional quotations, when be thinks that they +show a spirit and mode of appreciation which will win my gratitude. He has +carefully read through the articles which were accompanied by your kind +letter, and he has a high opinion of the feeling and discernment exhibited +in them. Some concluding passages which he read aloud to me are such as I +register among the grounds of any encouragement in looking backward on what +I have written, if not in looking forward to my future writing. + +Thank you, my dear young friend, whom I shall probably never know otherwise +than in this spiritual way. And certainly, apart from those relations in +life which bring daily duties and opportunities of lovingness, the most +satisfactory of all ties is this effective invisible intercourse of an +elder mind with a younger. + +The quotation in your letter from Hawthorne's book offers an excellent type +both for men and women in the value it assigns to that order of work which +is called subordinate but becomes ennobling by being finely done. +[Footnote: A reference to Hilda's ceasing to consider herself an original +artist in the presence of the great masters. "Beholding the miracles of +beauty which the old masters had achieved, the world seemed already rich +enough in original designs and nothing more was so desirable as to diffuse +these selfsame beauties more widely among mankind.'--So Hilda became a +copyist."] Yours, with sincere obligations, + +M.E. LEWES. + +By the way, Mr. Lewes tells me that you ascribe to me a hatred of blue +eyes--which is amusing, since my own eyes are blue-gray. I am not in any +sense one of the "good haters;" on the contrary, my weaknesses all verge +toward an excessive tolerance and a tendency to melt off the outlines of +things. + +THE PRIORY, +21 North Bank, Regent's Park, Jan. 16, '73. + +[Footnote: From The Critic of December 31, 1881. This letter was addressed +to Miss Alice Wellington, now Mrs. Rollins.] + +Her sensitiveness was great, and contact with an unappreciative and +unsympathetic public depressing to a large degree. It was a part of that +shrinking away from the world which kept her out of society, and away from +all but a select few whose tastes and sympathies were largely in accordance +with her own. Besides, she distrusted that common form of criticism which +presumes to tell an author how he ought to have written, and assumes to +itself an insight and knowledge greater than that possessed by genius +itself. Concerning the value of such criticism she wrote these pertinent +words: + + I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing + is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have + so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under + in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification + coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in + attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining + circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the + treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest. + +To the same correspondent she used even stronger words concerning her +dislike of ordinary criticism. + + Do not expect "criticism" from me. I hate "sitting in the seat of + judgment," and I would rather try to impress the public generally with + the sense that they may get the best result from a book without + necessarily forming an "opinion" about it, than I would rush into + stating opinions of my own. The floods of nonsense printed in the form + of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of our times--a chief + obstacle to true culture. + +It is not to be forgotten, however, that George Eliot had done much +critical work before she became a novelist, and that much of it was of a +keen and cutting nature. Severely as she was handled by the critics, no one +of them was more vigorous than was her treatment of Young and Cumming. Even +in later years, when she took up the critical pen, the effect was felt. Mr. +Lecky did not pass gently through her hands when she reviewed his +_Rationalism in Europe_. Her criticisms in _Theophrastus Such_ were +penetrating and severe. + +For the same reason, she read few works of contemporary fiction, that her +mind might not be biassed and that she might not be discouraged in her own +work. Always busy with some special subject which absorbed all her time and +strength, she could give little attention to contemporary literature. To +one correspondent she wrote,-- + + My constant groan is, that I must leave so much of the greatest writing + which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time. + +The style adopted by George Eliot is for the most part fresh, vital and +energetic. It is pure in form, rich in illustrations, strong and expressive +in manner. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, and she is +sometimes turgid and dry, again gaudy and verbose. Sententious in her +didactic passages, she is pure and noble in her sentiment, poetical and +impressive in her descriptions of nature. Her diction is choice, her range +of expression large, and she admirably suits her words to the thought she +would present. There is a rich, teeming fulness of life in her books, the +canvas is crowded, there is movement and action. An abundance of passion, +delicate feeling and fine sensibility is expressed. + +The critics have almost universally condemned the plots of George Eliot's +novels for their want of unity. They tell us that the flow of events is +often not orderly, while improbable scenes are introduced, superfluous +incidents are common, the number of characters is too great, and the +analysis of character impedes the unity of events. These objections are not +always vital, and sometimes they are mere objections rather than genuine +criticisms. Instances of failure to follow the best methods may be cited in +abundance, one of which is seen in the first two chapters in _Daniel +Deronda_ being placed out of their natural order. The opening scenes in +_The Spanish Gypsy_ seem quite unnecessary to the development of the plot, +while the last two scenes of the second book are so fragmentary and +unconnected with the remainder of the story as to help it but little. In +the middle of _Adam Bede_ are several chapters devoted to the birthday +party, which are quite unnecessary to the development of the action. +_Daniel Deronda_ contains two narratives which are in many respects almost +entirely distinct from each other, and the reader is made to alternate +between two worlds that have little in common. There is much of the +improbable in the account of the Transome estate in _Felix Holt_, while the +closing scenes in the life of Tito Melema in _Romola_ are more tragical +than natural. Yet these defects are incidental to her method and art rather +than actual blemishes on her work. For the most part, her work is +thoroughly unitary, cause leads naturally into effect, and there is a moral +development of character such as is found in life itself. Her plots are +strongly constructed, in simple outlines, are easily comprehended and kept +in mind, and the leading motive holds steadily through to the end. Her +analytical method often makes an apparent interruption of the narrative, +and the unity of purpose is frequently developed through the philosophic +purport of the novel rather than in its literary form. Direct narrative is +often hindered, it is true, by her habit of studying the remote causes and +effects of character, but she never wanders far enough to forget the real +purpose had in view. She holds the many elements of her story well under +command, she concentrates them upon some one aim, and she gives to her +story a tragic unity of great moral splendor and effect. Even the diverse +elements, the minute side-studies and the profuse comments, are all woven +into the organic structure, and are essential to the unfoldment of the +plot. They seem to be quite irrelevant interruptions until we look back +upon the completed whole and study the perfected intent of the story. Then +we see how essential they are to the epic finish of the novel, and to that +total effect which a work of genius creates. Then it is seen that a +dramatic unity and well-studied intent hold together every part and make a +completed structure of great beauty. + +Her dramatic skill is great, and her dialogues thoroughly good. Her +characters are full of power and life, and stand out as distinct +personalities. The conversation is sprightly, strong and wise. Probably no +novelist has created so many clearly cut, positive, intensely personal +characters as George Eliot, and this individualism is depicted as acting +within social and hereditary limits; hence dramatic action is constantly +arising. Shakspere and Browning only surpass her in dramatic power, as in +the creation of character. Yet her method of producing character differs +essentially from that of Shakspere, Homer and all the great creators. She +describes character, while they present it. Homer gives no description of +Helen; but of her beauty and her person we learn all the more because we +are left to find them out from the influence they produce. We know Hamlet +because he lives before us, and impresses his personality upon every +feature of the great drama in which he appears. George Eliot's manner is to +describe, to minutely portray, and to dissect to the last muscle and nerve. + +She has also a rich and racy humor, sensitive and sober, refined and +delicate. She does not caricature folly with Dickens, or laugh at weakness +with Thackeray; but she shows us the limitations of life in such a manner +as to produce the finest humor. She is never repulsive, grotesque or +vulgar; but wise, laughter-loving and sympathetic. Her humor is pure and +homely as it is delicate and exquisite; and it is invariably human and +noble. She has an intense love and a wonderful appreciation of the +ludicrous, sees whatever is incongruous In life, and makes her laughter +genial and joyous. Her humor is the very quintessence of human experience, +strikes deadly blows at what is unjust and untrue. It is both intellectual +and moral, as Professor Dowden suggests. "The grotesque in human character +is reclaimed from the province of the humorous by her affections, when that +is possible, and is shown to be a pathetic form of beauty. Her humor +usually belongs to her entire conception of character, and cannot be +separated from it." She laughs at all, but sneers at no one,--for she has +keen sympathy with all. + +George Eliot is not so good a satirist as she is humorist. Her humor is as +fresh and delightful as a morning in May, but her satire is nearly always +labored. She is too much in sympathy with human nature to laugh at its +follies and its weaknesses. Its joys, its bubbling humor and delight she +can appreciate, as well as all the pain and sorrow that come to men and +women; and she can fully enter into the life of her characters of every +kind, and portray their inmost motives and impulses; but the foibles of the +world she cannot treat in the vein of the satirist. In her earlier books +she is said to have been under the influence of Thackeray, but her satire +is heavy, and lacks his light touch and his tender undertone of compassion. +Here is a good specimen of her earlier attempts to be satirical: + + When a man is happy enough to win the affections of a sweet girl, who + can soothe his cares with crochet, and respond to all his most + cherished ideas with beaded urn-rugs and chair-covers in German wool, + he has, at least, a guarantee of domestic comfort, whatever trials may + await him out of doors. What a resource it is under fatigue and + irritation to have your drawing-room well supplied with small mats, + which would always be ready if you ever wanted to set anything on them! + And what styptic for a bleeding heart can equal copious squares of + crochet-work, which are useful for slipping down the moment you touch + them? [Footnote: Janet's Repentance, chapter III.] + +Similar to this is the account of Mrs. Pullett's grief. + + It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity + Introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization--the + sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow + of a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with + several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate + ribbon-strings--what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened + child of civilization the abandonment characteristic of grief is + checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an + interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and + eyes half-blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too + devious step through a door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves, + too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility produces a + composition of forces by which she takes a line that just clears the + door-post. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her + strings and throws them languidly backward--a touching gesture, + indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry + moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm. As the tears + subside a little, and with her head leaning backward at an angle that + will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when + grief, which has made all things else a weariness, has itself become + weary; she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and adjusts their + clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying to + her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state. [Footnote: + Mill on the Floss, chapter VII.] + +In her later books the strained efforts at satire are partially avoided, +and though the satirical spirit is not withdrawn in any measure, yet it is +more delicately managed. It is less open, less blunt, but hardly more +subtle and penetrative. It is still a strained effort, and it is quite too +hard and bare in statement. We are told in _Middlemarch_ that + + Mrs. Bulstrode's _naive_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the + nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the + consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a + sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable + seriousness. + +Such a turning of sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, +and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton +justly calls it, which is found in all of George Eliot's books:-- + + Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the + things whence its subtile interlacings are swung--are scarcely + perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from + blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and + lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs + and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life toward another, visions of + completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web + from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience + supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure--in spite, too, of + medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes + presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of + scientific inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic + love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose. + [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XXXVI.] + +This introduction of a scientific illustration will serve to bring another +tendency of George Eliot's to our attention. She makes a frequent use of +her large learning and culture in her novels. In the earlier ones a Greek +quotation is to be found here and there, while in the later, German seems +to have the preference. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she describes Bob +Jakin's thumb as "a singularly broad specimen of that difference between +the man and the monkey." Such references to recent scientific speculations +are not unfrequent. If they serve to show the tendencies of her mind +towards knowledge and large thought, they also indicate a too ready +willingness to imbibe, and to use in a popular manner, what is not +thoroughly assimilated truth. The force of such an illustration as the +following must be lost on most novel-readers:-- + + Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings toward + women than toward grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife + in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the + chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive + races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to + speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage tie. + [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter VI.] + +It is doubtful whether any reader will quite catch the meaning of this +sentence: + + Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of + prematrimonial acquaintanceship? [Footnote: Ibid, chapter II.] + +Many of her critics have asserted that this use of the language of science, +and the adoption of the speculative ideas of the time, had largely +increased upon George Eliot in her later books; but this is not true. In +her _Westminster Review_ essays both tendencies are strongly developed. In +one of them she says, "The very chyme and chyle of a rector are conscious +of the gown and band." Again, she says,-- + + The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of + ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy required + for spontaneous activity; the voltaic pile is not strong enough to + produce crystallization. + +It is not just to George Eliot, however, to refer to such mere casual +blemishes, without insisting on the largeness of thought, the wealth of +knowledge, and the comprehensive understanding of human experience with +which her books abound. She often turns aside to discuss the problems +suggested by the experiences of her characters, to point out how the effect +of their own thoughts and deeds re-act upon them, and to inculcate the +highest ethical lessons. In one of her "asides" she seems to reject this +method, in referring to Fielding. + + A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the + happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his + place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is + observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions + as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial + chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to + bring his arm-chair to the proscenium, and chat with us in all the + lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were + longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer + afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter + evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and + if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as + if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house. I, at least, have so + much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were + woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be + concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that + tempting range of relevancies called the universe. [Footnote: + Middlemarch, chapter XV.] + +She does not ramble away from her subject, it is true; but she likes to +pause often to discuss the doings of her personages, and to pour forth some +tender or noble thought. To many of her readers these bits of wisdom and of +sentiment are among the most valuable portions of her books, when taken in +their true environment in her pages. She has a purpose larger than that of +telling a story or of describing the loves of a few men and women. She +seeks to penetrate into the motives of life, and to reveal the hidden +springs of action; to show how people affect each other; how ideas mould +the destinies of the individual. To do all this in that large, artistic +spirit she has followed, requires that there shall be something more +than narration and conversation. That she has now and then commented +unnecessarily, and in a too-learned manner, is a very small detraction from +the interest of her books. + +In _Adam Bede_ she turns aside for a whole chapter to defend her method of +depicting accurately, minutely, in the simplest detail, the feelings, +motives, actions and surroundings of very commonplace and uninteresting +people. Her reasons for this method in novel-writing apply to all her +works, and are worthy of the author of _Adam Bede_ and _Silas Marner_. + + I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could + create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the + morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a + harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields--on + the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your + indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and + helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your + outspoken, brave justice. + + So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things + seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, + which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. + Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a + delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and the + larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility, which we + mistook for genius, is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real + unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that, + even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to + say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much + harder than to say something fine about them which is _not_ the exact + truth. + + It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in + many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a + source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous + homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my + fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic + suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn without shrinking, from + cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls and heroic warriors, to an + old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, + while the noonday light, softened, perhaps, by a screen of leaves, + falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel + and her stone jug, and all those cheap, common things which are the + precious necessaries of life to her: or I turn to that village wedding, + kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the + dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and + middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and + probably with quart pots in their hands, but with expression of + unmistakable contentment and good-will. "Foh!" says my idealistic + friend, "what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these + pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low + phase of life! what clumsy, ugly people!" + + But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, + I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have + not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, + squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions, are not + startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love among + us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the + Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; + yet, to my certain knowledge, tender hearts have beaten for them, and + their miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in + secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron who could + never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of + yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered + kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of + young heroes of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite + sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, + and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a + wife who waddles. Yes! thank God; human feeling is like the mighty + rivers that bless the earth; it does not wait for beauty--it flows with + resistless force, and brings beauty with it. + + All honor and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate + it to the utmost in men, women and children--in our gardens and in our + houses; but let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret + of proportion, but in the secret of deep sympathy. Paint us an angel, + if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the + celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face + upward, and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not + impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the regions of + Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those + heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house--those rounded-backs + and stupid, weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done + the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their + brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this + world there are so many of these common, coarse people, who have no + picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should + remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of + our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a + world of extremes. Therefore let Art always remind us of them; + therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a + life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see + beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly + the light of heaven falls on them. + + There are few prophets in the world--few sublimely beautiful women--few + heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such + rarities; I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day + fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great + multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to + make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or + romantic criminals half so frequent as your common laborer, who gets + his own bread, and eats it vulgarly, but creditably, with his own + pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy + connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a + vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal + in red scarf and green feathers; more needful that my heart should + swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the + faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman + of my own parish, who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent, and in other + respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes + whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract + of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. + [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XVII.] + +In all her earlier novels George Eliot has shown the artistic possibilities +of the humblest lives and situations. In the most ordinary lives, as in the +case of the persons described in _Silas Marner_, and in the least +picturesque incidents of human existence, there is an interest for us +which, when properly brought out, will be sure to absorb our attention. She +has abundantly proved that dramatic situations, historic surroundings and +heroic attitudes are not necessary for the highest purposes of the +novelist. Hers are heart tragedies and spiritual histories; for life has +its tragic, pathetic and humorous elements of the keenest interest under +every social condition. Her realism is relieved, as in actual life, by +love, helpfulness and pathos; by deep sorrow, sufferings patiently borne, +and tender sympathy for others' woes. And if she sometimes sketches with +too free a hand the coarse and repulsive features of life, this fault is +relieved by her tender sympathy with the sorrows and weaknesses of her +characters. She asks her readers not to grudge Amos Barton his lovely wife, +that "large, fair, gentle Madonna," with an imposing mildness and the +unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood. He was a man of very middling +qualities and a quite stupid sort of person, but he loved his wife and made +the most he could of such talents as he had. She pleads in his behalf by +saying,-- + + I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are + nobody's pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a + pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest + Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair. + +Much the larger number of characters in these novels are of the same +unpromising quality. Most of them are ignorant, uncouth and simple-minded; +yet George Eliot gives them a warm place in our hearts, and we rejoice to +have known them all. This ignorant rusticity is discovered to have charms +and attractions of its own. Especially does the reader learn that what is +most human and what is most lovely in personal character may be found +within these rough exteriors and amid these unpromising circumstances. + +Even so fine a character as Adam Bede, one of the best in all her books, +was a workman of limited education and little knowledge of the outside +world. The author does "not pretend that his was an ordinary character +among workmen." Yet such men as he are found among his class, and the noble +qualities he possessed are not out of place among workingmen. Her warm +sympathy with this class, the class in which she was born and reared, and +her earnest desire to do it justice, is seen in what she says of Adam. + + He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared here and there + in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an inheritance of + affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common + industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful, + courageous labor; they make their way upward, rarely as geniuses, most + commonly as painstaking, honest men, with the skill and conscience to + do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible + echo beyond the neighborhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure + to find there some good piece of road, some building, some application + of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform + of parish abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two + generations after them. Their employers were richer for them, the work + of their hands has worn well, and the work of their brains has guided + well the hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel + or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with lime and + red paint; in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honor at + church and at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and + daughters seated round the bright hearth on winter evenings, how + pleased they were when they first earned their twopence a day. Others + there are who die poor, and never put off the workman's coat on + week-days; they have not had the art of getting rich; but they are men + of trust, and when they die before the work is all out of them, it is + as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the master who + employed them says, "Where shall I find their like?" [Footnote: + Chapter XIX.] + +In _Amos Barton_ she states her reasons for portraying characters of so +little outward interest. Amos had none of the more manly and sturdy +qualities of Adam Bede, and yet to George Eliot it was enough that he was +human, that trouble and heartache could come to him, and that he must carry +his share of the burdens and weaknesses of the world. + + The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate, + was, you perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character; and + perhaps I am doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a + man who was so very far from remarkable,--a man whose virtues were not + heroic, and who had no undetected crime within his breast; who had not + the slightest mystery hanging about him, but was palpably and + unmistakably commonplace; who was not even in love, but had had that + complaint many years ago. "An utterly uninteresting character!" I think + I hear a lady reader exclaim,--Mrs. Farthingale, for example, who + prefers the ideal in fiction; to whom tragedy means ermine tippets, + adultery and murder; and comedy, the adventures of some personage who + is quite a "character." + + But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your + fellow-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp. At least + eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in + the last census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily + wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and + liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they + have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their + brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have + not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They + are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is + more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people--many of + them--bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the + painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows, and their sacred joys; + their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they + have mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in + their very insignificance,--in our comparison of their dim and narrow + existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which + they share? + + Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me + to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, + lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull + gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones. In that + case, I should have no fear of your not caring to know what further + befell the Rev. Amos Barton, or of your thinking the homely details I + have to tell at all beneath your attention. + +In her hands the novel becomes the means of recording the history of those +whom no history takes note of, and of bringing before the world its unnamed +and unnoted heroes. Professor Dowden says her sympathy spreads with a +powerful and even flow in every direction. In this effort she has been +eminently successful; and her loving sympathy with all that is human; her +warm-hearted faith in the weak and unfortunate; the graciousness of her +love for the common souls who are faithful and true in their way and in +their places, will excuse much greater literary faults than any into which +she has fallen. The sincere and loving humanity of her books gives them a +great charm, and an influence wide-reaching and noble. + +No one of her imitators and successors has gained anything of like power +which is given to her novels by her intense sympathy with her characters. +Others have described ignorant and coarse phases of life as something to +look at and study, but not to bring into the heart and love. George Eliot +loves her characters, has an intense affection for them, pours out her +motherliness upon them. Not so Daudet or James or Howells, who study +crude life on the surface, and because it is the fashion. There is no +heart-nearness in their work, little of passionate human desire to do +justice to phases of life hitherto neglected. She has in this regard the +genius of Scott and Hugo, who live in and with their characters, and so +make them living and real. She identifies herself with the life she +describes, and never looks at it from without, with curious and cold and +critical gaze, simply for the sake of making a novel. + +She is more at home among villagers than in the drawing-room. A profound +intuition has led her to the very heart of English life among the happier +and worthier classes of working-people. There is no squalor in her books, +no general misery, but always conscience, respectability and home-comforts. +There is something of coarseness in some of her scenes, and a realism too +bare and bald; but for the most part she has come far short of what might +have been done in picturing the repulsive and sensual side of life. In all +her books there is abundant evidence of her painstaking, and of her anxious +desire to be truthful. She has studied life on the spot, and gives to it +the local coloring. In writing _Romola_, she searched into every corner of +Florentine history, custom and thought. She is true to every touch of local +incident and manner. In _Daniel Deronda_, she made herself familiar with +Jewish life, and has given the race aroma to her portraits and scenes. She +is thoroughly a realist, but a realist with a wide and attractive sympathy, +a profound insight into motives and impulses, and a strong imagination. She +is too great a genius to believe that the novelist can describe life as the +geologist describes the strata of the earth. She feels with her characters; +she has that form of insight or imagination which enables her to apprehend +a mind totally unlike her own. This is what saves the history of Hetty from +coarseness and repulsiveness. It is Hetty's own account of her life-woes. +Its infinite pathos, and the tenderness and pity it awakens, destroys our +concern for the other features of the narrative. + +Psychologic analysis seems out of place in a novel, but with George Eliot +it is a chief purpose of her writing. She lays bare the soul, opens its +inmost secrets, and its anatomy is minutely studied. She devotes more space +to the inner life and character of her personalities than to her narratives +and conversations. She traces some of her characters through a long process +of development, and shows how they are affected by the experiences of life. +Her more important characters grow up under her pen, develop under the +influence of thought or sorrow. Novelists usually carry their characters +through their pages on the same level of mind and life; and George Eliot +not only does this with her uncultured characters, but she also shows the +soul in the process of unfolding or expanding. None of her leading +characters are at the end what they were in the beginning; with the most +subtle power she traces the growth of Tito Melema's mind through its +perilous descent into selfish corruption, and with equal or even greater +skill she unfolds the history of Daniel Deronda's development under the +impulse to find for himself a life-mission. In this direction George Eliot +is always great. Her skill is remarkable, albeit she has not sounded either +the highest or the lowest ranges of human capacity. The range within which +her studies are made is a wide one, however, and within it she has shown +herself the master of human motives and a consummate artist in portraying +the soul. She devotes the utmost care to describing some plain person who +appears in her pages for but a moment, and is as much concerned that he +shall be truly presented as if he were of the utmost consequence. More than +one otherwise very ordinary character acquires under this treatment of hers +the warmest interest for the reader. And she describes such persons, +because their influence is subtle or momentous as it affects the lives of +others. Personages and incidents play a part in her books not for the sake +of the plot or to secure dramatic unity, but for the sake of manifesting +the soul, in order that the unfoldment of psychologic analysis may go on. +The unity she aims at is that of showing the development of the soul under +influence of some one or more decisive impulses or as affected by given +surroundings. The lesser characters, while given a nature quite their own, +help in the process of unfolding the personality which gives central +purpose to each of her novels. The influence of opposite natures on each +other, the moulding power of circumstances, and especially the bearings of +hereditary impulses, all play a prominent part in this process of +psychologic analysis. + +Through page after page and chapter after chapter she traces the feelings +and thoughts of her characters. How each decisive event appears to them is +explained at length. Moreover, the most trivial trait of character, the +most incidental impulse, is described in all its particularity. Through +many pages Hetty's conduct in her own bedroom is laid before the reader, +and in no other way could her nature have been so brought to our knowledge. +Her shallow lightness of heart and her vanity could not be realized by +ordinary intercourse with one so pretty and so bright; but George Eliot +describes Hetty's taking out the earrings given her by Arthur, and we see +what she is. The author seeks to open before us the inner life of that +childish soul, and we see into its nature and realize all its capacities +for good and evil. + + Oh, the delight of taking out that little box and looking at the + earrings! Do not reason about it, my philosophical reader, and say that + Hetty, being very pretty, must have known that it did not signify + whether she had any ornaments or not; and that, moreover, to look at + earrings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could + hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to + the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's + natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest + yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were + studying the psychology of a canary-bird, and only watch the movements + of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an + unconscious smile at the earrings nestled in the little box. Ah! you + think, it is for the sake of the person who has given them to her, and + her thoughts are gone back now to the moment when they were put into + her hands. No; else why should she have cared to have earrings rather + than anything else? and I know that she had longed for earrings from + among all the ornaments she could imagine. + +This faculty of soul interpretation may be illustrated by innumerable +passages and from characters the most diverse in nature and capacity. As an +instance of her ability to interpret uncommon minds, those affected in some +peculiar manner, reference may be made to Baldassarre, in _Romola_. The +descriptions of this man's sufferings, the giving way of his mind under +them, and the purpose of revenge which took complete possession of him, +form a study in character unsurpassed. For subtle insight into the action +of a morbid mind, and for a majestic conception of human passion, the +passage wherein Baldassarre finds he can again read his Greek book is most +worthy of attention. + +Her ability to delineate a growing mind, and a mind at work under the +influence of new and rare experiences, is shown in the case of Daniel +Deronda. His quiet love of ease as a boy is described as he sits one day +watching the falling rain, and meditates on the possibility which has been +suggested to him, that his is not to be the life of a gentleman. + + He knew a great deal of what it was to be a gentleman by inheritance, + and without thinking much about himself--for he was a boy of active + perceptions, and easily forgot his own existence in that of Robert + Bruce--he had never supposed that he could be shut out from such a lot, + or have a very different part in the world from that of the uncle who + petted him... But Daniel's tastes were altogether in keeping with his + nurture: his disposition was one in which every-day scenes and habits + beget not _ennui_ or rebellion but delight, affection, aptitudes; + and now the lad had been stung to the quick by the idea that his + uncle--perhaps his father--thought of a career for him which was + totally unlike his own, and which he knew very well was not thought of + among possible destinations for the sons of English gentlemen. + +The mind of this lad expands; ideal desires awake in him; there is a +yearning for a life of noble knight-errantry in some heroic cause. The +reader is permitted to watch from step to step the growth of this longing, +and to behold each new deed by which it is expressed. He craves for a +broader life, but he is surrounded by such a social atmosphere as to make +his longing futile. As a young man who is seeking to know what there is in +the world for him to do, and who is eager for some task that is to end in a +larger life for man, he is again described. + + It happened that the very vividness of his impressions had often made + him the more enigmatic to his friends, and had contributed to an + apparent indefiniteness in his sentiments. His early wakened + sensibility and reflectiveness, had developed into a many-sided + sympathy, which threatened to hinder any persistent course of action: + as soon as he took up any antagonism, though only in thought, he seemed + to himself like the Sabine warriors in the memorable story--with + nothing to meet his spear but flesh of his flesh, and objects that he + loved. His imagination had so wrought itself to the habit of seeing + things as they probably appeared to others, that a strong partisanship, + unless it were against an immediate oppression, had become an + insincerity for him. His plenteous, flexible sympathy had ended by + falling into one current with that reflective analysis which tends to + neutralize sympathy. Few men were able to keep themselves clearer of + vices than he; yet he hated vices mildly, being used to think of them + less in the abstract than as a part of mixed human natures having an + individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to trace with + understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he was fervidly + democratic in his feeling for the multitude, and yet, through his + affections and imagination, intensely conservative; voracious of + speculations on government and religion, yet loath to part with + long-sanctioned forms which, for him, were quick with memories and + sentiments that no argument could lay dead... He was ceasing to care + for knowledge--he had no ambition for practice--unless they could both + be gathered up into one current with his emotions; and he dreaded, as + if it were a dwelling-place of lost souls, that dead anatomy of culture + which turns the universe into a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and + knows, not everything, but everything else about everything--as if one + should be ignorant of nothing concerning the scent of violets except + the scent itself, for which one had no nostril. But how and whence was + the needed event to come?--the influence that would justify partiality, + and make him what he longed to be, yet was unable to make himself--an + organic part of social life, instead of roaming in it like a yearning + disembodied spirit, stirred with a vague, social passion, but without + fixed local habitation to render fellowship real? To make a little + difference for the better was what he was not contented to live + without; but how make it? It is one thing to see your road, another to + cut it. + +He rescues Mirah and sets out in search of her brother. He finds Mordecai, +and gradually a way is opened to him along which his yearning is satisfied. +Step by step the reader is permitted to trace the expansion of his mind. A +window is opened into his soul, and we see its every movement as Daniel is +led on to find the mission which was to be his. When that task is fully +accepted he says to Mordecai,-- + + Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some + ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a + multitude--some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty, + and not to be striven for as a personal prize. + +In her strong tendency to psychologic analysis George Eliot much resembles +Robert Browning. It is the life of passion and ideas which both alike +delight to describe. They greatly differ, however, in their methods of +dissecting the inner life. Browning lays bare the soul in some startling +experience, George Eliot by the slow development of the mind through all +the stages of growth. He is impersonal, but she is always present to make +comments and to expound the causes of growth. Yet her characters are as +clear-cut, as individual, as his. His analysis is the more rapid, subtle +and complete in immediate expression; hers is the more penetrating, +vigorous and interesting. His lightning flash sees the soul through and +through in the present moment; her calmer and intenser gaze penetrates the +long succession of hidden causes by which the soul is shaped to its earthly +destiny. + +Any account of George Eliot which dwells only on her humor and sarcasm, her +realism and her powers of analysis, does her grave injustice. She has also +in rare degree the power of artistic constructiveness, a strong and +brilliant imagination and genius of almost the highest range. She can +create character as well as analyze it, and with that brilliant command of +resources which indicates a high order of genius. She had culture almost +equal to Goethe's, and quite equal to Mrs. Browning's; and she had that +wide sympathy with life which was his, with an equal capacity for their +expression in an artistic reconstruction of human experience. While Mr. R. +H. Hutton is justified in saying that "few minds at once so speculative and +so creative have ever put their mark on literature," yet the critic needs +to beware lest he give the speculative tendency in her mind a place too +prominent compared with that assigned to her creative genius. The poet and +the novelist are so seldom speculative, so seldom put into their creations +the constant burden of great thoughts, that when one appears who does this, +it is likely to be dwelt upon too largely by the critics. George Eliot +speculates about life and its experiences, and it is evident she had a +philosophy of life at her command; but it is quite as true that she soars +on pinions free into the heavens of genius, and brings back the song which +no other has sung, and which is a true song. She has created characters, +she has described the histories of souls, in a manner which will cause some +of her books to endure for all time. If she has allied her genius to +current culture and speculation, it has in that way been given continuity +of purpose and definiteness of aim. The genius is there and cannot be +hidden or obscured; and those who love what is great and noble will be +profoundly attracted by her books. If a great thinker, she is still more +truly a great literary artist; and such is the largeness and gracious power +of her genius that those who do not love her speculations will be drawn to +her in spite of all objections. Her genius is generous, expansive, +illuminative, profound. Her creativeness is an elemental power; new births +are to be found in her books; life has grown under her moulding touch. + + + + +VII. + + +THEORY OF THE NOVEL. + +Before George Eliot began her career as a novelist she had already turned +her attention to what is good and bad in fiction-writing, and had given +expression to her own theory of the novel. What she wrote on this subject +is excellent in itself, but it now has an additional interest in view of +her success as a novelist, and as throwing light on her conception of the +purposes to be followed in the writing of fiction. In what she wrote on +this subject two ideas stand out distinctly, that women are to find in +novel-writing a literary field peculiarly adapted to their capacities, and +that the novel should be a true portraiture of life. + +She was a zealous advocate of woman's capacity to excel as a novelist, and +she saw in this form of literature a field especially adapted to her +greater powers of emotion and sympathy. Very generous and appreciative are +her references to the lady novelists whom she defends, the excellence of +whose work she maintains entitles them to the highest places as literary +artists. In the article on "Lady Novelists" she has drawn attention both to +those qualities in which woman may excel and to those in which she may +fail. In writing later of "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" she criticised +unsparingly those women who write novels without comprehending life or any +of its problems, and who write in a merely artificial manner. The width of +her own culture, the vigor of her critical talent, the largeness of her +conception of life and its interests, are well expressed in these essays. +Only a large mind could have so truly conceived the real nature of woman's +relations to literature, and expressed them in a spirit so intelligent and +comprehensive. She would have the whole of life portrayed, and she believes +only a woman can truly speak for women. But her faith in woman seems not to +have been of the revolutionary character. She rather preferred that women +should achieve a higher social condition by deeds than by words. A great +intellectual career like her own, which places a woman in the front rank of +literary creators, does more to elevate the position of women than any +amount of agitation in favor of suffrage. That she sought for the highest +intellectual achievement, and that she labored to attain the widest results +of scholarship, is greatly to her credit; but more to her credit is it, +that she made no claim upon the public as a woman, but only as a literary +artist. She asked that her work should be judged on its literary merits, as +the product of intellect, and not with reference to her sex. While +believing that woman can do her work best by being true to the instincts, +sympathies and capacities of her sex, yet she would have the same standard +of literary judgment applied to women as to men. Its truthfulness, its +reality, its power to widen our sympathies and enlarge our culture, its +measure of genius and moral power, is the true test to be applied to any +literary work. Such being her conception of the manner in which women +should be judged when becoming literary creators, she had no excuses to +offer for those who make use of prejudices and a false culture in their own +behalf. She says that + + The most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form, + because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the solid + education of women. + +That she believed in the solid education of women is apparent in her own +efforts towards obtaining it for herself, and her conception of what is to +be done with it was large and generous. Mere learning she did not hold to +be an adornment in a woman. The culture must be transmuted into life-power, +and be poured forth, not as oracular wisdom in silly novels, but as +sympathy and enlarged comprehension of the daily duties of life. When +educated women "mistake vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and +affectation for originality," she is not surprised that men regard +rhodomontade as the native accent of woman's intellect, or that they come +to the conclusion that "the average nature of women is too shallow and +feeble a soil to bear much tillage." + + It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very + superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in + the world; but we have not now to contest their opinion--we are only + pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have + volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We + do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by + associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her + knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cultured woman, + like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive + for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in + something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from + which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and + things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right + estimate of herself.... She does not write books to confound + philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight + them, in conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she + understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you _can't_ + understand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw + material of culture,--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest + essence. + +After this estimate of the value of culture to women, it is interesting to +turn to George Eliot's words concerning the legitimate work which women can +perform in literature. What she says on this subject shows that she not +only had culture, but also the wisdom which is its highest result. She saw +that while a woman is to ask for no leniency towards her work because she +is a woman, yet that she is not to imitate men or to ignore her sex. She is +to portray life as a woman sees it, with a woman's sympathies and +experiences. To interpret the feminine side of life is her legitimate +province as a literary artist. + + If we regard literature as the expression of the emotions, the whims, + the caprices, the enthusiasms, the fluctuating idealisms which move + each epoch, we shall not be far wrong; and inasmuch as women + necessarily take part in these things, they ought to give them _their_ + expression. And this leads us to the heart of the question, what does + the literature of women mean? It means this: while it is impossible for + men to express life otherwise than as they know it--and they can only + know it profoundly according to their own experience--the advent of + female literature promises woman's view of life, woman's experience; in + other words, a new element. Make what distinctions you please in the + social world, it still remains true that men and women have different + organizations, consequently different experiences. To know life you + must have both sides depicted. Let him paint what he knows. And if you + limit woman's sphere to the domestic circle, you must still recognize + the concurrent necessity of domestic life finding its homeliest and + truest expression in the woman who lives it. + + Keeping to the abstract heights we have chosen, too abstract and + general to be affected by exceptions, we may further say that the + masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect, + and the feminine by the predominance of the emotions. According to this + rough division, the regions of philosophy would be assigned to men, + those of literature to women. We need scarcely warn the reader against + too rigorous an interpretation of this statement, which is purposely + exaggerated the better to serve as a signpost. It is quite true that no + such absolute distinction will be found in authorship. There is no man + whose mind is shrivelled up into pure intellect; there is no woman + whose intellect is completely absorbed by her emotions. But in most men + the intellect does not move in such inseparable alliance with the + emotions as in most women, and hence, although often not so great as in + women, yet the intellect is more commonly dominant. In poets, artists, + and men of letters, _par excellence_, we observe this feminine trait, + that their intellect habitually moves in alliance with their emotions; + and one of the best descriptions of poetry was that given by Professor + Wilson, as the "intellect colored by the feelings." + + Woman, by her greater affectionateness, her greater range and depth + of emotional experience, is well fitted to give expression to + the emotional facts of life, and demands a place in literature + corresponding to that she occupies in society; and that literature + must be greatly benefited thereby, follows from the definition we have + given of literature. + + But hitherto, in spite of illustrations, the literature of woman has + fallen short of its function, owing to a very natural and a very + explicable weakness--it has been too much a literature of imitation. To + write as men write, is the aim and besetting sin of women; to write as + women, is the real office they have to perform. Our definition of + literature includes this necessity. If writers are bound to express + what they have really known, felt and suffered, that very obligation + imperiously declares they shall not quit their own point of view for + the point of view of others. To imitate is to abdicate. We are in no + need of more male writers; we are in need of genuine female experience. + The prejudices, notions, passions and conventionalisms of men are amply + illustrated; let us have the same fulness with respect to women. + Unhappily the literature of women may be compared with that of Rome: no + amount of graceful talent can disguise the internal defect. Virgil, + Ovid and Catullus were assuredly gifted with delicate and poetic + sensibility; but their light is, after all, the light of moons + reflected from the Grecian suns, and such as brings little life with + its rays, To speak in Greek, to think in Greek, was the ambition of all + cultivated Romans, who could not see that it would be a grander thing + to utter their pure Roman natures in sincere originality. So of women. + The throne of intellect has so long been occupied by men, that women + naturally deem themselves bound to attend the court. Greece domineered + over Rome; its intellectual supremacy was recognized, and the only way + of rivalling it seemed to be imitation. Yet not so did Rome vanquish + Pyrrhus and his elephants; not by employing elephants to match his, but + by Roman valor. + + Of all departments of literature, fiction is the one to which, by + nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women + will of course be found competent to the highest success in other + departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The + domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an + appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for + that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the + feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms the story + of a woman's life." The joys and sorrows of affection, the incidents of + domestic life, the aspirations and fluctuations of emotional life, + assume typical forms in the novel. Hence we may be prepared to find + women succeeding better in _finesse_ of detail, in pathos and + sentiment, while men generally succeed better in the construction of + plots and the delineation of character. Such a novel as _Tom Jones_ or + _Vanity Fair_ we shall not get from a woman, nor such an effort of + imaginative history as _Ivanhoe_ or _Old Mortality_; but Fielding, + Thackeray and Scott are equally excluded from such perfection in its + kind as _Pride and Prejudice_, _Indiana_ or _Jane Eyre_. As an artist + Jane Austen surpasses all the male novelists that ever lived; and for + eloquence and depth of feeling no man approaches George Sand. + + We are here led to another curious point in our subject, viz., the + influence of sorrow upon female literature. It may be said without + exaggeration that almost all literature has some remote connection with + suffering. "Speculation," said Novalis, "is disease." It certainly + springs from a vague disquiet. Poetry is analogous to the pearl which + the oyster secretes in its malady. + + "Most wretched men + Are cradled into poetry by wrong, + They learn in suffering what they teach in song." + + What Shelley says of poets, applies with greater force to women. If + they turn their thoughts to literature, it is--when not purely an + imitative act--always to solace by some intellectual activity the + sorrow that in silence wastes their lives, and by a withdrawal of the + intellect from the contemplation of their pain, or by a transmutation + of their secret anxieties into types, they escape from the pressure of + that burden. If the accidents of her position make her solitary and + inactive, or if her thwarted affections shut her somewhat from that + sweet domestic and maternal sphere to which her whole being + spontaneously moves, she turns to literature as to another sphere. We + do not here simply refer to those notorious cases where literature was + taken up with the avowed and conscious purpose of withdrawing thoughts + from painful subjects; but to the unconscious, unavowed influence of + domestic disquiet and unfulfilled expectations, in determining the + sufferer to intellectual activity. The happy wife and busy mother are + only forced into literature by some hereditary organic tendency, + stronger even than the domestic; and hence it is that the cleverest + women are not those who have written books. + +In the later essay on "Silly Novels" her powers of sarcasm were fully +displayed. It showed keen critical powers, and a clear insight into the +defects inherent in most novel-writing. She spared no faults, had no mercy +for presumption, and condemned unsparingly the pretence of culture. +She described four kinds of silly novels, classing them as being of the +_mind-and-millinery_, the _oracular, the _white-neck-cloth_, and the +_modern-antique_ varieties. All her powers of analysis and insight shown +in her novels appeared in this article. + +Severe as her criticism is, it is always just. It aims at the presentation +of a truer conception of the purpose of novel-writing, and women are +judged simply as literary workers. This criticism is based on the clearest +apprehension of why it is that women fail as novel-writers; that it is not +because they are women, but because they are false to nature and to the +simplest conditions of literary art. These women write poor novels because +they aim at fine writing, and believe they must be learned and +grandiloquent. They ignore what they see about them every day, and which, +if they were to describe it in simple language, would give them real power. +It is this falsity in thought, method and purpose which is so severely +condemned. And it is the very justness of the criticism which makes it +severe, which gives to a true description of these novels the nature of a +stinging sarcasm. That these women are praised by the critics she justly +regards as a sure indication of their incapacity, or a sign of man's +chivalry towards the other sex, which does not permit him to speak the +truth about what he knows to be so false and immature. She also sees that +what women need is to be told the truth, and to be compelled to accept the +just consequences of their work, + + The standing apology for women who become writers without any special + qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres of + occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for + the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to + bad poetry. But society, like "matter" and her Majesty's Government, + and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as + well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes from + necessity, we believe there are three who write from vanity; and + besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact + of working for one's bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind + of literature is not likely to have been produced under such + circumstances. "In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly + novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness. + + Happily we are not dependent on argument to prove that fiction is a + department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully + equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our + memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but + among the very finest;--novels, too, that have a precious specialty, + lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No + educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of + fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid + requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form and yet + be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements--genuine + observation, humor and passion. But it is precisely this absence + of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of + novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very + grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here + certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and + incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute + _technique_ is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of + mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers + for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a + writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have + again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose + to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, + aussi, je joue de la flute;"--a fable which we commend, at parting, to + the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to + the number of "silly novels by lady novelists." + +Her praise of the great novelists is as enthusiastic as her condemnation of +the silly ones is severe. It is interesting to note that in the first of +these papers she selects Jane Austen and George Sand as the chiefest among +women novelists, and that she praises them for the truthfulness of their +portraitures of life, nor is she any the less aware of the defects of these +masters than of the deficiencies of silly women who write novels. She finds +that Jane Austen never penetrates into the deeper spiritual experiences of +life, and that George Sand lacks in that moral poise and purity which is so +necessary to the finest literary effort. Her sketches of these women are as +truthful as they are interesting. + + First and foremost let Jane Austen be named, the greatest artist that + has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery + over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in human nature + Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of + passionate existence into which she has never set foot; but although + this is obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she has + risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not + seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a + perfect orb and vital. Life, as it appears to an English gentlewoman + peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in + her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest + for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual experience of + life; you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel + something of personal affection towards them. The marvellous reality + and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led + Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspere. If the whole force of the + distinction which lies in that epithet _prose_ be fairly appreciated, + no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspere it + would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely + demarcated within the limits of their kind. We do not find such + profound psychological insight as may be found in George Sand (not to + mention male writers), but taking the type to which the characters + belong, we see the most intimate and accurate knowledge in all Miss + Austen's creations. + + Only cultivated minds fairly appreciate the exquisite art of Miss + Austen. Those who demand the stimulus of effects, those who can only + see by strong lights and shadows, will find her tame and uninteresting. + We may illustrate this by one detail. Lucy Steele's bad English, so + delicately and truthfully indicated, would in the hands of another have + been more obvious, more "effective" in its exaggeration, but the loss + of this comic effect is more than replaced to the cultivated reader by + his relish of the nice discrimination visible in its truthfulness. And + so of the rest. _Strong_ lights are unnecessary, _true_ lights being + at command. The incidents, the characters, the dialogue--all are of + every-day life, and so truthfully presented that to appreciate the art + we must try to imitate it, or carefully compare it with that of others. + + We are but echoing an universal note of praise in speaking thus highly + of her works, and it is from no desire of simply swelling that chorus + of praise that we name her here, but to call attention to the peculiar + excellence, at once womanly and literary, which has earned this + reputation. Of all imaginative writers she is the most _real_. Never + does she transcend her own actual experience, never does her pen trace + a line that does not touch the experience of others. Herein we + recognize the first quality of literature. We recognize the second and + more special quality of womanliness in the tone and point of view; they + are novels written by a woman, an Englishwoman, a gentlewoman; no + signature could disguise that fact; and because she has so faithfully + (although unconsciously) kept to her own womanly point of view, her + works are durable. There is nothing of the _doctrinaire_ in Jane + Austen; not a trace of woman's "mission;" but as the most truthful, + charming, humorous, pure-minded, quick-witted and unexaggerated of + writers, female literature has reason to be proud of her. + +And this is her suggestive portrait of the other, drawn with that skill +which is only displayed when one genius interprets another through +community of feeling and purpose. + + Of greater genius, and incomparably deeper experience, George Sand + represents woman's literature more illustriously and more obviously. In + her, quite apart from the magnificent gifts of nature, we see the + influence of sorrow as a determining impulse to write, and the abiding + consciousness of the womanly point of view as the subject matter of her + writings. In vain has she chosen the mask of a man: the features of a + woman are everywhere visible. Since Goethe no one has been able to say + with so much truth, "My writings are my confessions." Her biography + lies there, presented, indeed, in a fragmentary shape and under wayward + disguises, but nevertheless giving to the motley groups the strong and + uumistakable charm of reality. Her grandmother, by whom she was brought + up, disgusted at her not being a boy, resolved to remedy the misfortune + as far as possible by educating her like a boy. We may say of this, as + of all the other irregularities of her strange and exceptional life, + that whatever unhappiness and error may be traceable thereto, its + influence on her writings has been beneficial, by giving a greater + range to her experience. It may be selfish to rejoice over the malady + which secretes a pearl, but the possessor of the pearl may at least + congratulate himself that at any rate the pearl has been produced; and + so of the unhappiness of genius. Certainly few women have had such + profound and varied experience as George Sand; none have turned it to + more account. Her writings contain many passages that her warmest + admirers would wish unwritten; but although severe criticism may detect + the weak places, the severest criticism must conclude with the + admission of her standing among the highest minds of literature. In the + matter of eloquence, she surpasses everything France has yet produced. + There has been no style at once so large, so harmonious, so expressive, + and so unaffected: like a light shining through an alabaster vase, the + ideas shine through her diction; while as regards rhythmic melody of + phrase, it is a style such as Beethoven might have written had he + uttered in words the melodious passion that was in him. But deeper than + all eloquence, grander than all grandeur of phrase, is that forlorn + splendor of a life of passionate experience painted in her works. There + is no man so wise but he may learn from them, for they are the + utterances of a soul in pain, a soul that has been tried. No man could + have written her books, for no man could have had her experience, even + with a genius equal to her own. The philosopher may smile sometimes at + her philosophy, for _that_ is only the reflex of some man whose ideas + she has adopted; the critic may smile sometimes--at her failure in + delineating men; but both philosopher and critic must perceive that + those writings of hers are _original_ and genuine, are transcripts of + experience, and as such fulfil the primary condition of all literature. + +This clear, intellectual apprehension of what woman can effect in +literature, had much to do with George Eliot's own success. Yet it is +doubtful if she was so true, in some directions, to the instincts of her +sex as was George Sand, Mrs. Browning or Charlotte Bronte. Hers was in +large measure an intellect without sex; and though she was a woman in all +the instincts of her heart, yet intellectually she occupied the human +rather than the woman's point of view. With a marvellous insight into the +heart of woman, and great skill in portraying womanly natures, she had a +man's way, the logical and impersonal manner, of viewing, the greater +problems of human existence. Charlotte Bronte more truly represents the +woman's way of viewing life; the trustful way of one educated in the +conventional views of religion. She has given a corrector interpretation of +the meaning of love to woman than George Eliot has been able to present, +and simply because she thought and lived more nearly as other women think +and live. Hers was the genius of spontaneous insight and emotion, that +vibrated to every experience and was moved by every sentiment. Life played +upon her heart like the wind upon an Aescolian harp, and she reflected its +every movement of joy and sorrow. George Eliot studied life, probed into +it, cut it in pieces, constructed a theory of it, and then told us what it +means. In this she was unlike other women who have made a deep impression +on literature. Mrs. Browning had nearly as much culture, was as thoughtful +as she, but more genuinely feminine at the heart-core. Love she painted in +a purer and happier fashion than that adopted by George Eliot, and she had +the warmer impulses of a woman's tenderness. Her account of life is the +truer, because it is the more ideal; and this may be said for Charlotte +Bronte also. George Eliot had the larger intellect, the keener mind, was a +profounder thinker; but her realism held her back from that instinctive +conception of life which realizes its larger ideal meanings. It is not +enough to see what is; man desires to know what ought to be. The poet is +the seer, the one who apprehends, who has that finer eye for facts by which +he is able to behold what the facts give promise of. This ideal vision Mrs. +Browning had, and in so far she was the superior of George Eliot. The same +may be said for George Sand, who, with all her wildness and impurity, was a +woman through and through. She was all heart, all impulse, lived in her +instincts and emotions. She had the abandon, enthusiasm and spontaneity +which George Eliot lacked. If the one represents the head, the other +expresses the heart of woman. George Eliot, as a woman, thought, reasoned, +philosophized; George Sand felt, gave every emotion reign, lived out all +her impulses. What the one lacks the other had; where one was weak the +other was strong. With somewhat of George Sand's idealism and emotional +zeal for wider and freer life, George Eliot would have been a greater +writer. Could she have moulded Dorothea with what is best in Consuelo, she +would have been the rival of the greatest literary artists among men. Yet, +with her limitations, it must be said that George Eliot is the superior of +all other women in her literary accomplishments. If others are her +superiors in some directions, in the totality of her powers she surpasses +all. Even as an interpreter of woman's nature and the feminine side of +life, she does not fail to keep well ahead of the best of feminine writers. +She is more thoroughly the master of her powers, is more self-centred, +looks out upon human experience more calmly and with a more penetrating +gaze. Foremost of the half-dozen women who during the present century have +sought to interpret the feminine side of life, she has done much for her +sex. Daring more than others, she has given a greater promise than any +other of what woman is to accomplish when her nature blossoms out into all +its possibilities. + +The chief rule for novel-writing laid down by George Eliot in these essays +is, that the novel shall be the result of experience and true to nature. +She emphasizes the importance of this condition, and says that the novelist +is bound to use actual experience as his material, and that alone, or else +keep silent. Weak and silly novels are the result of an effort to break +away from this rule; but the writer who ventures to disregard it never can +be other than silly or weak. Novelists, she says, may either portray +experience outwardly through observation, or inwardly through sentiment, or +through a combination of both. + + Observation without sentiment usually leads to humor or satire; + sentiment without observation to rhetoric and long-drawn lachrymosity. + The extreme fault of the one is flippant superficiality, that of the + other is what is called sickly sentimentality. + +All true literature, she says, is based on fact, describes life as it is +lived by men and women, touches and is fragrant with reality. This cardinal +principle of literary art she has defined and illustrated in her own strong +and expressive manner in this _Review_ article. + + All poetry, all fiction, all comedy, all _belles-lettres_, even to the + playful caprices of fancy, are but the expression of experiences and + emotions; and these expressions are the avenues through which we reach + the sacred _adytum_ of humanity, and learn better to understand our + fellows and ourselves. In proportion as these expressions are the forms + of universal truths, of facts common to all nations or appreciable by + all intellects, the literature which sets them forth is permanently good + and true. Hence the universality and immortality of Homer, Shakspere, + Cervantes, Moliere. But in proportion as these expressions are the forms + of individual, peculiar truths, such as fleeting fashions or + idiosyncrasies, the literature is ephemeral. Hence tragedy never grows + old, for it arises from elemental experience; but comedy soon ages, for + it arises from peculiarities. Nevertheless, even idiosyncrasies are + valuable as side glances; they are aberrations that bring the natural + orbit into more prominent distinctness. + + It follows from what has been said, that literature, being essentially + the expression of experience and emotion--of what we have seen, felt + and thought--that only _that_ literature is effective, and to be prized + accordingly, which has _reality for its basis_ (needless to say that + emotion is as real as the three-per-cents), _and effective in + proportion to the depth and breadth of that basis_. + +In writing? of the authors of _Jane Eyre_ and _Mary Barton_, she shows how +important to her mind it is that the novel should have its basis in actual +experience, and that it should be an expression of reality. + + They have both given imaginative expression to actual experience--they + have not invented, but reproduced; they have preferred the truth, such + as their own experience testified, to the vague, false, conventional + notions current in circulating libraries. Whatever of weakness may be + pointed out in their works will, we are positive, be mostly in those + parts where experience is deserted, and the supposed requirements of + fiction have been listened to; whatever has really affected the public + mind is, we are equally, certain, the transcript of some actual + incident, character or emotion. Note, moreover, that beyond this basis + of actuality these writers have the further advantage of deep feeling + united to keen observation. + +Especially severe is her condemnation of the tendency to introduce only +fashionable or learned people into novels. She says the silly novelists +rarely make us acquainted with "any other than very lofty and fashionable +society," and very often the authors know nothing of such society except +from the reading of other such novels. + + It is true that we are constantly struck with the want of + verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which + they seem to live; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with + any other form of life. If their peers and peeresses are improbable, + their literary men, tradespeople and cottagers are impossible; and + their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing + both what they _have_ seen and heard, and what they have _not_ seen + and heard, with equal faithfulness. + +What is simple, natural, unaffected, she pleads for as the true material of +fiction. How she would apply this idea may be seen in her condemnation of a +novelist who devoted her pages to a defence of Evangelicalism. This writer +is "tame and feeble" because she attempts to depict a form of society with +which she is not familiar. That the common phases of religious life are +capable of affording the richest material for the novelist, George Eliot +has abundantly shown, and what she says of their value in this discussion +of "Silly Novelists" is of great interest in view of her own success in +this kind of portraiture. What she suggested as a fine field for the +novelist was to be the one she herself was so well to occupy. Her success +proved how clearly she comprehended the nature of novel-writing, and how +well she understood the character of the material with which the best +results can be attained. + + It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist than any other, + gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and carriages. The real + drama of Evangelicalism--and it has abundance of fine drama for any one + who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it--lies among the + middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood + to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather + than in the mighty? Why, then, cannot our Evangelical novelists show + us the operation of their religious views among people (there really + are many such in the world) who keep no carriage, "not so much as a + brass-bound gig," who even manage to eat their dinner without a silver + fork, and in whose mouths the authoress's questionable English would be + strictly consistent? Why can we not have pictures of religious life + among the industrial classes in England as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's + pictures of religious life among the negroes? + +Was this question a prophecy? It indicates that the writer's attention +had already been directed to the richness of this material for the purposes +of the novelist. After reading these words we see why she took up the +common life of the English village as she had herself been familiar with +it from childhood. In order to be true to her own conception of the novel, +there was no other field she could occupy. That she understood the +picturesqueness of this form of life no reader of her novels will doubt, +or that she saw and understood its capacities for artistic delineation. +The opening paragraphs of her _Westminster Review_ article on the "Natural +History of German Life" afford further evidence of her insight and +wisdom on this subject. They also afford evidence of her hatred of the +conventional and the artificial in art, literature and life. The spirit of +imitation and mannerism common to the eighteenth century was in every way +repugnant to her. She could have had only contempt for the literary art of +a Pope or a Boileau. The nature of her realism, and the conception she had +of its importance, may be understood from these paragraphs, for in them she +has unfolded her theory more clearly than in anything else she has written, +and with that genius for sympathetic description which is so marked in her +novels. + + How little the real characteristics of the working-classes are known to + those who are outside them, how little their natural history has been + studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our art as well as by our + political and social theories. Where, in our picture exhibitions, shall + we find a group of true peasantry? What English artist even attempts to + rival in truthfulness such studies of popular life as the pictures of + Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo? Even one of the greatest + painters of the pre-eminently realistic school, while in his picture of + "The Hireling Shepherd" he gave us a landscape of marvellous + truthfulness, placed a pair of peasants in the foreground who were not + much more real than the idyllic swains and damsels of our chimney + ornaments. Only a total absence of acquaintance and sympathy with our + peasantry could give a moment's popularity to such a picture as "Cross + Purposes," where we have a peasant girl who looks as if she knew + L.E.L.'s poems by heart, and English rustics whose costumes seem to + indicate that they are meant for ploughmen with exotic features that + remind us of a handsome _primo tenore_. Rather than such cockney + sentimentality as this as an education for the taste and sympathies, we + prefer the most crapulous group of boors that Teniers ever painted. But + even those among our painters who aim at giving the rustic type of + features, who are far above the effeminate feebleness of the "Keepsake" + style, treat their subjects under the influence of traditions and + prepossessions rather than of direct observation. The notion that + peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a + smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound + teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village children + necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from + the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature instead + of life. The painter is still under the influence of idyllic + literature, which has always expressed the imagination of the + cultivated and town-bred, rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic + ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic + shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers + dance in the chequered shade, and refresh themselves, not immoderately, + with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual + ploughmen thinks them jocund; no one who is well acquainted with the + English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no + sense of beauty beams, no humor twinkles,-the slow utterance and the + heavy slouching walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal, the + camel, than of the sturdy countryman with striped stockings, red waist + coat and hat aside, who represents the traditional English peasant. + Observe a company of haymakers, when you see them at a distance, + tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon + creeps--slowly with its increasing burthen over the meadow, and the + bright green space which tells of work done gets larger and larger, you + pronounce the scene "smiling," and you think that these companions in + labor must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give + animation. Approach nearer, and you will certainly find that haymaking + time is a time of joking, especially it there are women among the + laborers; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and + expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your idyllic + conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence of the + mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the northern peasant, + except tipsy revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for the + English clown exists at the bottom of the third quart-pot. + + The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket books and + never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty + has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake that an + unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that + slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true + that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical + cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn + in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging + letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into + filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not + subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least + established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make + men moral, something more is requisite than to turn them out to grass. + + Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin's indignation, are + surely too frank an idealization to be misleading; and since popular + chorus is one of the most effective elements of the opera, we can + hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant laced bodices and picturesque + motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of colliers in + their pit costume, or a ballet of charwomen and stocking-weavers. But + our social novels profess to represent the people as they are, and the + unreality of their representations is a grave evil. The greatest + benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is + the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations + and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already + in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can + give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention + to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material + of moral sentiment. When Scott takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's + cottage, or tells the story of The Two Drovers,--when Wordsworth + sings to us the reverie of Poor Susan,--when Kingsley shows us Alton + Locke gazing yearningly over the gate which leads from the highway + into the first wood he ever saw,--when Harnung paints a group of + chimney-sweepers,--more is done towards linking the higher classes + with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, + than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the + nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and + extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our + personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he + undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsification here is far + more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not + so very serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent + fashions--about the manners and conversation of beaux and duchesses; + but it _is_ serious that our sympathy with the perennial joys and + struggles, the toil, the tragedy and the humor in the life of our more + heavily laden fellow-men,--should be perverted, and turned towards a + false object instead of the true one. + + This perversion is not the less fatal because the misrepresentation + which gives rise to it has what the artist considers a moral end. The + thing for mankind to know is, not what are the motives and influences + which the moralist thinks _ought_ to act on the laborer or the artisan, + but what are the motives and influences which do act on him. We want to + be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental + peasant, but for the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan + in all his suspicious selfishness. + + We have one great novelist who is gifted with the utmost power of + rendering the external traits of our town population; and if he could + give us their psychological character--their conceptions of life, and + their emotions--with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his + books would be the greatest contribution art has ever made to the + awakening of social sympathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Plornish's + colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while + there is the same startling inspiration in his description of the + gestures and phrases of "Boots," as in the speeches of Shakspere's mobs + or numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from the humorous and external to + the emotional and tragic, without becoming as transcendent in his + unreality as he was a moment before in his artistic truthfulness. But + for the precious salt of his humor, which compels him to reproduce + external traits that serve, in some degree, as a corrective to his + frequently false psychology, his preternaturally virtuous poor children + and artisans, his melodramatic bootmen and courtesans, would be as + noxious as Eugene Sue's idealized proletaires in encouraging the + miserable fallacy that high morality and refined sentiment can grow + out of harsh social relations, ignorance and want; or that the + working-classes are in a condition to enter at once into a millennial + state of _altruism_, wherein every one is caring for every one else, + and no one for himself. + + If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our + sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and + direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid + conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social + questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of + men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations,--the + dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which + appeals principally to their moral sensibilities,--the aristocratic + dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" by a sort + of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity and veneration as + we grow prize turnips, by an artificial system of culture,--none of + these diverging mistakes can co-exist with a real knowledge of the + people, with a thorough study of their habits, their ideas, their + motives. The landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the mining + agent, have each an opportunity for making precious observations on + different sections of the working-class, but unfortunately their + experience is too often not registered at all, or its results are too + scattered to be available as a source of information and stimulus to + the public mind generally. If any man of sufficient moral and + intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be vitiated by a + foregone conclusion, or by a professional point of view, would devote + himself to studying the natural history of our social classes, + especially of the small shop-keepers, artisans and peasantry,--the + degree in which they are influenced by local conditions, their maxims + and habits, the points of view from which they regard their religious + teachers, and the degree in which they are influenced by religious + doctrines, the interaction of the various classes on each other, and + what are the tendencies in their position towards disintegration or + towards development,--and if, after all this study, he would give us + the result of his observations in a book well nourished with specific + facts, his work would be a valuable aid to the social and political + reformer. + +The estimates given in these essays of the writings of Jane Austen, George +Sand, Charlotte Bronte and Thackeray, show the soundness of George Eliot's +critical judgment. She fully appreciated Jane Austen's artistic skill, as +she did George Sand's impassioned love of liberty and naturalness. She also +saw how tame are Miss Austen's scenes, how humanly imperfect are +Thackeray's characters. Her own work is wanting in Jane Austen's artistic +skill and finish, but there is far more of originality and character in her +books, more of thought and purpose. Miss Austen tells her story wonderfully +well, but her books are all on the same level of social mediocrity and +flatness. No fresh, strong, natural, aspiring life is to be found in one of +them. George Eliot has not Jane Austen's artistic skill, but she has +thought, depth of purpose, originality of expression and conception, and a +marvellous creative insight into character. She is less passionate and bold +than George Sand, not the same daring innovator, more rational and +sensible. She is not so much a poet, has little of George Sand's power of +improvisation, much less of eloquence and abandon. She has more literary +skill than Charlotte Bronte, less originality, but none of her crudeness. +She has not so much of the subtle element of genius, but more of solidity +and thought. + +Her theories concerning the novel place George Eliot fully in sympathy with +what may very properly be called the British school of fiction. The natural +history of man is the subject matter used by this school; and to describe +accurately, minutely, some portion of the human race, some social +community, is its main object. Richardson, Fielding, Miss Austen and +Thackeray are the masters in this school, who have given direction to its +aims and methods. They have sought to accomplish in novel-writing somewhat +the same results as those aimed at by Wordsworth and Browning in poetry, to +follow the natural, to make much of the common, to describe things as they +are. They are realists both in method and philosophy, though differing +widely from the minuteness and coarseness of Tourguenief and Zola, in that +they show a large element of the ideal interfused with the real. This +school is seldom coarse, vulgar or sensuous, does not mistake the depraved +and beastly for the natural. Its members delight in simple scenes, plain +life, common joys; the scenes, life and joys which are open to every +Englishman. They have made use of the facts lying immediately about them, +those with which they were the most familiar. They have broken away from +the traditional theories of life, the manners of books of etiquette and the +rules of fashionable society, for the life which is natural and instinct +with impulses of its own. The life of the professions is described, local +dialects and provincialisms appear, places and scenery are carefully +painted, and the disagreeable and painful become elements in these novels, +because common to humanity. + +To this special theory of the novel, as it had been worked out by the +English masters of prose-poetry, George Eliot added nothing essential. +Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Austen, Miss Mitford, Fielding and Richardson +had preceded her along the way she was to follow. Their methods became +hers, she accepted their influence, and her work was done in the spirit +they had so ably illustrated. In one direction, however, she far surpassed +any one of her masters, and gave to the novel a richness of power and +fulness of aim it had not attained to with any of her predecessors. George +Eliot combined other methods with that of naturalism, not adhering rigidly +to the purpose of painting life as it appears on the surface. Not only from +the pre-Raphaelites, but from such romanticists as Scott, did she learn +much. Past scenes became natural, and history was discovered to be a vast +element in the thought of the present. Scott's power of reviving the past +in all its romantic and picturesque features, which gave him such capacity +for re-creating the life that had once passed away, was not possessed by +George Eliot. Still, if not a romancist, she realized how mighty is the +shaping power of the past over the present. For this reason, she endeavored +to recast old scenes, to revive in living shapes the times that had gone +by. The living movements of the present, its efforts at reform, its cries +for liberty, its searchings after a freer and purer life, also became a +prominent element in her novels. If in this tendency she somewhat enlarged +upon the methods of her masters, yet she was quite in sympathy with many +who came just before her, and with many more who were her contemporaries. +In another direction she kept along the way followed by many of her +co-workers, and brought philosophy and socialistic speculation to the aid +of the naturalistic method. Indeed, she so far departed from that method, +and from the soundest theories of art, as to become to some extent a +_doctrinaire_. + +Her novels, like much of the poetry of the same period, are eclectic in +spirit, combining with the naturalistic methods those of the historic, +socialistic, culture and speculative schools. Art and culture for their own +sake combined in her novels with the purpose to use history and social life +obedient to a distinct conception of their meanings. To describe life +accurately there must be a clear conception of what life means. Genius +never works aimlessly; and in seeing life as it is, always sees that it has +a tendency and direction. A mind so thoughtful as George Eliot's, with so +strong a love of speculative interest in it, was likely to give to +novel-writing done by her a large philosophic element. Yet her philosophy +is nearly always subject to her imagination and to her naturalism. Her love +of nature, her intimate interest in life and its elemental problems, her +passionate sympathy with all human passions and experiences, saves her from +becoming a mere _doctrinaire_, and gives to her speculations a pathetic, +living interest. The poetic elements of her novels are so many as to +subordinate the philosophic to the true purposes of art. + +In one direction George Eliot departed from the methods of her +predecessors, and to so great an extent as to be herself the originator of +a new school of fiction. She followed the bent of her time for analysis and +psychologic interpretation. It is here more than anywhere else she differs +from Charlotte Bronte and George Sand. These two great novelists create +character by direct representation, by making their persons live and act. +George Eliot shows her characters to the reader by analyzing their motives +and by giving the history of their development. The disadvantages of the +analytic method are apparent when George Eliot is compared with Scott. +Unique, personal and human are his creations, instinct with all human +emotions, and profoundly real. It is only the poetic side of life which he +sees, not its philosophic. George Eliot wanted to know the meanings of +things, and this very desire brings a largeness into her books which is not +found in Scott's. She was much the more thoughtful of the two, the one who +tried to realize to the intellect what life means. Yet her method of doing +this is not always the best one for the poet or the novelist. Scott was no +realist, and yet George Eliot has not been more accurate than he. Indeed, +he is far more truly accurate in so far as he paints the soul as well as +the body of life. The sad endings of her novels grew out of a false theory, +and from her inability to see anything of spiritual reality beyond the +little round of man's earthly destiny. She did not accept the doctrine that +art is to be cultivated only for art's sake, for art was always to her the +vehicle of moral or philosophic teaching. The limitations of her art +largely lay in the direction of her agnosticism. Scott and George Sand gain +for their work a great power and effect by their acceptance of the +spiritual as real. There is a light, a subtle aroma, a width of vision, a +sense of reality, in their work from this source, which is wanting in +George Eliot's. The illimitable mystery beyond the region of the real is +the greatest fact man has presented to him, and that region is a reality in +all the effects it works on humanity. No poet can ignore it or try to limit +it to humanity without a loss to his work. It is this subtle, penetrative, +aromatic and mystic power of the ideal which is most to be felt as lacking +in the works of George Eliot. Much as we may praise her, we can but feel +this limitation. Great as is our admiration, we can but feel that there is +a higher range of poetic and artistic creation than any she reached. + +The quotations presented from her early writings prove that George Eliot +began her career as a novelist with a fully elaborated conception of the +purposes of the novel and of the methods to be followed in its production. +She had thoroughly studied the subject, had read many of the best works of +the best writers, and had formed a carefully digested theory of the novel. +That she could do this is rather an indication of critical than of creative +power. Her novels everywhere betray the greatness of her reasoning powers, +that she was a thinker, that she had strong powers of intellectual +analysis, and that she had a logical, accurate mind. Had her mind taken no +other direction than this, however, she never could have become a great +novelist. These essays indicated something beside powers of reasoning and +psychological analysis. They also indicated her capacity for imaginative +insight into the motives and impulses of human nature, and an intuitive +comprehension of what is most natural to human thought and action. They +showed appreciation of sympathy and feeling, and delicate perception of the +finer cravings and tendencies of even the commonest souls. They gave +promise of so much creative power, her friends saw that in novel-writing +she was to find the true expression of her large qualities of mind and +heart. The person who could so skilfully point out the faults in the poor +novels rapidly issuing from the press, and realize the true indications of +a master's power in the creations of the literary artists, might herself +possess the genius necessary to original work of her own. Her early essays +are now chiefly of value for this promise they give of larger powers than +those which could be fully expressed in such work. They prophesied the +future, and made her friends zealous to overcome her own reluctance to +enter upon a larger work. She doubted her own genius, but it was not +destined to remain unfruitful. + + + + +VIII. + + +POETIC METHODS. + +Had George Eliot written nothing else than the poems which bear her name, +she would have been assigned a permanent place among the poets. Having +first attained her rank in the highest order of novelists, however, her +poetry suffers in comparison with her prose. The critics tell us that no +person gifted with supreme excellence in one form of creative expression +has ever been able to attain high rank in another. They forget that Goethe +was great both in prose and poetry; that his _Wilhelm Meister_ is of +scarcely inferior genius to his _Faust_. They also forget that Victor Hugo +holds the first place among the French poets of the present century, at the +same time that he is the greatest of all French novelists. It would be well +for them also to remember that Scott held high rank as a poet before he +began his wonderful career as a novelist. A contemporary of George Eliot's, +to name a single instance of another kind, was equally excellent as poet +and painter. Dante Rossetti made for himself a lasting place in both +directions, and in both he did work of a high order. + +In reality, the novel much resembles the narrative or epic poem; and if a +work of true genius, it is difficult to distinguish it from the poem except +as they differ in external form. The novel has for its main elements those +qualities of imagination, description, high-wrought purpose, which are also +constituents of much of the best poetry. The novel is more expansive than +the poem, one of the chief characteristics of which is condensation; its +theme may take a wider range, and it may embrace those cruder and more +common features of life which are inappropriate to the poem. The novelist +can make a greater use of humor, he can give more detail to description, +and portrayal of character can be carried to a much greater extent, than is +usual with the poet. The poet requires a subject more sublime, inspiring +and naturally beautiful than the novelist, who seeks what is the more +human, nearer the level of daily social existence, and full of the +affecting even if ruder interests and passions of life. The novel is so +similar to the poem, and in so many ways requires such similar qualities of +mind for its production, that there is no inherent reason why the same +person cannot do equally good work in both. The supposition is that the +poet may become a novelist, or the novelist a poet, in all cases except +where there is some outward disqualification. The novelist may not have the +sense of rhythmical form and of metrical expression; and the poet may not +possess that constructive faculty which builds up plots, incidents and +characters. In nearly all respects but these the two forms of creative +genius so nearly assimilate each other, it is to be expected a novelist may +turn poet if he have a large imagination and a stimulating capacity for +metrical expression. + +Novelists of strong imagination and a ready command of expressive words, +barely escape writing poetry when they only purpose to write prose. This is +true of Hugo, Auerbach, Dickens and George Eliot, again and again. The glow +of creation, the high-wrought impulse of imagination, the ideal conception +of life, all move the novelist in the direction of poetry. With much effort +he keeps meter and rhyme out of his prose, but simile and metaphor, +condensed expression, unusual words, poetic compounds, alliteration, +sublime and picturesque expression, will intrude themselves. Dickens even +permits meter and rhyme to conquer him, and weakens his style in +consequence. He grows sentimental, and the real strength of pure prose is +lost. George Eliot is often poetical in expression, touches the very +borders of poetry continually, but she seldom permits herself to lapse from +the strong, energetic and impressive prose which she almost uniformly +writes. Specimens of this noble poetic-prose may be found very often in her +pages. While it would be difficult by any transposition of words to turn it +into poetry, as may often be done in the case of Dickens's prose, yet it +contains most of the elements of a high order of poetry. In the account of +the death of Maggie and Tom is to be found a fine specimen of her style, +the last words being good iambics. + + The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace + never to be parted; living through again, in one supreme moment, the + days when they _had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the + daisied fields together_. + +In the first paragraph of the thirty-third chapter of _Adam Bede_ is a +sentence which makes a successful stanza in iambics by the addition of a +single word. + + The woods behind the chase, + And all the hedgerow trees, + Took on a solemn splendor _then_ + Under the dark low-hanging skies. + +It is very seldom, however, that George Eliot permits anything like meter +in her prose, and she is usually very reticent of rhythm. There is fervor +and enthusiasm, imagination and poetic insight, but all kept within the +limits of robust and manly prose. This capacity of prose to serve most of +the purposes of poetry may be seen in a marked degree in all of George +Eliot's novels. In the account of Adam Bede's love for Hetty this subtle +power of words and ideas to give the charm and impression of poetry without +rhythm or rhyme is exhibited in a characteristic manner. + + I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, + dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came + out of the very strength of his nature, and not out of any inconsistent + weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite + music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings + of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can + penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in + one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the + tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome + years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation + all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your + present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your + past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon + by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the + liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her + lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music; what can one say + more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's + soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than + the thought that prompted them; it is more than a woman's love that + moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off, mighty love + that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the + rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their + prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness + and peace. [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XXXIII.] + +Love, music and beautiful landscapes continually inspire the poetic side of +her nature; and these themes, which are constantly recurring in her +chapters, draw forth her imagination and give fervor and enthusiasm to her +expression. Her love of nature is deep and most appreciative of all its +transformations and beauties. This sensitiveness to the changes of the +outward world is a large element in her mind, and indicates the reality of +her poetic gifts. This may be seen in a passage such as the following:-- + + The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, + lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and + pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty, and to + spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a + particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from + childhood; the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and + trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in + mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope + of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the + huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of + approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering + wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and + valleys, with wondrous modulations of light and shadow, such as we + travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more + beautiful. These are the things that made the gamut of joy in landscape + to midland-bred souls--the things they toddled among, or perhaps + learned by heart, standing between their father's knees while he drove + leisurely. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XII.] + +It is nature as affecting man, and man as transformed into a creature of +feeling and passion by the mysterious conditions of his existence, which +oftenest arouses the poetic fervor in her. The enthusiasm of high resolves, +yearnings after the pure and beautiful, and love's regenerating power, give +to her themes which kindle poetic expression to a glow. The vision of +Mordecai on Blackfriars' bridge affords a fine example of her love of the +ideal in moral purpose, and shows how stimulating it is to her imagination. +It is a poetic picture of the finest quality she has given in this chapter, +one that could easily have been made to find expression in verse of great +beauty; but it is poetry in thought and spirit alone, not in form or +structure. It is true prose in form, strong in its fulness of detail, knit +together with words of the right texture, built up into a true prose image +of beauty in thought. + + Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images that his coherent + trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to + sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments; nay, they + often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage + from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually + thought of the Being answering to his need as one distinctly + approaching or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a + golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai's + habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a + favorite resort of his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some + one of the bridges, especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he + was bending over watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper + room looking out on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his + imagination spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a + far-stretching scene; his thought went on in wide spaces, and whenever + he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky. + Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriars' bridge, and gazing meditatively, + the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half + luminous, the grand dim masses or tall forms of buildings which were + the signs of world-commerce, the on-coming of boats and barges from the + still distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent + themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to + which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our + spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of + Mordecai's longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light + in the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his + imagination toward fuller detail he ceased to see the figure with its + back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became discernible; + the words youth, beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity, + turned into hardly individual but typical form and color: gathered from + his memory of faces seen among the Jews of Holland and Bohemia, and + from the paintings which revived that memory. Reverently let it be said + of this mature spiritual need that it was akin to the boy's and girl's + picturing of the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire + are feeble compared with the passionate current of an ideal life + straining to embody itself, made intense by resistance to imminent + dissolution. The visionary form became a companion and auditor, keeping + a place not only in the waking imagination, but in those dreams of + lighter slumber of which it is truest to say, "I sleep, but my heart is + awake"--when the disturbing trivial story of yesterday is charged with + the impassioned purpose of years. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chapter + XXXVIII.] + +Many times in her prose George Eliot has recognized the true character of +poetry, and she has even given definitions of it which show how well she +knew its real nature. She makes Will Ladislaw say that-- + + To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of + quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand + playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in + which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling + flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. [Footnote: Middlemarch, + chapter XXII.] + +She thinks poetry and romance are as plentiful in the world as ever they +were, that they exist even amidst the conditions created by invention and +science; and if we do not find them there it is only because poetry and +romance are absent from our own minds. If we have not awe and tenderness, +wonder and enthusiasm, poetry cannot come near us, and we shall not be +thrilled and exalted by it. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chanter XIX.] Yet it +is not difficult to see that George Eliot is not a poet in the fullest +sense, because hers is not thoroughly and always a poetic mind, because she +reasons about things too much. The poet is impressed, moved, thrilled and +exalted, and pours out his song from his feelings and transfused with +emotion. George Eliot was given to speculation, loved exactness of +expression, and kept too close to the real. She had not that lightness of +touch, that deftness and flexibility of expression, and that versatility of +imaging forth her ideas, which the real poet possesses. Her mind moved with +a ponderous tread, which needed a prose style large and stately as its true +medium of expression. While she had poetic ideas in abundance, and an +imaginative discernment of nature and life, she had not the full gift of +poetic speech. She lacked inspiration as well as flexibility of thought, +her imagination was not sufficiently rich, and she had not the full sense +of rhythmic harmony. + +George Eliot first began to write in verse, as was to be expected of one +gifted with an imagination vigorous as hers. Her love of music, her keen +perception of the beauties of nature, her love of form and color, gave +added attraction and impetus in the same direction. That she did not +continue through many years to write poetry seems to have been partly the +result of her intense interest in severer studies. The speculative cast of +her mind predominated the poetical so nearly as to turn her away from the +poetic side of life to find a solution for its graver and more intricate +problems. Her return to the poetic form of expression may be accounted for +partly as the result of a greater confidence in her own powers which came +from success, and partly from a desire for a new and richer medium of +utterance. + +So far as can be judged from the dates of her poems, as appended to many of +them, "How Lisa Loved the King" was the earliest written. This was written +in the year of the publication of _Romola_, and was followed the next year +by the first draft of _The Spanish Gypsy_. The poetical mottoes of _Felix +Holt_, however, were the first to be published; and not until these +appeared did the public know of her poetic gifts. _The Spanish Gypsy_ was +not published until 1868, and "How Lisa Loved the King" appeared the +following year. + +The original mottoes in _Felix Holt_ gave good hint of George Eliot's +poetic gifts. They are solid with thought, pregnant with the ripe wisdom of +daily experience, significant for dramatic expression, or notable for their +humor. They are rather heavy and ponderous in style, though sonorous in +expression. A stately tread, a largeness of expression, an air of weighty +meaning, appear in nearly all these mottoes. As a specimen of the more +philosophic, the following will indicate the truthfulness of this +description:-- + + Truth is the precious harvest of the earth, + But once, when harvest waved upon a land, + The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar, + Locusts, and all the swarming, foul-born broods, + Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws, + And turned the harvest into pestilence, + Until men said, What profits it to sow? + +Her capacity for dramatic expression, in which a rich comprehension of +life is included, may be seen in these lines: + + 1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth + That makes a vice of virtue by excess. + + 2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins + Be loss of virtue? + + 1ST CITIZEN. All things cool with time-- + The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find + A general level, nowhere in excess. + + 2D CITIZEN. 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought, + That future middlingness. + +Wisdom alloyed with humor appears in another motto: + + "It is a good and soothfast saw; + Half-roasted never will be raw; + No dough is dried once more to meal. + No crock new-shapen by the wheel; + You can't turn curds to milk again + Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then; + And having tasted stolen honey, + You can't buy innocence for money." + +Mr. Buxton Forman says, that "in the charming headings to the chapters of +_Felix Holt_ it seemed as though the strong hand which had, up to that +point, exercised masterly control over the restive tendency of high prose +to rear up into verse, had relaxed itself just for the sake of a holiday, +and no more. These headings did not bear the stamp of original poetry upon +them. Forcible as were some, admirable in thought and applicability to the +respective chapters as were all, none bore traces of that clearly defined +individuality of style betrayed by all great and accomplished practitioners +of verse, in even so small a compass as these headings. Some of them +possess the great distinctive technical mark of poetry,--condensation; but +this very condensation is compassed not in an original and individual +method, but in the method of some pre-existent model; and it is hardly +necessary to enforce that power of assimilation or reproduction, however +large, is no infallible index of self-existent poetical faculty." This +critic finds traces of Shakspere, Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning in these +mottoes, and thinks they are all imitative, even when they are best. It is +too easy, however, to dispose of a piece of literary work in this manner, +and such criticism is very apt to have little meaning in it. George Eliot +has proven herself far too original, both in prose and poetry, to make such +a criticism of much value. Even if the charge of imitation is a valid one, +it is far more probable that it was conscious and purposed, than that +George Eliot's poetic gifts could only be exercised when impelled by the +genius of some other. To give the impression of quotation may have been a +part of George Eliot's purpose in writing these mottoes, which are original +enough, and thoughtful enough, to have been attributed to any of the great +poets. The real defects of her poetry lie in quite another direction than +that of a lack of originality. She has enough to say that is fresh and +interesting, she has no need to consult others for what she is to utter; +but she has not the fervor of expression, the impressive touch, which +separates poetry from prose. There is intellectual power enough, thought +even in excess, but she does not soar and sing. She walks steadily, +majestically along on the ground, she has no wings for the clear ether. +Indeed, she is too much a realist to breathe in that upper air of pure +song; it is too fine and delicate for one who loves the solid facts of +earth so well as she. + +If George Eliot often wrote prose which is almost poetry, she also wrote +poetry which is almost prose. The concentrated, image-bearing phrases of +poetry are wanting oftentimes in her verse. There is meter but no other +quality of poetry, and not a few passages could be printed as prose with +scarce a suspicion to the reader that they were intended for poetry. Mr. +Buxton Forman has given a passage from _The Spanish Gypsy_ in this way, +adding only six insignificant words, and restoring _i_ to _is_ in two +instances. He rightly says that the passage printed in prose "would surely +be read by any one who saw it for the first time, without any suspicion +that it merely required the excision of six little words and two letters to +transform it to verse; no single expression betraying the secret that the +passage is from a poem." + + _Do_ you hear the trumpet! There _is_ old Eamon's + blast. No bray but his can shake the air so well. He takes his + trumpeting as solemnly as _an_ angel charged to wake the + dead; thinks war was made for trumpeters, and _that_ their + great art _was_ made solely for themselves who understand + it. His features have all shaped themselves to blowing, and when + his trumpet _is either_ bagged or left at home he seems + _like_ a chattel in a broker's booth, a spoutless + watering-can, a promise to pay no sum particular! + +George Eliot had not full command of poetic expression. This frequently +appears, not only in the fact that many lines are simply prose in thought, +but in the defects of the poetic form. Some lines are too short and others +too long, some having four and some six feet. An instance of the former is +to be found in these words between Don Silva and the Prior, forming one +line: + + Strong reasons, father. + Ay, but good? + +Of the latter: + + And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion. + +Still more suggestive are the expedients she resorts to in order to +complete the line. Lopez is made to say,-- + + Santiago! Juan, thou art hard to please. + I speak not for my own delighting, I. + I can be silent, I. + +Very near this, Lopez is spoken of in this line: + + That was not what he drew his sword at--he! + +Such defects as these are not, certainly, of vital importance, and may +doubtless be found in even the greatest poets; but they are noticeable here +because of one texture with that which limits the quality of her poetic +art. The principal criticism to be made on her poetry is that it was +composed and did not create itself out of a full poetic mind. It was +wrought out, was the result of study and composition, is wanting in +spontaneity and enthusiasm. The most serious defect of her poetry is also +the most marked defect of her prose, and this is a want of the ideal +element. She was a realist by nature, and could not free herself from the +tendency to look at the world on its surface only. + +In her poetry George Eliot is much more a _doctrinaire_ than in her novels. +All her poems, except a few of the shorter ones, are devoted to the +inculcation of some moral or philosophic teaching. The very effort she was +obliged to make to give herself utterance in poetry predisposed her to +intellectual subjects and those of a controversial nature. For this reason +her verse has a special interest for those who are attracted to her +teachings. Her pen was freer, more creative, in her great novels than in +her poems. In fact, her novels, especially _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on the +Floss_, are much more poetical than much she did in verse. In her verse she +tried to present the more spiritual side of life, to make living and +effective her own conceptions of the unseen and eternal. Yet she was +burdened constantly in this effort by the fact that she had a new theory of +the spiritual and ideal side of life to interpret. The poets who win the +homage of mankind, and conquer all hearts to themselves, take the accepted +interpretations of the great spiritual problems of life as the basis of +their work and give those a larger, loftier meaning through their poetic +and ideal insight and capacity of interpretation. They shun theories which +must be expounded and interpretations for which no one is prepared. It is +here George Eliot is seriously at fault as a poet, however much she may be +commended as a teacher and reformer. Perhaps the truest piece of poetic +work she did was _Agatha_, in which, however, there is a greater reliance +than in most of her poems, on the accepted interpretations of spiritual +beliefs. In portraying the trust, childlike and simple, of an old woman, +and in endeavoring to realize the poetic elements of that trust and +simplicity, she was very effective. In such work as this she would have +been much more successful, from the strictly poetic point of view, than she +has been, if she had not attempted to give her theories a clothing in +verse. In her "Brother and Sister" she was also very successful, but +especially so in the "Two Lovers." There is an exquisite charm and power in +some of these minor poems. Where the heart was free, and the intellect was +not dominant and insistent on the importance of its theories, there was +secured a genuine poetic beauty. There is true poetry in these lines: + + Two lovers by a moss-grown spring: + They lean soft cheeks together there, + Mingled the dark and sunny hair, + And heard the wooing thrushes sing. + Oh budding time! + Oh love's blest prime! + + Two wedded from the portal stept: + The bells made happy carrollings, + The air was soft as passing wings, + White petals on the pathway slept. + Oh pure-eyed bride! + Oh tender pride! + +There is a beauty and majesty in the poem on subjective immortality which +is likely to make it, as it has already become, the one popular poem among +all she wrote. There is a stimulus, enthusiasm and abandon about it which +is attained but seldom in her other verses. The love of humanity, its +passionate longing to sacrifice self for the good of all, is acceptable to +much of the thought and purpose of the present time; and its spirit of +sacrifice is one which may commend it to all earnest souls. In the more +extended poems there is genuine accomplishment just in proportion as the +leading purpose was artistic rather than philosophic or moral. + +Difficult as it was for a successful novelist to secure applause as a poet, +George Eliot overcame the distrust of her admirers and gained also a not +unmerited place as a poet. Her verse has been a real addition to her work, +and is likely to command an increasing interest in the future. That it is +not always successful from the merely artistic point of view, that it is +not to be placed by the side of the best poetry of the time, is no reason +why it will not appeal to many minds and enlist its own company of +admirers. Next after the universal poets are those who appeal to a select +circle and charm a particular class of minds. Among these George Eliot will +stand as one of the foremost and one of those most worthy of homage. As the +poet of positivism, she will long delight those in sympathy with her +teachings. It would be extravagant praise to call her a second Lucretius, +and yet that which has given the Roman author his place among poets will +also give George Eliot rank in the same company. With all his merits as a +poet, it has not been his poetic power, or his love of nature, or his worth +as an interpreter of human nature, which has given Lucretius his reputation +as a poet. With real poetic power,--for he would have been a much smaller +man without this,--he combined a philosophic mind and a daring genius for +speculation. The poetry gave charm and ideal grandeur to the speculations, +and the philosophy made the poetry full of meaning and earnest intellectual +purpose. He read life and nature with a keener eye and a more profound +penetration than others of his time; he tried to grasp the secret of the +universe, and because of it he left behind the touch of a strong mind. In +some such way as this, George Eliot's poetry is likely to be read in the +future. As poetry merely, it cannot take high rank; but for the sake of its +philosophy, which is conceived as a poet would conceive it, there is +promise that its future is to be one that is lasting. Even for poetry there +must be thought, and the larger, profounder it is the better for the +poetry, if it is imaginatively conceived and expressed. It is not thought, +or even philosophy, which annuls poetry, but want of ideal and creative +insight. To Goethe, Wordsworth or Browning there was a gain by enlargement +of intellectual materials, but these were suffused in true poetic fire, and +came forth a new creation. In so far as George Eliot has attained this +result is she a poet, and is she sure of the future suffrages of those who +accept her philosophy. At the least, her admirers must rejoice at the +enlarged range of expression she secured by the use of the poetic form. + + + + +IX. + + +PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE. + +George Eliot was pre-eminently a novelist and a poet; but she is also the +truest literary representative the nineteenth century has yet afforded of +its positivist and scientific tendencies. What Comte and Spencer have +taught in the name of philosophy, Tyndall and Haeckel in the name of +science, she has applied to life and its problems. Their aims, spirit and +tendencies have found in her a living embodiment, and re-appear in her +pages as forms of genius, as artistic creations. They have experimented, +speculated, elaborated theories of the universe, drawn out systems of +philosophy; but she has reconstructed the social life of man through her +creative insight. What they mean, whither they lead, is not to be +discovered nearly so plainly in their books as in hers. She is their +interpreter through that wonderful insight, genius and creative power which +enabled her to see what they could not themselves discover,--the effect of +their teachings on man as an individual and as a social being. + +Whoever would know what the agnostic and evolution philosophy of the time +has to teach about man, his social life, his moral responsibilities, his +religious aspirations, should go to the pages of George Eliot in preference +to those of any other. The scientific spirit, the evolution philosophy, +live in her pages, reveal themselves there in all their strength and in all +their weakness. She was a thinker equal to any of those whose names stand +forth as the representatives of the philosophy she accepted, she was as +competent, as they to think out the problems of life and to interpret +social existence in accordance with their theories of man and nature. +Competent to grasp and to interpret the positive philosophy in all its +details and in all its applications, she also had that artistic spirit of +reconstruction which enabled her to apply to life what she held in theory. +Along with the calm philosophic spirit which thinks out "the painful riddle +of the earth," she had the creative spirit of the artist which delights in +portraying life in all its endeavors, complexities and consequences. She +not only accepted the theory of hereditary transmission as science has +recently developed it, and as it has been enlarged by positivism into a +shaping influence of the past upon the present, but she made this law vital +with meaning as she developed its consequences in the lives of her +characters. To her it was not merely a theory, but a principle so pregnant +with meaning as to have its applications in every phase of human +experience. Life could not be explained without it; the thoughts, deeds and +aspirations of men could be understood only with reference to it; much that +enters into human life of weal and woe is to be comprehended only with +reference to this law. In regard to all the other evolution problems and +principles her knowledge was as great, her insight as clear, and her +constructive use of them as original. + +A new theory of life and the universe may be intellectually accepted as +soon as its teachings are comprehended; but the absorption of that theory +into the moral tissues, so that it becomes an active and constant impulse +and motive in feeling and conduct, is a long and difficult process. It +takes generations before it can associate itself with the instinctive +impulses of the mind. It is one thing to accept the theory of universal law +as an intellectual explanation of the sequences of phenomena, but it is +quite another to be guided by that theory in all the most spontaneous +movements of feeling, conscience and thought. A few minds are able to make +such a theory at once their own by virtue of genius of a very instinctive +and subtle order; but for the great majority of mankind this result can +only be reached after generations of instruction. The use made of such +theories by the poets and novelists is a sure test of their popular +acceptance. When the poets accept such a theory, and naturally express +themselves in accordance with its spirit, the people may soon feel and +think according to its meaning. + +The theory of evolution will not easily adjust the human mind to its +conclusions and methods. It is therefore very remarkable that George Eliot, +the contemporary of Comte, Spencer, Darwin, Lewes and Tyndall, should be +able to give a true literary expression to their speculations. She has not +only been able to follow these men, to accept their theories and to +understand them in all their implications and tendencies, but she has so +absorbed these theories into her mind, and so made them a part of all its +processes, that she has painted life thoroughly in accordance with their +spirit. Should the teachings of the evolutionists of to-day be finally +accepted, and after a few generations become the universally received +explanations of life and the universe, it is not likely any poet or +novelist will more genuinely and entirely express their spirit than George +Eliot has done. The evolutionary spirit and ways of looking at life became +instinctive to her; she saw life and read its deepest experiences wholly in +the light shed by this philosophy. For this reason her writings are of +great value to those who would understand the evolution philosophy in its +higher phases. + +George Eliot accepted the intellectual conclusions of evolution, and the +outline thus afforded she filled in with feeling and poetry. She +interpreted the pathos, the tragedy, the aspirations of life in the light +of this philosophy. Accepting with a bold and undismayed intellect the +implications and consequences of evolution, rejecting or abating no least +portion of it, she found in it a place for art, poetry and religion; and +she tried to show how it touches and moulds and uplifts man. She shrank +from nothing which would enable her to reveal how man is to live in such a +universe as she believed in; she saw all its hardness, cruelty, anguish and +mystery, and resolutely endeavored to show how these enter into and help to +form his destiny. In doing this she followed the lead of the positivists in +the acceptance of feeling as the basis and the true expression of man's +inner life. The emotional life is made the essential life; and all its +phases of manifestation in art, poetry and religion are regarded as of +great importance. George Eliot viewed the higher problems of life from this +point of view, giving to the forms in which the emotional side of man's +nature is expressed a supreme importance. Religion, as the response of +feeling to the mystery of existence, occupied a most important place in her +philosophy. That her interpretation of the emotional elements of life is +the true one, that she has discovered their source or their real ideal +significance, may well be doubted; but there is every reason for believing +that she realized their great value, and she certainly tried in an earnest +spirit to make them helpful in the life of ideal beauty and truthfulness. + +All that agnostic science and the evolution philosophy had to teach, George +Eliot accepted, its doctrine of descent, its new psychology, and its +theories of society and human destiny. Its doctrine of experience, its +ethical theories, were equally hers. Yet into her interpretation of +existence went a woman's heart, the widest and tenderest sympathy, and a +quick yearning purpose to do what good she could in the world. She saw with +the lover's eyes, motherhood revealed itself in her soul, the child's trust +was in her heart. The new philosophy she applied to life, revealed its +relations to duty, love, sorrow, trial and death. To her it had a deep +social meaning, a vital connection with the heart, its hopes and its +burdens, and for her it touched the spiritual content of life with reality. +It was in this way she became the truest interpreter of the evolution +philosophy, the best apostle of the ethics taught by agnostic science. She +not only speculated, she also felt and lived. Philosophy was to her more +than an abstract theory of the universe; into it entered a tender sympathy +for all human weakness, a profound sense of the mystery of existence, and a +holy purpose to make life pure and true to all she could reach. This larger +comprehension gives a new significance to her interpretation of evolution. +It makes it impossible that this philosophy should be fully understood +without a study of her books. + +It is because George Eliot was not a mere speculative thinker that her +teachings become so important. The true novelist, who is gifted with +genius, who creates character and situation with a master's hand, must have +some theory of life. He must have some notion of what life means, what the +significance of the pathos and tragedy of human experience, and why it is +that good and evil in conduct do not produce the same results. Such a +theory of life, if firmly grasped and worked out strongly, becomes a +philosophy. Much depends with the novelist on that philosophy, what it +places foremost, what it sees destiny to mean. It will affect his insight, +give shape to his plots, decide his characters, guide his ethical +interpretations, fix his spiritual apprehension. It was because George +Eliot adopted a new and remarkable philosophy, one that teaches much which +the instincts of the race have rejected, and repudiates much which the race +has accepted as necessary to its welfare, that her teachings become so +noteworthy. Genius first of all she had, and the artist's creative power; +but the way she used these, and the limitations she put upon them by her +philosophy, give her books an interest which not even her wonderful genius +could alone produce. That philosophy is in debate; and it is not yet +decided whether it is mainly false because growing out of wrong methods, +or if it be in reality a true explanation of existence. Its revolutionary +character, its negative spirit, its relations to ethics and religion, +make it remarkable, and even startling. Profound thinkers, men of +commanding philosophic apprehension and power of generalization, have +accepted it; physical science has largely lent its aid to the support of +its conclusions. Yet on its side genius, imagination, creative instinct, +artistic apprehension, have not given their aid. Without them it is +defective, and cannot command the ideal sentiments and hopes of the race. +First to fill this gap came George Eliot, and she yet remains its only +great literary ally and coadjutor. Tyndall, Haeckel and DuBois Raymond can +give us science; but this is not enough. Comte, Mill and Spencer can give +us philosophy; but that is inadequate. They have also essayed, one and all, +to say some true word about morals, religion and the social ideals; but +they have one and all failed. They are too speculative, too far away from +the vital movements of life, know too little of human experience as it +throbs out of the heart and sentiments. They can explain their theories +in terms of science, ethics and philosophy; but George Eliot explains them +in terms of life. They have speculated, she has felt; they have made +philosophies, she has created ideal characters and given us poetry; they +have studied nature, she has studied experience and life; they have tried +to resolve the mind into its constituent elements; she has entered into the +heart and read its secrets; they have looked on to see what history meant, +she has lived all heart tragedies and known all spiritual aspirations. + +George Eliot was not a mere disciple of any of the great teachers of +evolution. Though of their school, and largely in accord and sympathy with +them, yet she often departed from the way they went, and took a position +quite in opposition to theirs. Her standpoint in philosophy was arrived at +quite independently of their influence, and in many of its main features +her philosophy was developed before she had any acquaintance either with +them or their books. She wrote concerning John Stuart Mill, [Footnote: +Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' "Last words from George Eliot," is Harper Magazine +for March 1882. The names of Mill and Spencer are not given in this +article, but the words from her letters so plainly refer to them that they +have been quoted here as illustrating her relations to these men.]-- + + I never had any personal acquaintance with him, never saw him to my + knowledge except in the House of Commons; and though I have studied his + books, especially his _Logic_ and _Political Economy_ with much + benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked epoch + in my life. + +Concerning another leading positivist she has said,-- + + Of [Herbert Spencer's] friendship I have had the honor and advantage + for twenty years, but I believe that every main bias of my mind had + been taken before I knew him. Like the rest of his readers, I am, of + course, indebted to him for much enlargement and clarifying of thought. + +Not long previous to her death, in reading Bridges' version of _The General +View of Positivism_, she expressed her dissent more often than her assent, +and once she said,-- + + I cannot submit my intellect or my soul to the guidance of Comte. + +George Eliot did not take up her residence in London until her +thirty-second year, and previous to that time her acquaintance with the +positivist leaders must have been slight. Before that age the opinions of +most persons are formed, and such was the case with George Eliot. It is +likely her opinions underwent many changes after this date, but only in the +direction of those already established and in modification of the +philosophy already accepted. She became an evolutionist without the aid of +those men who are supposed to be the originators of this theory. Every new +idea or new way of interpreting nature and life grows into form gradually, +and under the influence of many different minds. The evolution philosophy +was long accepted before it became a doctrine or was formulated into a +philosophy. The same influences worked in many quarters to produce the same +conclusions. It was given to George Eliot to come under a set of influences +which led her to accept all the leading ideas of evolution before she had +any opportunity to know that philosophy as it has been elaborated by the +men whose names are most often connected with it. A brief account of the +successive philosophic influences which most directly and personally +touched her mind will largely help towards the comprehension of her +teachings. + +The most intimate friend of her youth, who gave her a home when trouble +came with her family, and stimulated her mind to active inquiry after +truth, was a philosopher of no mean ability. Charles Bray not only was the +first philosopher she knew, but her opinions of after years were mainly in +the direction he marked out for her. In his _Philosophy of Necessity_, +published in 1841, he maintained that the only reality is the _Great +Unknown_ which we name God, that all natural laws are actions of the first +cause. He taught that the world is created in our own minds, the result of +some unknown cause without us, which we call matter; but it is thus God +mirrors himself to us. "All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we +call laws of nature are but attributes of Deity." Matter is known to us +only as the cause of sensations, while the soul is the principle of +sensation, dependent upon the nervous system; the nervous system depending +upon life, and life upon organization. All knowledge comes to man through +the action of the external world upon the senses; all truth, all progress, +come to us out of experience. "Reason is dependent for its exercise upon +experience, and experience is nothing more than the knowledge of the +invariable order of nature, of the relations of cause and effect." All acts +of men are ruled by necessity. Pain produces our ideas of right and wrong, +and happiness is the test of all moral action. There are no such things +as sin and evil, only pains and pleasures. Evil is the natural and +necessary limitation of our faculties, and our consequent liability to +error; and pain, which we call evil, is its corrective. Nothing, under the +circumstances, could have happened but that which did happen; and the +actions of men, under precisely the same circumstances, must always issue +in precisely the same results. Death, treated of in a separate chapter, is +shown to be good, and a necessary aid to progress. Society is regarded as +an organism, and man is to find his highest life in the life of others. +"The great body of humanity (considered as an individual), with its soul, +the principle of sensation, is ever fresh and vigorous and increasing in +enjoyment. Death and birth, the means of renewal and succession, bear +the same relation to this body of society as the system of waste and +reproduction do to the human body; the old and useless and decayed material +is carried out, and fresh substituted, and thus the frame is renovated +and rendered capable of ever-increasing happiness.... The minds, that is +to say, the ideas and feelings of which they were composed, of Socrates, +Plato, Epicurus, Galileo, Bacon, Locke, Newton, are thus forever in +existence, and the immortality of the soul is preserved, not in +individuals, but in the great body of humanity.... To the race, though +not to individuals, all beautiful things are preserved forever; all that +is really good and profitable is immortal." + +Nearly every idea here presented was accepted by George Eliot and +re-appears in her writings. In Bray's later books much also is to be found +which she embraced. He therein says that all outside of us is a delusion of +the senses. [Footnote: This summary of Bray's philosophy is condensed from +an article in the Westminster Review for April, 1879.] The senses conspire +with the intellect to impose upon us. The constitution of our faculties +forces us to believe in an external world, but it has no more reality than +our dreams. Each creature is the creator of its own separate, different +world. The unity of outward things is imposed on them by the faculty of +individuality, and is a mere fiction of the mind. Matter is a creature of +the imagination, and is a pure assumption. It is the centre of force, as +immaterial as spirit, as ethereal and unsubstantial. As centres of force +imply locality, and locality space, so space must have an extension of its +own. Not so; it is a pure creation of the mind. The same holds true of +time. The world of mind, the moral world as well, are our own creations. +Man has no power over himself; nothing could have been otherwise than as +it is. Repentance and remorse are foolish regrets over what could not have +been otherwise. All actions and motives are indifferent; only in their +consequences can any distinction be observed between them. Such as minister +to man's pleasure he calls good; such as produce pain he calls evil. + Thereis no good but pleasure, and no evil but pain. Hence there is no +distinction between moral and physical evil. Morality is the chemistry of +the mind, its attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes. God is an +illusion, as are all moral conclusions based on his existence, Nor has +man any reality; he is the greatest illusion and delusion of all. The +faculty of individuality gives us all our ideas and feelings, and creates +for us what we call our minds. A mind is an aggregate of a stream of +consciousness. Ideas, feelings, states of consciousness, do not inhere in +anything; each is a distinct entity. "Thinking is," is what we should say, +not "I think." Here we are at the ground fact of what constitutes being, on +solid footing; consciousness cannot deceive us. Thinking is, even if mind +and matter, self and not-self, are illusory. It is, even if we deny both +the external and internal causes of consciousness. We know our own +consciousness, that alone. All is inference beside. When we consider what +inferences are most probable, we are led to build up a constructive +philosophy. Consciousness says we have a body, body a brain, and pressure +on the brain stops consciousness; hence a close connection between the +brain and consciousness. The two go together, and in the brain we must lay +the foundation of our philosophy. The mental faculties create the world of +individual consciousness, it the outside world. We know only what is +revealed in consciousness. Matter and mind are one. Life and mind are +correlates of physical force; they are the forms assumed by physical force +when subjected to organic conditions. Yet there is no such thing as mere +physical force. Every atom of matter acts intelligently; it has so acted +always. The conscious intelligence of the universe has subsided into +natural law, and acts automatically. This universal agent of life in all +things is God. All consciousness and physical force are but "the varied +God." There is in reality no agent but mind, conscious or unconscious. God +is nature; matter is mind solidified. Matter is force as revealed by the +senses. It is the body, force is the soul. In nature, as in man, body and +soul are one and indivisible. Mind builds up organisms. There is a living +will, conscious or unconscious, in all things. The One and All requires the +resignation of the individual and personal, of all that is selfish, to the +Infinite whole. + +The basis of Bray's philosophy was idealism and pantheism, assuming form +under the influence of modern science. He quoted Emerson frequently, and +the school of thought Emerson represents affected him greatly. On the other +hand, he was then a strong phrenologist, had imbibed much of the teaching +of Combe's _Constitution of Man_, and he eagerly embraced those notions of +the relations of body and mind which have been propagated in the name of +physical science. + +The same double influence is to be seen at work upon the next thinker who +was destined to give direction to George Eliot's philosophy. Feuerbach was +a disciple of Hegel, whose influence is deeply marked through all his +earlier writings. He also was affected by physical science, and he found in +sensationalism an element for his system. To him all thought is the product +of experience; he founded his ideas on materials which can be appropriated +only through the activity of the senses. The external world affects the +senses and generates feeling, feeling produces ideas. Feeling re-acts upon +the external world, interprets it according to its own wants. Feeling is +thus the source of all knowledge; feeling is the basis alike of religion +and philosophy. Feuerbach, as well as Bray, finds that man creates the +outward world in consciousness; all that is out of man which he can know, +is but a reflection of what is in him. This conception of consciousness, +this pure idealism, becomes the source of Feuerbach's philosophy of +religion. He says that religion is based on the differences between man and +the brute; man has consciousness, which is only present in a being to whom +his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought. Man thinks, +converses with himself, is at once I and Thou, can put himself in the place +of another. Religion is identical with self-consciousness, and expresses +man's sense of the infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about +himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to +bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. +Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that +all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of +that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of +God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man +lives mainly in feeling, finds there the sources of all his mental and +moral life, he comes to regard feeling as the divinest part of his nature, +the noblest and most excellent; so it becomes to him the organ of the +divine. When man thinks what is infinite he in reality does nothing more +than to perceive and affirm that to him feeling has an infinite power. +If you feel the infinite, you feel and affirm the infinitude of the power +of feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect objective to itself; +the object of feeling is feeling objective to itself. God is pure, +unlimited, free feeling. In religion, consciousness of the object and +self-consciousness coincide. The object of any subject is nothing else than +the subject's own nature taken objectively. God is like our thoughts and +dispositions; consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God +is self-knowledge. Religion is the unveiling of a man's hidden treasures, +the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love +secrets. It is to the understanding Feuerbach attributes man's capacity for +objectifying himself or of attributing to the outward world those qualities +which really exist only within. Man's consciousness of God is nothing else +than his consciousness of his species. "Man has his highest being, his God, +in himself; not in himself as an individual, but in his essential nature, +his species. No individual is an adequate representative of his species, +but only the human individual is conscious of the distinction between the +species and the individual. In the sense of this distinction lies the root +of religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is nothing +else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, the yearning to +be free from himself, _i.e._, from the limits and defects of his +individuality. Individuality is the self-conditioning, the self-limitation +of the species. Thus man has cognizance of nothing above himself, of +nothing beyond the nature of humanity; but to the individual man this +nature presents itself under the form of an individual man. All feelings +which man experiences towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral +feelings which man has towards man, are of a religious nature. Man feels +nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man." The dogmas of +Christianity are interpreted by Feuerbach from this standpoint of +conceiving religion as a projection of feeling upon the outward world. So +he explains the incarnation as man's love for man, man's yearning to help +his fellows, the renunciation and suffering man undergoes for man. The +passion of Christ represents freely accepted suffering for others in love +of them. The trinity typifies the participated, social life of the species; +it shows the father, mother and son as the symbols of the race. The _logos_ +or son is the nature of the imagination made objective, the satisfaction of +the need for mental images, the reflected splendor of the imagination. +Faith in providence is faith in one's own worth; it indicates the divine +reality and significance of our own being. Prayer is an expression of the +power of feeling, a dialogue of man with his own heart. Faith is confidence +in the reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or laws +of nature and reason. Its specific object is miracle; faith and miracle are +absolutely inseparable. That which is objectively miracle is subjectively +faith. Faith is the miracle of feeling; it is nothing else than belief in +the absolute reality of subjectivity. The power of miracle is the power of +the imagination, for imagination corresponds to personal feeling; it sets +aside all limits, all laws painful to the feelings, and thus makes +objective to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction of his +subjective wishes. The belief in miracle accepts wishes as realities. In +fact, the fundamental dogmas of Christianity are simply realized wishes of +the heart. This is true, because the highest law of feeling is the +immediate unity of will and deed, of wishing and reality. To religion, what +is felt or wished is regarded as real. In the Redeemer this is realized, +wish becomes fact. All things are to be wrought, according to religion, by +belief. Thus the future life is a life where feeling realizes every desire. +Its whole import is that of the abolition of the discordance which exists +between wish and reality. It is the realization of a state which +corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison with himself. The +other world is nothing more than the reality of a known idea, the +satisfaction of a conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish. "The sum of +the future life is happiness, the everlasting bliss of personality, which +is here limited and circumscribed by nature. Faith in the future life is +therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the limits of nature; +it is faith in the eternity and infinitude of personality, and not of +personality viewed in relation to the idea of the species, in which it +forever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of personality as belonging +to already existing individuals; consequently, it is the faith of man in +himself. But faith in the kingdom of heaven is one with faith in God; the +context of both ideas is the same; God is pure absolute subjectivity +released from all natural limits; he is what individuals ought to be and +will be; faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and +truth of his own nature; the Divine Being is the subjective human being in +his absolute freedom and unlimitedness." + +It is not probable that George Eliot confined her philosophic studies to +the writings of Charles Bray and Feuerbach, but it is quite certain that in +their books which she did faithfully study, are to be found some of the +leading principles of her philosophy. What gives greater confirmation to +the supposition that her philosophy was largely shaped under their +influence is the fact that her intimate friend, Sara Hennell, drew from the +same sources for the presentation of theories quite identical with hers. +Sara Hennell's _Thoughts in Aid of Faith_, published in 1860, is an attempt +to show that the religious sentiments may be retained when the doctrines of +theology are intellectually rejected, that a disposition of the heart akin +to Paul's may be present though conviction be extinct. In securing this +result, she too takes Feuerbach as her guide, and his teachings she claims +are fully corroborated by the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Religion she +regards as the result of the tendency of man's mind towards philosophy, the +outgrowth of the activity of his mental faculties seeking satisfaction for +themselves in explaining the world given for his contemplation and study. +"The growth of religion in the human intelligence (thereby distinguished +from mere blind emotion), is coincident with, or rather immediately +consequent upon, the power of forming abstract ideas; that is to say, it is +a generalization effected by the operation of the intellect upon the +sentiments and emotions, when these have attained to so great extent and +distinctness as to become self-conscious." Man early objectifies the +qualities he finds in himself and his fellows, regards them as entities, is +prostrated in awe and worship before them, conceives them to be gods. He +attributes to outward objects his subjective states, and regards them as +like himself, only infinitely more powerful. His emotions he believes are +caused by these objective beings, and he thinks he is inspired, that the +gods are at work within him. Feeling becomes the voice of God, the +revelator of religions and theologies. Christianity Miss Hennell regards as +"the form in which the religious affections, struggling against earthly +limitations, have created for themselves the satisfaction they demand, and, +therefore, in so far, real, just as the affections are real." Feeling, she +says, is real as logic, and must equally have its real foundation. That is, +feeling gives us the truth, actually answers to the realities of things as +man can know them. She is here an ontologist, and she is convinced that +feeling is a direct witness of the deeper knowledge and reality which man +seeks in religion. The permanency and validity of religion she believes in, +and she testifies to its wholesome and ennobling effect upon the race. +"Christianity, having formed an actual portion of the composition both of +our own individual experience and of the world's history, can no more be +annihilated out of them than the sum of what we learned during a certain +number of years of our childhood, from the one, or the effects of any +notable occurrence, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, or the Norman +invasion, from the other;--Christianity on every view, whether of its truth +or falsity, and consequently of its good or bad effect, has undoubtedly +contributed to make us what we are; without it we should have grown into +something incalculably different from our present selves.... And how can it +be otherwise than real to us, this belief that has nourished the souls +of us all, and seems to have moulded actually anew their internal +constitution, as well as stored them up with its infinite variety of +external interests and associations? What other than a very real thing has +it been in the life of the world, sprang out of, and again causing to +spring forth, such volumes of human emotion? making a current, as it were, +of feeling, that has drawn within its own sphere all the moral vitality of +so many ages. In all this reality of influence there is indeed the +testimony of Christianity having truly formed an integral portion of the +organic life of humanity." + +Though Miss Hennell is so earnest a believer in Christianity, yet she +totally rejects the idea of any objective reality corresponding to its +dogmas. This conclusion is based on the philosophic notion, which she +shares with Bray, Feuerbach, George Eliot, Spencer and Lewes, that man has +no real knowledge whatever except that which is given in consciousness. +This philosophy, shared in common by these persons, is called by Lewes +"reasoned realism," and by Spencer "transfigured realism." It accepts the +reality of an outward world, but says that all man knows of it is, that it +produces impressions on his senses which are transmuted into sensations. +Sensations produce feelings, and feelings become ideas. According to +Spencer, the steps of knowledge are three: the co-ordinating of sensations +in a living organism; the registering of impressions within the organism in +such a way as to build up a store of experiences; the transmission of the +organism and its susceptibilities to offspring. Miss Hennell accepts +Spencer's theory that feeling is the source of all our knowledge. Not only, +as she says, does it "constitute the essential and main vitality of our +nature," but when it is stored up in the human organism and inherited, it +becomes the vital source out of which all moral and religious truth is +built up. Experience, transformed into inherited feeling, takes on the form +of those intuitions which "are the only reliable ground of solid belief." +"These sentiments which are born within us, slumbering as it were in our +nature, ready to be awakened into action immediately they are roused by +hint of corresponding circumstances, are drawn out of the whole of previous +human existence. They constitute our treasured inheritance out of all the +life that has been lived before us, to which no age, no human being who has +trod the earth and laid himself to rest with all his mortal burden upon her +maternal bosom, has failed to add his contribution. No generation has had +its engrossing conflict, surely battling out the triumphs of mind over +material force, and through forms of monstrous abortions concurrent with +its birth, too hideous for us now to bear in contemplation, moulding the +early intelligence by every struggle, and winning its gradual powers,--no +single soul has borne itself through its personal trial,--without +bequeathing to us of its fruit. There is not a religious thought that we +take to ourselves for secret comfort in our time of grief, that has not +been distilled out of the multiplicity of the hallowed tears of mankind; +not an animating idea is there for our fainting courage that has not +gathered its inspiration from the bravery of the myriad armies of the +world's heroes. All this best of humanity's hard earnings has been hoarded +with generous care by our _alma natura naturans_; so that at last, in our +rich ages, the _mens naturafa_ opens its gaze with awful wonder upon its +environment of spiritual possessions." + +The intimate sympathy of George Eliot and Miss Hennell indicates that they +followed much the same studies, and it is certain they arrived at very +similar conclusions. That the one was directly influenced or led by the +other there seem to be no reasons for believing. All that is probable is, +that there was a close affinity of thought and purpose between them, and +that they arrived at similar philosophical conclusions. The same is to be +said in regard to George Eliot's relations to George Henry Lewes. Her +theories of life, as has been already clearly indicated, were firmly fixed +before she knew him, and her philosophical opinions were formed. The +similarity of their speculative opinions doubtless had something to do with +bringing them together; and it is certain that the tenor of their thoughts, +their views about life, and their spiritual aspirations, were very much +alike, giving promise of a most thorough sympathy in all their intellectual +and moral pursuits. If she was influenced by him, he was quite as much +influenced by her. Lewes accepted the philosophical side of Comte's +Positive Philosophy, but the religious side of it he rejected and strongly +condemned. In his _History of Philosophy_, he says, "Antagonism to the +method and certain conclusions of the _Politique positive_ led me for many +years to regard that work as a deviation from the Positive Philosophy in +every way unfortunate. My attitude has changed now that I have learned +(from the remark of one very dear to me) to regard it as an Utopia, +presenting hypotheses rather than doctrines, suggestions for inquirers +rather than dogmas for adepts--hypotheses carrying more or less of truth, +and serviceable as a provisional mode of colligating facts, to be confirmed +or contradicted by experience." It is altogether probable, as in this case, +that George Eliot gave Lewes the suggestive aid of her acute mind. If she +was aided by him, it was only as one strong mind aids another, by collision +and suggestion rather than by direct teaching. + +Lewes may have had the effect to deepen and establish firmly the +conclusions already reached by George Eliot, and a consideration of his +philosophy must confirm this conjecture. He, too, makes feeling the basis +of all knowing. From this point, however, he diverges widely from Herbert +Spencer and the other English empiricists. Spencer regards matter and mind +as two phases of an underlying substance, which he presents as the unknown +and unknowable. Lewes at once denies the duality implied in the words +matter and mind, motion and feeling, and declares these are one and the +same thing, objectively or subjectively presented. Feeling is motion, and +motion is feeling; mind is the spiritual aspect of the material organism, +and matter is the objective aspect of feeling. Feeling is not the cause of +motion, as idealism would suggest; and motion does not cause or turn into +feeling, as materialism teaches. The two are absolutely identical; there is +no dualism or antithesis. In the same way, cause and effect are but two +aspects of one phenomenon; there is no separation between them, but one and +the same thing before and after. He applies this idea to the conception of +natural law, and declares it to be only the persistence of phenomena; that +is, the persistence of feeling. He denies that there is any absolute behind +phenomena; the absolute is in the phenomena, which is the only reality. The +phenomenal universe is simply a group of relations, nothing more; and what +seems to be, really exists, because the relations are real. + +It is not necessary here to enter into a full presentation of Lewes's +philosophy, but his theories about the functions of feeling are of +importance, in view of George Eliot's acceptance of them. They have been +summarized into the statement that "all truths are alike feelings, ideally +distinguishable according to the aspects under which they are viewed. There +is no motion apart from feeling, for the motion _is_ the feeling; there is +no force apart from matter which compels it to moves for the force _is_ the +matter, as matter is motion--differently viewed; there is no essence or +substance which determines the properties, for the substance is the whole +group of properties; there are no causes outside of effects, no laws +outside the processes, no reality outside the phenomena, no absolute +outside the relative, which determine things to be as they are and not +otherwise, for all these are but different sides of one and the same +thing." The central thought presented by Lewes is, that "for us there is +nothing but feeling, whose subjective side is sensations, perceptions, +memories, reasonings, the ideal constructions of science and philosophy, +emotions, pleasures, pains; whose objective side is motion, matter, force, +cause, the absolute." The outcome of this theory is, it enables Lewes to +believe that the inner and outer practically agree, that our feelings give +a sufficiently correct picture of the universe. In reality, the two do not +agree, and even "science is in no respect a plain transcript of reality;" +but so intimate are feeling and the outer world, that the inward report is +to be regarded as practically a correct one. + +In many ways Lewes differed from his contemporaries, disagreeing again and +again with Spencer, Bain and Huxley. He often seems much nearer Schelling +than Haeckel. He differs from Schelling in his demand for verification and +the inductive method, and in claiming that all his conclusions are the +result of scientific experiments and deductions. He agrees with Schelling +in his rejection of mechanical processes and in his acceptance of a vital, +organic method in nature and in social development. He differs from many of +the other leaders of speculative science in his rejection of reflex action, +maintaining that the brain is not the only seat of sensation, and that all +cerebral processes are mental processes. With equal vigor he rejects the +theory of animal automatism, and the assertion that animal actions can be +completely expressed and accounted for in terms of nervous matter and +motion. The laws of the mind, he maintained, are not to be deduced from +physiological processes, but with them must be joined the psychical +processes of the individual and the social man. He separates man by an +impassable barrier from the lower animals, this gulf between them being due +to human society and to the social acquisition of language. In the social +factor he finds an important element of psychology, and one that must +always come in to overturn any mechanical theories of mental activity. + +It has been very truly said, that Lewes must be credited with the doctrine +of the dependence of the human mind on the social medium. Others had hit +upon this idea, and it had been very well developed by Spencer and Comte; +but Lewes gave it a wider and profounder interpretation than any other. One +of his critics says that Lewes "has the sort of claim to have originated +this theory that Bacon has to be considered the discoverer of the inductive +method." He not only held with Spencer and other evolutionists, that the +human mind is the product of experience in contact with the outer world, +that experience transmitted by heredity and built up into mental processes +and conclusions; but he maintained that the social medium is a much greater +and more important factor. The past makes the present; the social life +develops the individual. Our language, our thought, as individuals, are the +product of the collective life of the race. "We are to seek in the social +organism for all the main conditions of the higher functions, and in the +social medium of beliefs, opinions, institutions, &c., for the atmosphere +breathed by the intellect. Man is no longer to be considered simply as an +assemblage of organs, but also as an organ in a collective organism. From +the former he derives his sensations, judgments, primary impulses; from the +latter, his conceptions, theories and virtues. This is very clear when we +learn how the intellect draws both its inspiration and its instrument from +the social needs. All the materials of intellect are images and symbols, +all its processes are operations on images and symbols. Language--which is +wholly a social product for a social need--is the chief vehicle of +symbolical operation, and the only means by which abstraction is +affected.... Language is the creator and sustainer of that ideal world in +which the noblest part of human activity finds a theatre, the world of +thought and spiritual insight, of knowledge and duty, loftily elevated +above that of sense and appetite. Into this ideal world man absorbs the +universe as in a transfiguration. It is here that he shapes the programme +of his existence; and to that programme he makes the real world conform. +It is here he forms his highest rules of conduct. It is here he plants +his hopes and joys. It is here he finds his dignity and power. The ideal +world becomes to him the supreme reality." Lewes said that what a man +thinks "is the necessary product of his organism and external conditions." +The "organism itself is the product of its history; it is what it has +become; it is a part of the history of the race." Because man is a creature +of feeling he is susceptible to the influences of the outer world, and +from the influences and experiences thus received the foundations of his +mental life are laid. The structure erected on this foundation, however, is +the product of man's social environment. As a social being, he inherits +mental capacities, and all the instruments of mental, moral and social +development, as these have been produced in the past. The social structure +takes up and preserves the results of individual effort; and social +capacity enlarges mental and moral power quite beyond what mere inheritance +produces. + +Lewes assigned as high a value to introspection as to observation in +psychology, and said that whatever place is assigned to the one in +scientific method must be assigned to the other. He therefore accorded a +high value to imagination and intuition, and to all ideal constructions of +life and its meanings which are based on science. All knowledge grows out +of feeling, and must be expressible again in feeling, if it is to have any +value. Accordingly, man's life is of little value apart from sentiment, and +the emotional nature must always be satisfied. As Lewes begins his +philosophy in feeling, he holds that the final object of philosophy is to +develop feeling into a perfect expression, in accordance with the ideal +wants of man's nature. In other words, the final and supreme object of +philosophy is the expression of religion and the founding of a moral and +spiritual system of life. He believed that religion will continue to +regulate the evolution of humanity, and in "a religion founded on science +and expressing at each stage what is known of the world and of man." As +much as any zealous Christian believer he accepted man's need of spiritual +culture and religious development. At the same time, his philosophy +rejected a substantive absolute, or any other spiritual realities or +existences apart from the universe given in feeling and consciousness. +Accordingly, man must find his ideal satisfactions, his spiritual realities +and moral ideals, within the limits of the universe as known to philosophy, +and in the organic life of the race. + +George Eliot was also largely influenced by the teachings of Auguste Comte. +The place he assigned to positive knowledge and the inductive method, to +feeling, to development and the influence of the past upon the present, +were all accepted by her in an enthusiastic spirit. Altruism commanded her +hearty belief, and to its principles she devoted her life. Comte's +conceptions in regard to sentiment, and the vital importance of religion +and social organization, had her entire assent. She differed from him in +regard to spiritual and social organization, and she could not accept his +arbitrary and artificial methods. One of the leaders of positivism in +England [Footnote: Some Public Aspects of Positivism, the annual address +before the Postivist Society, London, January 1, 1881, by Professor E.G. +Beesley, of University College.] has given this account of her relations to +its organized movements and to its founder: + +"Her powerful intellect had accepted the teaching of Auguste Comte, and she +looked forward to the reorganization of belief on the lines which he had +laid down. Her study of his two great works was diligent and constant. The +last time I saw her--a few days before her death--I found that she had just +been reading over again, with closest attention, that wonderful treatise, +_The General View of Positivism_, a book which always seems full of fresh +wisdom, however often one comes back to it. She had her reservations, no +doubt. There were details in Comte's work which did not satisfy her. But +all who knew her were aware--and I speak from an acquaintance of eighteen +years--that she had not only cast away every shred of theology and +metaphysics, but that she had found refuge from mere negativism in the +system of Comte. She did not write her positivism in broad characters on +her books. Like Shakspere, she was first an artist and then a philosopher; +and I imagine she thought it to be her business as an artist rather to +paint humanity as it is than as she would have it to be. But she could not +conceal her intellectual conviction, and few competent persons read her +books without detecting her standpoint. If any doubt could have existed, it +was set at rest by that noble poem on 'Subjective Immortality,' the +clearest, and at the same time the most beautiful, expression that has yet +been given to one of the most distinctive doctrines of positivism; a +composition of which we can already say with certainty that it will enter +into the positivist liturgies of all countries and through all time. +Towards positivism as an organization, a discipline,--in short, as a +church,--her attitude must be plainly stated. She had much sympathy with +it, as she showed by regularly subscribing to positivist objects, as, for +instance, to the fund of the central organization in Paris presided over by +M. Laffitte. But she sought membership neither in that nor any other +church. Like most of the stronger and thoroughly emancipated minds in this +period of transition and revolutionary disturbance, she looked not beyond +her own conscience for guidance and authority, but judged for herself, +appealing to no external tribunal from the solitary judgment-seat within. I +do not for a moment suppose that she looked on the organization of a church +as unattainable; but she did not regard it as attained." + +Another of her friends [Footnote: W.M.W. Call in the Westminster Review +for July, 1881.] has indicated very clearly the nature and extent of her +dissent from Comte. He remarks that "her apologetic representation of the +_Politique_ as an _Utopia_ evinces that she did not admit the cogency of +its reasoning, or regard the entire social reconstruction of Comte as +demonstrably valid. Her dissatisfaction with some of his speculations, as +expressed to ourselves in the spring of 1880, was very decided.... All +membership with the positivist community she steadily rejected. That a +philosophy originally so catholic as that of Comte should assume a +sectarian character, was a contingency she foreboded and deprecated." In +this last remark we doubtless have the explanation of George Eliot's +dissent from Comte. She believed in an organic, vital development of a +higher social structure, which will be brought about in the gradual +evolution of humanity. Comte's social structure was artificial, the +conception of one mind, and therefore as ill adapted to represent the wants +of mankind as any other system devised by an individual thinker. His +philosophy proper, his system of positive; thought, she accepted with but +few reservations. Her views in this direction, as in many others, were +substantially those presented by Lewes in his many works bearing on +positivism. She was profoundly indebted to Comte, although in her later +years she largely passed beyond his influence to the acceptance of the new +evolution philosophy. In fact, she belonged to that school of English +positivists which has only accepted the positive philosophy of Comte, and +which has rejected his later work in the direction of social and religious +construction. Lewes was the earliest of English thinkers to look at Comte +in this way; but other representative members of the school are John Stuart +Mill, George Eliot, Frederic Harrison and John Morley. Zealously accepting +Comte's position that philosophy must limit itself to positive data and +methods, they look upon the "Religion of Humanity," with Prof. Tyndall, as +Catholicism minus Christianity, and reject it. + +She certainly came nearer to Comte in some directions than to Herbert +Spencer, for the latter has not so fully recognized those elements of the +mental and social life which most attracted her attention. Her theory of +duty is one which he does not accept. He insists in his _Data of Ethics_ +that duty will become less and less _obligatory_ and necessary in the +future, because all action will be in harmony with the impulses of the +inner man and with the conditions of the environment. This conclusion is +entirely opposed to the moral-theory of George Eliot, and is but one +instance of their wide divergence. He insists, in his _Study of Sociology_, +that the religious consciousness will not change its lines of evolution. He +distinctly rejects the conclusion arrived at by George Eliot, that there is +no Infinite Reality knowable to man, and that the substance and reality of +religion is purely subjective. "That the object-matter of religion," he +says, "can be replaced by another object-matter, as supposed by those who +think the 'religion of humanity' will be the religion of the future, is a +belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction. However dominant +may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never +exclude the sentiment alone properly called religious, awakened by that +which is behind humanity and behind all other things." George Eliot was +content with humanity, and believed that all religion arises out of the +subjective elements of human life. At the same time that she made religion +a development from feeling, she limited the moral law to emotional +sanctions. On the contrary, Spencer is much more a rationalist, and insists +on the intellectual basis both of morals and of religion. He makes less of +feeling than she; and in this fact is to be found a wide gulf of separation +between them. She could have been no more content with his philosophy than +she was indebted to it in the construction of her own. As much one as they +are in their philosophic basis and general methods, they are antagonistic +in their conceptions about man and in the place assigned to nature in the +development of religion. To George Eliot, religion is the development of +feeling. To Spencer, it is the result of our "_thought_ of a power of which +humanity is but a small and fugitive product." In these, as in other +directions, they were not in sympathy. Her realism, her psychologic method, +her philosophic theories, her scientific sympathies, she did not derive +from him, diligently as she may have studied his books. + +George Eliot agreed with Comte and all other positivists in setting aside +every inquiry into causes, and limiting philosophy to the search after +laws. The idea of causes is idealistic, and a cause of any kind whatever +is, according to these thinkers, not to be found. "The knowledge of laws," +says Comte, "is henceforth to take the place of the search after causes." +In other words, it is impossible for man to find out _why_ anything is, he +can only know _how_ it is. George Eliot entirely agreed with Comte as to +the universal dominion of law. She also followed him in his teachings about +heredity, which he held to be the cause of social unity, morality, and the +higher or subjective life. His conception of feeling as the highest +expression of human life confirmed the conclusions to which she had already +arrived from the study of Feuerbach. She was an enthusiastic believer in +the Great Being, Humanity; she worshipped at that shrine. More to her than +all other beliefs was her belief that we are to live for others. With Comte +she said, "Altruism alone can enable us to live in the highest and truest +sense." She would have all our doctrines about _rights_ eliminated from +morality and politics. They are as absurd, says Comte, as they are immoral. + +George Eliot had a strong tendency towards philosophical speculations. +While yet a student she expressed an ardent desire that she might live to +reconcile the philosophy of Locke with that of Kant. In positivism, as +developed and modified by Lewes, she found that reconciliation. She went +far towards accepting the boldest speculations of the agnostic science of +the time, but she modified it again and again to meet the needs of her own +broader mind and heart. Yet it is related of her that in parting with one +of the greatest English poets, probably Tennyson, when he said to her, +"Well, good-by, you and your molecules," she replied, "I am quite content +with my molecules." Her speculations led to the rejection of anything like +a positive belief in God, to an entire rejection of faith in a personal +immortality, and to a repudiation of all idealistic conceptions of +knowledge derived from supersensuous sources. Her theories are best +represented by the words environment, experience, heredity, development, +altruism, solidarite, subjective immortality. These speculations confront +the reader in nearly every chapter of her novels, and they gave existence +to all but a very few of her poems. + + + + +X. + + +DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS. + +Science was accepted by George Eliot as furnishing the method and the proof +for her philosophic and religious opinions. She was in hearty sympathy with +Spencer and Darwin in regard to most of their speculations, and the +doctrine of evolution was one which entirely approved itself to her mind. +All her theories were based fundamentally on the hypothesis of universal +law, which she probably interpreted with Lewes, in his _Foundations of a +Creed_, as the uniformities of Infinite Activity. Not only in the physical +world did she see law reigning, but also in every phase of the moral and +spiritual life of man. In reviewing Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_, she +used these suggestive words concerning the uniformity of sequences she +believed to be universal in the fullest sense: + + The supremely important fact that the gradual reduction of all + phenomena within the sphere of established law, which carries as a + consequence the rejection of the miraculous, and has its determining + current in the development of physical science, seems to have engaged + comparatively little of his attention; at least he gives it no + prominence. The great conception of uniform regular sequence, without + partiality and without caprice--the conception which is the most potent + force at work in the modification of our faith, and of the practical + form given to our sentiments--could only grow out of that patient + watching of external fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions, + which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical science. + [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, May, 1865.] + +The uniformities of nature have the effect upon man, through his nervous +organization, of developing a responsive feeling and action. He learns to +respond to that uniformity, to conform his actions to it. The habits thus +acquired are inherited by his children, and moral conduct is developed. +Heredity has as conspicuous a place in the novels of George Eliot as in the +scientific treatises of Charles Darwin. She has attempted to indicate the +moral and social influences of heredity, that it gives us the better part +of our life in all directions. Heredity is but one phase of the uniformity +of nature and the persistence of its forces. That uniformity never changes +for man; his life it entirely ignores. He is crushed by its forces; he is +given pain and sorrow through its unpitying disregard of his tender nature. +Not only the physical world, but the moral world also, is unfailing in the +development of the legitimate sequences of its forces. There is no +cessation of activity, no turning aside of consequences, no delay in the +transformation of causes into necessary effects. + +George Eliot never swerves from this conception of the universe, physical +and moral; everywhere cause is but another name for effect. The unbending +order adopts man into its processes, helps him when he conforms to them, +and gives him pain when he disregards them. The whole secret of man's +existence is to be found in the agreement of his life with the invariable +sequences of nature and moral activity; harmony with them brings true +development, discord brings pain and sorrow. The unbending nature of law, +and man's relations to it, she has portrayed in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," +when describing Tina's sorrows. + + While this poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy + for it, Nature was holding on her calm inexorable way, in unmoved and + terrible beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the + tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was + making brilliant day to busy nations oil the other side of the + expectant earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and + broadening onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships + were laboring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the + fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest, and + sleepless statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. + What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, + rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest + centre of quivering life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as + the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has + fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought food, and has found the + nest torn and empty. + +The effect of the uniformities of nature upon man, as George Eliot regarded +them, is not quite that which would be inferred from these words alone. +While she believed that nature is as unbending and pitiless as is here +indicated, yet that unbending uniformity, which never changes its direction +for man, is a large influence towards the development of his higher life. +It has the effect on man to develop feeling which is the expression of all +that is best and most human in his life. + +George Eliot believed that the better and nobler part of man's life is to +be found in feeling. It is the first expression which he makes as a +sentient being, to have emotions; and his emotions more truly represent him +than the purely intellectual processes of the mind. She would have us +believe that feeling is rather to be trusted than the intellect, that it is +both a safer and a surer guide. In _Middlemarch_ she says that "our good +depends on the quality and breadth of our emotions." Her conception of the +comparative worth of feeling and logic is expressed in _Romola_ with a +characteristic touch. + + After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence + of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong + agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great + world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in + the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and + hope. + +In _Daniel Deronda_, when considering the causes which prevent men from +desecrating their fathers' tombs for material gain, she says, "The only +check to be alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold +that sentiments are the better part of the world's wealth." To the same +effect is her saying in _Theophrastus Such_, that "our civilization, +considered as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril without +the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings." She expresses the +conviction in _Adam Bede_, that "it is possible to have very erroneous +theories and very sublime feelings;" and she does not hesitate through +all her writings to convey the idea, that sublime feelings are much to +be preferred to profound thoughts or the most perfect philosophy. She +makes Adam Bede say that "it isn't notions sets people doing the right +thing--it's feelings," and that "feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Feeling +gives us the only true knowledge we have of our fellow-men, a knowledge +in every way more perfect than that which is to be derived from our +intellectual inquiries into their natures and wants. In _Janet's +Repentance_ this power of feeling to give us true knowledge of others, +to awaken us to the deeper needs of our own souls, when we come in contact +with those who are able to move and inspire us, is eloquently presented. + + Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not + calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, + effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is + quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing + tasselled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes + cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot + make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe + upon us with warm breath; they touch us with soft responsive hands; + they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing + tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, + its faith and its love. Then their presence is a power; then they shake + us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, + as flame is drawn to flame. [Footnote: Chapter XIX.] + +She returns to the same subject when considering the intellectual theories +of happiness and the proportion of crime there is likely to occur in the +world. She shows her entire dissent from such a method of dealing with +human woe, and she pleads for that sympathy and love which will enable us +to feel the pain of others as our own. This fellow-feeling gives us the +most adequate knowledge we can have. + + It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that "there is more joy + in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just + persons that need no repentance." And certain ingenious philosophers + of our own day must surely take offence at a joy so entirely out of + correspondence with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has + been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for the woes of + another--that has "learned pity through suffering"--is likely to find + very imperfect satisfaction in the "balance of happiness," "doctrine of + compensations," and other short and easy methods of obtaining thorough + complacency in the presence of pain; and for such a heart that saying + will not be altogether dark. The emotions I have observed are but + slightly influenced by arithmetical considerations: the mother, when + her sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from her one after + another, and she is hanging over her last dead babe, finds small + consolation in the fact that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a + necessary average, and that a thousand other babes brought into the + world at the same time are doing well, and are likely to live; and if + you stood beside that mother--if you knew her pang and shared it--it is + probable you would be equally unable to see a ground of complacency in + statistics. Doubtless a complacency resting on that basis is highly + rational; but emotion, I fear, is obstinately irrational; it insists on + caring for individuals; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative + view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a + set-off against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on + the side of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of feeling, + and one must be a great philosopher to have got quite clear of all + that, and to have emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in + which it is evident that individuals really exist for no other purpose + than that abstractions maybe drawn from them--abstractions that may + rise from heaps of ruined lives like the sweet savor of a sacrifice in + the nostrils of philosophers, and of a philosophic Deity. And so it + comes to pass that for the man who knows sympathy because he has known + sorrow, that old, old saying about the joy of angels over the repentant + sinner outweighing their joy over the ninety-nine just, has a meaning + which does not jar with the language of his own heart. It only tells + him that for angels too there is a transcendent value in human pain + which refuses to be settled by equations; that the eyes of angels too + are turned away from the serene happiness of the righteous to bend with + yearning pity on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert where no + water is; that for angels too the misery of one casts so tremendous a + shadow as to eclipse the bliss of ninety-nine. [Footnote: Chapter + XXII.] + +Again, she says in the same story,-- + + Surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that + which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the + heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance + and opinion. Our subtlest analogies of schools and sects must miss the + essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms + of human thought and-work the life-and-death struggles of separate + human beings. + +George Eliot would have us believe, that until we can feel with man, +enter sympathetically into his emotions and yearnings, we cannot know +him. It is because we have common emotions, common experiences, common +aspirations, that we are really able to understand man; and not because of +statistics, natural history, sociology or psychology. The objective facts +have their place and value, but the real knowledge we possess of mankind is +subjective, grows out of fellow-feeling. + +The mental life of man, according to George Eliot, is simply an expansion +of the emotional life. At first the mental life is unconscious, it is +instinctive, simply the emotional response of man to the sequences of +nature. This instinctive life of the emotions always remains a better part +of our natures, and is to be trusted rather than the more formal activities +of the intellectual faculties. In the most highly developed intellects +even, there is a subconscious mental activity, an instinctive life of +feeling, which is rather to be trusted than reason itself. This is a +frequently recurring statement, which George Eliot makes in the firmest +conviction of its truthfulness. It appears in such a sentence as this, in +_The Mill on the Floss_: "Watch your own speech, and notice how it is +guided by your less conscious purposes." In _Daniel Deronda_ it finds +expression in the assertion that "there is a great deal of unmapped country +within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of +our gusts and storms." It is more explicitly presented in _Adam Bede_. + + Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulses by the + name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, + we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all + given to us. + +George Eliot puts into the mouth of Mordecai the assertion that love lies +deeper than any reasons which are to be found for its exercise. In the same +way, she would have us believe that feeling is safer than reason. Daniel +Deronda questions Mordecai's visions, and doubts if he is worth listening +to, except for pity's sake. On this the author comments, in defence of the +visions, as against reason. + + Suppose he had introduced himself as one of the strictest reasoners: do + they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and + illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations, too + hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to + hold the universe. Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an + illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions and propositions, + with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking + will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the + matter to be thought about. And since the unemotional intellect may + carry us into a mathematical dream-land where nothing is but what is + not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its + passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be--the more + comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the + sensibility of the artist seizes combinations which science explains + and justifies. At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be + trusted. [Footnote: Chapter XLI.] + +As explicit is a passage in _Theophrastus Such_, wherein imagination is +regarded as a means of knowledge, because it rests on a subconscious +expression of experience. + + It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward + vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy + constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of experience, + which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the + habitual confusion of probable fact with the fictions of fancy and + transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs + every material object, every incidental fact, with far-reaching + memories and stored residues of passion, bringing into new light the + less obvious relations of human existence. [Footnote: Chapter XIII.] + +Imagination, feeling and the whole inward life are being constantly shaped +by our actions. Experience gives new character to the inward life, and at +the same time determines its motives and its inclinations. The muscles +develop as they are used; what has been once done it is easier to do again. +In the same way, our deeds influence our lives, and compel us to repeat our +actions. At least this is George Eliot's opinion, and one she is fond of +re-affirming. After Arthur had wronged Hetty, his life was changed, and of +this change wrought in his character by his conduct, George Eliot says,-- + + Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we + know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with + inward facts which constitute a man's critical actions, it will be + better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a + terrible coercion in our deeds which may at first turn the honest man + into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this + reason--that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of + the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been + seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which + is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterward with the lens of + apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful + and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe + adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_, and so does an individual + character--until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive + retribution. [Footnote: Chapter XXIX.] + +What we have done, determines what we shall do, even in opposition to +our wills. After Tito Melema had done his first act towards denying his +foster-father, we have this observation of the author's: + + Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act + apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds + never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our + consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on + Tito for the first time. + +When Tito had openly denied that father, at an unexpected moment, we hear +the ever-present chorus repeating this great ethical truth: + + Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we + prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or + evil that gradually determines character. + +As a river moves in the channel made for it, as a plant grows towards the +sunlight, so man does again what he has once done. The impression of his +act is left upon his nature, it is taken up into his motives, it leads to +feeling and impulse, it repeats itself in future conduct. His deed lives in +memory, it lives in weakness or strength of impulse, it lives in disease or +in health, it lives in mental listlessness or in mental vigor. What is +done, determines our natures in their character and tendency for the +future. "A man can never separate himself from his past history," says +George Eliot in one of the mottoes of _Felix Holt_. We cannot rid ourselves +of the effects of our actions; they follow us forever. This truth takes +shape in _Romola_ in these words: + + Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life + of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have + once acted greatly, seems a reason why we should always be noble. But + Tito was feeling the effect of an opposite tradition: he had now no + memories of self-conquest and perfect faithfulness from which he could + have a sense of falling. + +A motto in _Daniel Deronda_ reiterates this oft-repeated assertion. + + Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, + And righteous or unrighteous, being done, + Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself + Be laid in stillness, and the universe + Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more. + +Feeling is to be preferred to logic, according to George Eliot, because it +brings us the results of long-accumulating experiences, because it embodies +the inherited experiences of the race. She was an earnest believer in +"far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion," for she was +convinced that the better part of all our knowledge is brought to us by +inheritance. The deeds of the individual make the habits of his life, they +remain in memory, they guide the purposes of the will, and they give +motives to action. Deeds often repeated give impulse and direction to +character, and these appear in the offspring as predispositions of body +and mind. In this way our deeds "throb in after-throbs" of our children; +and in the same manner the deeds of a people live in the life of the race +and become guiding motives in its future deeds. As the deeds of a person +develop into habits, so the deeds of a people develop into national +tendencies and actions. + +George Eliot was a thorough believer in the Darwinian theories of heredity, +and she has in all her books shown the effects of hereditary conditions on +the individual and even upon a people. Family and race are made to play a +very important part in her writings. Other novelists disregard the +conditions and limitations imposed by heredity, and consider the individual +as unrestricted by other laws than those of his own will; but George Eliot +gives conspicuous prominence to the laws of heredity, both individual and +social. Felix Holt never ceases in her pages to be the son of his mother, +however enlarged his ideas may become and broad his culture. Rosamond Vincy +also has a parentage, and so has Mary Garth. Daniel Deronda is a Jew by +birth, the son of a visionary mother and a truth-seeking father. This +parentage expresses itself throughout his life, even in boyhood, in all his +thought and conduct. Heredity shapes the destiny of Tito Melema, Romola, +Fedalma, Maggie Tulliver, Will Ladislaw, Gwendolen Harleth and many another +character in George Eliot's novels. It is even more strongly presented in +her poems. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she describes Fedalma as a genuine +daughter of her father, as inheriting his genius and tendencies, which are +stronger than all the Spanish culture she had received. When Fedalma says +she belongs to him she loves, and that love + + is nature too, + Forming a fresher law than laws of birth,-- + +Zarca replies,-- + + Unmake yourself, then, from a Zincala-- + Unmake yourself from being child of mine! + Take holy water, cross your dark skin white; + Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks; + Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe: + Unmake yourself--doff all the eagle plumes + And be a parrot, chained to a ring that slips + Upon a Spaniard's thumb, at will of his + That you should prattle o'er his words again! + +Fedalma cannot unmake herself; she has already danced in the plaza, and she +is soon convinced that she is a Zincala, that her place is with her father +and his tribe. The Prior had declared,-- + + That maiden's blood + Is as unchristian as the leopard's, + +and it so proves. His statement of reasons for this conviction expresses +the author's own belief. + + What! Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips + Descend through generations, and the soul + That moves within our frame like God in worlds-- + Convulsing, urging, melting, withering-- + Imprint no record, leave no documents, + Of her great history? Shall men bequeath + The fancies of their palates to their sons, + And shall the shudder of restraining awe, + The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, + Faith's prayerful labor, and the food divine + Of fasts ecstatic--shall these pass away + Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly? + Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain, + And god-enshrining symbols leave no trace + Of tremors reverent? + +This larger or social heredity is that which claims much the larger share +of George Eliot's attention, and it is far more clearly and distinctively +presented in her writings. She gives a literary expression here to the +teachings of the evolutionists, shows the application to life of what has +been taught by Spencer, Haeckel and Lewes. In his _Foundations of a Creed_, +Lewes has stated this theory in discussing "the limitations of knowledge." +"It is indisputable," he says, "that every particular man comes into the +world with a heritage of organized forms and definite tendencies, which +will determine his feeling and thinking in certain definite ways, whenever +the suitable conditions are present. And all who believe in evolution +believe that these forms and tendencies represent ancestral experiences and +adaptations; believe that not only is the pointer born with an organized +tendency to point, the setter to set, the beaver to build, and the bird to +fly, but that the man is born with a tendency to think in images and +symbols according to given relations and sequences which constitute logical +laws, that _what_ he thinks is the necessary product of his organism and +the external conditions. This organism itself is a product of its history; +it _is_ what it has _become_; it is a part of the history of the human +race; it is also specially individualized by the particular personal +conditions which have distinguished him from his fellow-men. Thus +resembling all men in general characters, he will in general feel as +they feel, think as they think; and differing from all men in special +characters, he will have personal differences of feeling and shades of +feeling, thought and combinations of thought.... The mind is built up +out of assimilated experiences, its perceptions being shaped by its +pre-perceptions, its conceptions by its pre-conceptions. Like the body, +the mind is shaped through its history." In other words, experience is +inherited and shapes the mental and social life. What some philosophers +have called intuitions, and what Kant called the categories of the mind, +Lewes regarded as the inherited results of human experience. By a slow +process of evolution the mind has been produced and shaped into harmony +with its environment; the results of inherited experience take the form of +feelings, intuitions, laws of thought and social tendencies. Its intuitions +are to be accepted as the highest knowledge, because the transmitted +results of all human experience. + +As the body performs those muscular operations most easily to which it +is most accustomed, so men as social beings perform those acts and think +those thoughts most easily and naturally to which the race has been longest +accustomed. Man lives and thinks as man has lived and thought; he inherits +the past. In his social life he is as much the child of the past as he is +individually the son of his father. If he inherits his father's physiognomy +and habits of thought, so does he socially inherit the characteristics of +his race, its social and moral life. George Eliot was profoundly convinced +of the value of this fact, and she has presented it in her books in all +its phases. In her _Fortnightly Review_ essay on "The Influence of +Rationalism," she says all large minds have long had "a vague sense" "that +tradition is really the basis of our best life." She says, "Our sentiments +may be called organized traditions; and a large part of our actions gather +all their justification, all their attractions and aroma, from the memory +of the life lived, of the actions done, before we were born." Tradition is +the inherited experience of the race, the result of its long efforts, its +many struggles, after a larger life. It lives in the tendencies of our +emotions, in the intuitions and aspirations of our minds, as the wisdom +which our minds hold dear, as the yearnings of our hearts after a wider +social life. These things are not the results of our own reasonings, but +they are the results of the life lived by those who have gone before us, +and who, by their thoughts and deeds, have shaped our lives, our minds, to +what they are. Tradition is the inherited experience, feeling, yearning, +pain, sorrow and wisdom of the ages. It furnishes a great system of +customs, laws, institutions, ideas, motives and feelings into which we are +born, which we naturally adopt, which gives shape and strength to our +growing life, which makes it possible for us to take up life at that stage +it has reached after the experiences of many generations. George Eliot says +in _Middlemarch_ that "a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality +with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition." We come into a world +made ready for us, and find prepared for our immediate use a vast complex +of customs and duties and ideas, the results of the world's experience. +George Eliot believed, with Comte, that with each generation the influence +of the past over the present becomes greater, and that men's lives are more +and more shaped by what has been. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she makes Don +Silva say that + + The only better is a Past that lives + On through an added Present, stretching still + In hope unchecked by shaming memories + To life's last breath. + +This deep conviction of the blessed influence of the past upon us is well +expressed in the little poem on "Self and Life," one of the most fully +autobiographical of all her poems, where she makes Life bid Self remember + + How the solemn, splendid Past + O'er thy early widened earth + Made grandeur, as on sunset cast + Dark elms near take mighty girth. + Hands and feet were tiny still + When we knew the historic thrill, + Breathed deep breath in heroes dead, + Tasted the immortals' bread. + +In expressive sentences, in the development of her characters, and in many +other ways, she affirms this faith in tradition. In one of the mottoes +in _Felix Holt_ she uses a fine sentence, which is repeated in "A Minor +Prophet." + + Our finest hope is finest memory. + +The finest hope of the race is to be found in memory of its great deeds, as +its saddest loss is to be found in forgetfulness of a noble past. In _The +Mill on the Floss_, when describing St. Ogg's, she attributes its sordid +and tedious life to its neglect of the past and its inspiring memories. + + The mind of St. Ogg's did not look extensively before or after. It + inherited a long past without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the + spirits that walk the streets, Since the centuries when St. Ogg with + his boat, and the Virgin Mother at the prow, had been seen on the wide + water, so many memories had been left behind, and had gradually + vanished like the receding hill-tops! And the present time was like the + level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, + thinking to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giant forces that used + to shake the earth are forever laid to sleep. The days were gone when + people could be greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less change + it: the Catholics were formidable because they would lay hold of + government and property, and burn men alive; not because any sane and + honest parishioner of St. Ogg's could be brought to believe in the + Pope. One aged person remembered how a rude multitude had been swayed + when John Wesley preached in the cattle-market; but for a long while it + had not been expected of preachers that they should shake the souls of + men. An occasional burst of fervor in Dissenting pulpits on the subject + of infant baptism was the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober + times when men had done with change. Protestantism sat at ease, + unmindful of schisms, careless of proselytism; Dissent was an + inheritance along with a superior pew and a business connection; and + Churchmanship only wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish + habit that clung greatly to families in the grocery and chandlering + lines, though not incompatible with prosperous wholesale dealing. + [Footnote: Chapter XII.] + +This faith in tradition, as giving the basis of all our best life, is +perhaps nowhere so expressively set forth by George Eliot as in _The +Spanish Gypsy_. It is distinctly taught by all the best characters in the +words they speak, and it is emphatically taught in the whole purpose and +spirit of the poem. Zarca says his tribe has no great life because it has +no great national memories. He calls his people + + Wanderers whom no God took knowledge of + To give them laws, to fight for them, or blight + Another race to make them ampler room; + Who have no whence or whither in their souls, + No dimmest lure of glorious ancestors + To make a common breath for piety. + +As his people are weak because they have no traditional life, he proposes +by his deeds to make them national memories and hopes and aims. + + No lure + Shall draw me to disown them, or forsake + The meagre wandering herd that lows for help-- + And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture + Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. + Because our race has no great memories, + I will so live, it shall remember me + For deeds of such divine beneficence + As rivers have, that teach, men what is good + By blessing them. I have been schooled--have caught + Lore from Hebrew, deftness from the Moor-- + Know the rich heritage, the milder life, + Of nations fathered by a mighty Past. + +The way in which such a past is made is suggested by Zarca, in answer to a +question about the Gypsy's faith; it is made by a common life of faith and +brotherhood, that gives origin to a common inheritance and memories. + + O, it is a faith + Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts + Faith to each other: the fidelity + Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place + Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share + The scanty water: the fidelity + Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, + Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, + The speech that even in lying tells the truth + Of heritage inevitable as birth, + Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel + The mystic stirring of a common life + Which makes the many one: fidelity + To that deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate + Made through our infant breath when we were born + The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, + Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. + Fear thou that oath, my daughter--nay, not fear, + But love it; for the sanctity of oaths + Lies not in lightning that avenges them, + But in the injury wrought by broken bonds + And in the garnered good of human trust. + And you have sworn--even with your infant breath + You too were pledged. + +George Eliot's faith in tradition, as furnishing the basis of our best +life, and the moral purpose and law which is to guide it, she has +concentrated into one question asked by Maggie Tulliver. + + If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should + have no law but the inclination of the moment. + +Although this question is asked in regard to an individual's past, the +answer to it holds quite as good for the race as for the individual. She +repudiates all theories which give the individual authority to follow +inclination, or even to follow some inner or personal guide. The true +wisdom is always social, always grows out of the experiences of the race, +and not out of any personal inspiration or enlightenment. Tradition +furnishes the materials for reason to use, but reason does not penetrate +into new regions, or bring to us wisdom apart from that we obtain through +inherited experiences. George Eliot compares these two with each other in +_The Spanish Gypsy_ in the words of Sephardo. + + I abide + By that wise spirit of listening reverence + Which marks the boldest doctors of our race. + For Truth, to us, is like a living child + Born of two parents: if the parents part + And will divide the child, how shall it live? + Or, I will rather say: Two angels guide + The path of man, both aged and yet young, + As angels are, ripening through endless years. + On one he leans: some call her Memory, + And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet, + With deep mysterious accords: the other, + Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams + A light divine and searching on the earth, + Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, + Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew + Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp + Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked + But for Tradition; we walk evermore + To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp. + +Man leans on tradition, it is the support of his life, by its strength he +is able to move forward. Reason is a lamp which lights the way, gives +direction to tradition; it is a beacon and not a support. Tradition not +only brings us the wisdom of all past experience, but it develops into a +spiritual atmosphere in which we live, move and have our being. This was +Comte's idea, that the spiritual life is developed out of tradition, that +the world's experiences have produced for us intangible hopes, yearnings +and aspirations; awe, reverence and sense of subtle mystery: mystic trust, +faith in invisible memories, joy in the unseen power of thought and love; +and that these create for us a spiritual world most real in its nature, and +most powerful in its influence. On every hand man is touched by the +invisible, mystical influences of the past, spiritual voices call to him +out of the ages, unseen hands point the way he is to go. He breathes this +atmosphere of spiritual memories, he is fed on thoughts other men have made +for his sustenance, he is inspired by the heroisms of ages gone before. In +an article in the _Westminster Review_ in July, 1856, on "The Natural +History of German Life," in review of W.H. Riehl's books on the German +peasant, and on land and climate, she presents the idea that a people can +be understood only when we understand its history. Society, she says, has +developed through many generations, and has built itself up in many +memories and associations. To change it we must change its traditions. +Nothing can be done _de novo_; a fresh beginning cannot be had. The dream +of the French Revolution, that a new nation, a new life, a new morality, +was to be created anew and fresh out of the cogitations of philosophers, is +not in any sense to be realized. Tradition forever asserts itself, the past +is more powerful than all philosophers, and new traditions must be made +before a new life can be had for society. These ideas are well expressed by +George Eliot in her review of Riehl's books. + + He sees in European society _incarnate history_, and any attempt to + disengage it from its historical elements must, he believes, be simply + destruction of social vitality. What has grown up historically can only + die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. The + external conditions which society has inherited from the past are but + the manifestation of inherited internal conditions in the human beings + who compose it; the internal conditions and the external are related to + each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take + place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both. As a + necessary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must obtain + purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of + hereditary affection and antipathy; which is as easy as to get running + streams without springs, or the leafy shade of the forest without the + secular growth of trunk and branch. + + The historical conditions of society may be compared with those of + language. It must be admitted that the language of cultivated nations + is in anything but a rational state; the great sections of the + civilized world are only approximately intelligible to each other, and + even that, only at the cost of long study; one word stands for many + things, and many words for one thing; the subtle shades of meaning, and + still subtler echoes of association, make language an instrument which + scarcely anything short of genius can wield with definiteness and + certainty. Suppose, then, that the effort which has been again and + again made to construct a universal language on a rational basis has + at length succeeded, and that you have a language which has no + uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of + many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms "familiar with forgotten + years,"--a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects + the purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic + signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of expression to science, + but will never express _life_, which is a great deal more than science. + With the anomalies and inconveniences of historical language, you will + have parted with its music and its passion, with its vital qualities + as an expression of individual character, with its subtle capabilities + of wit, with everything that gives it power over the imagination; and + the next step in simplification will be the invention of a talking + watch, which will achieve the utmost facility and despatch in the + communication of ideas by a graduated adjustment of ticks, to be + represented in writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A + "melancholy language of the future!" The sensory and motor nerves that + run in the same sheath are scarcely bound together by a more necessary + and delicate union than that which binds men's affections, imagination, + wit and humor with the subtle ramifications of historical language. + Language must be left to grow in precision, completeness and unity, as + minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness and sympathy. And there is + an analogous relation between the moral tendencies of men and the + social conditions they have inherited. The nature of European men has + its roots intertwined with the past, and can only be developed by + allowing those roots to remain undisturbed while the process of + development is going on, until that perfect ripeness of the seed which + carries with it a life independent of the root.... + + It has not been sufficiently insisted on, that in the various branches + of social science there is an advance from the general to the special, + from the simple to the complex, analogous with that which is found in + the series of the sciences, from mathematics to biology. To the laws of + quantity comprised in mathematics and physics are superadded, in + chemistry, laws of quality; to those again are added, in biology, laws + of life; and lastly, the conditions of life in general branch out into + its special conditions, or natural history, on the one hand, and into + its abnormal conditions, or pathology, on the other. And in this series + or ramification of the sciences, the more general science will not + suffice to solve the problems of the more special. Chemistry embraces + phenomena which are not explicable by physics; biology embraces + phenomena which are not explicable by chemistry; and no biological + generalization will enable us to predict the infinite specialties + produced by the complexity of vital conditions. So social science, + while it has departments which in their fundamental generality + correspond to mathematics and physics, namely, those grand and simple + generalizations which trace out the inevitable march of the human race + as a whole, and, as a ramification of these, the laws of economical + science, has also, in the departments of government and jurisprudence, + which embrace the conditions of social life in all their complexity, + what may be called its biology, carrying us on to innumerable special + phenomena which outlie the sphere of science, and belong to natural + history. And just as the most thorough acquaintance with physics, or + chemistry, or general physiology, will not enable you at once to + establish the balance of life in your private vivarium, so that your + particular society of zoophytes, molluscs and echinoderms may feel + themselves, as the Germans say, at ease in their skins; so the most + complete equipment of theory will not enable a statesman or a political + and social reformer to adjust his measures wisely, in the absence of a + special acquaintance with the section of society for which he + legislates, with the peculiar characteristics of the nation, the + province, the class whose well-being he has to consult. In other words, + a wise social policy must be based not simply on abstract social + science but on the natural history of social bodies. + +Her conception of the corporate life of the nice has been clearly expressed +by George Eliot in the concluding essay in _Theophrastus Such_. In that +essay she writes of the powerful influence wrought upon national life by +"the divine gift of memory which inspires the moments with a past, a +present and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that +raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute." The +nations which lead the world on to a larger civilization are not merely +those with most genius, originality, gift of invention or talent for +scientific observation, but those which have the finest traditions. As a +member of such a nation, the individual can be noble and great. We should +almost be persuaded, reading George Eliot's eloquent rhetoric on this +subject, that personal genius is of little moment in comparison with a rich +inheritance of national memories. It is indeed true that Homer, Virgil, +Dante, Milton and Shakspere have used the traditions of their people for +the materials of their immortal works, but what would those traditions have +been without the genius of the men who deal with the traditions in a +fashion quite their own, giving them new meaning and vitality! The poet, +however, needs materials for his song, and memories to inspire it. The +influence of these George Eliot well understands in calling them "the deep +suckers of healthy sentiment." + + The historian guides us rightly in urging us to dwell on the virtues of + our ancestors with emulation, and to cherish our sense of a common + descent as a bond of obligation. The eminence, the nobleness of a + people, depends on its capability of being stirred by memories, and for + striving for what we call spiritual ends--ends which consist not in an + immediate material possession, but in the satisfaction of a great + feeling that animates the collective body as with one soul. A people + having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when + it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its + national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and + gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such as are still + demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited + may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when + an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great + precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its + institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which + makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest + with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their + blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all + calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and + thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual + man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, + if not in actual existence yet existing in the past--in memory, as a + departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be + restored.... Not only the nobleness of a nation depends on the presence + of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each + individual citizen. Our dignity and rectitude are proportioned to our + sense of relationship with something great, admirable, pregnant with + high possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to + self-repression and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and + more attractive to our generous part than the securing of personal ease + or prosperity. [Footnote: Theophrastus Such, chapter XVIII.] + +Zealous as is George Eliot's faith in tradition, she is broad-minded enough +to see that it is limited in its influence by at least two causes,--by +reason and by the spirit of universal brotherhood. We have already seen +that she makes reason one of man's guides. In _Romola_ the right of the +individual to make a new course for action is distinctly expressed. Romola +had "the inspiring consciousness," we are told, "that her lot was vitally +united with the general lot which exalted even the minor details of +obligation into religion," and so "she was marching with a great army, she +was feeling the stress of a common life." Yet she began to feel that she +must not merely repeat the past; and the influence of Savonarola, in +breaking with Rome for the sake of a pure and holy life, inspired her. + + To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the + soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law + to appeal to, but in face of a law which is not unarmed with divine + lightnings--lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false. + +It is reason's lamp by which "we walk evermore to higher paths;" and by its +aid, new deeds are to be done, new memories created, fresher traditions +woven into feeling and hope. National memories are to be superseded by the +spirit of brotherhood, for, as the race advances, nations are brought +closer to each other, have more in common, and development is made of +world-wide traditions. Theophrastus Such, in the last of his essays, tells +us that "it is impossible to arrest the tendencies of things towards the +quicker or slower fusion of races." + +The environment of her characters George Eliot makes of very great +importance. She dwells upon the natural scenery which they love, but +especially does she magnify the importance of the social environment, and +the perpetual influence it has upon the whole of life. Mr. James Sully has +clearly interpreted her thought on this subject, and pointed out its +engrossing interest for her. + +"A character divorced from its surroundings is an abstraction. A +personality is only a concrete living whole, when we attach it by a network +of organic filaments to its particular environment, physical and social. +Our author evidently chooses her surroundings with strict regard to her +characters. She paints nature less in its own beauty than in its special +aspect and significance for those whom she sets in its midst. 'The bushy +hedgerows,' 'the pool in the corner of the field where the grasses were +dank,' 'the sudden slope of the old marl-pit, making a red background for +the burdock'--these things are touched caressingly and lingered over +because they are so much to the 'midland-bred souls' whose history is here +recorded; so much because of cumulative recollection reaching back to the +time when they 'toddled among' them, or perhaps 'learnt them by heart +standing between their father's knees while he drove leisurely.' And what +applies to the natural environment applies still more to those narrower +surroundings which men construct for themselves, and which form their daily +shelter, their work-shop, their place of social influence. The human +interest which our author sheds about the mill, the carpenter's shop, the +dairy, the village church, and even the stiff, uninviting conventicle, +shows that she looks on these as having a living continuity with the people +whom she sets among them. Their artistic value is but a reflection of all +that they mean to those for whom they have made the nearer and habitually +enclosing world." The larger influence in the environment of any person, +according to George Eliot, is that which arises from tradition. Cut off +from the sustenance given by tradition, the person loses the motives, the +supports of his life. This is well shown in the case of Silas Marner, who +had fled from his early home and all his life held dear. George Eliot +describes the effect of such a change of environment. + + Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes + find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on + their faith in the Invisible--nay, on the sense that their past joys + and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported + to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their + history, and share none of their ideas--where their mother earth shows + another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their + souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old + faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in + which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, + and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. + [Footnote: Chapter II.] + +She delights to return again and again to the influences produced upon us +by the environment of childhood. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she tells us +how dear the earth becomes by such associations. + + We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood + in it,--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again + every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat + lisping to ourselves on the grass--the same hips and haws on the autumn + hedgerows--the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," + because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth + that sweet monotony where everything is known, and _loved_ because it + is known? + + The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown + foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white + star-flowers, and the blue-eyed speedwell, and the ground-ivy at + my feet--what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid + broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate + fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these + well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, + these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given + to it by the capricious hedgerows--such things as these are the mother + tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the + subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood + left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass + to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, + if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, + which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. + [Footnote: Chapter V.] + +In the backward glance of _Theophrastus Such_ this anchorage of the life in +familiar associations is described as a source of our faith in the +spiritual, even when all the childhood thoughts about those associations +cannot be retained. + + The illusions that began for us when we were less acquainted with evil + have not lost their value when we discern them to be illusions. They + feed the ideal better, and in loving them still, we strengthen, the + precious habit of loving something not visibly, tangibly existent, but + a spiritual product of our visible, tangible selves. + +In the evolution philosophy she found the reconciliation between Locke and +Kant which she so earnestly desired to discover in girlhood. The old school +of experimentalists did not satisfy her with their philosophy; she saw +that the dictum that all knowledge is the result of sensation was not +satisfactory, that it was shallow and untrue. On the other hand, the +intellectual intuition of Schelling was not acceptable, nor even Kant's +categories of the mind. She wished to know why the mind instinctively +throws all experiences and thoughts under certain forms, and why it must +think under certain general methods. She found what to her was a perfectly +satisfactory answer to these questions in the theory of evolution as +developed by Darwin and Spencer. Through the aid of these men she found the +reconciliation between Locke and Kant, and discovered that both were wrong +and both right. So familiar has this reconciliation become, and so wide is +its acceptance, that no more than a mere hint of its meaning will be needed +here. This philosophy asserts, with Locke, that all knowledge begins in +sensation and experience; but with Kant, it affirms that knowledge passes +beyond experience and becomes intuitional. It differs from Kant as to the +source of the intuitions, pronouncing them the results of experience built +up into legitimate factors of the mind by heredity. Experience is inherited +and becomes intuitions. The intuitions are affirmed to be reliable, and, to +a certain extent, sure indications of truth. They are the results, to use +the phrase adopted by Lewes, of "organized experience;" experience verified +in the most effective manner in the organism which it creates and modifies. +According to this philosophy, man must trust the results of experience, but +he can by no means be certain that those results correspond with actuality. +They are actual for him, because it is impossible for him to go beyond +their range. Within the little round created by "organized experience," +which is also Lewes's definition of science, man may trust his knowledge, +because it is consistent with itself; but beyond that strict limit he can +obtain no knowledge, and even knows that what is without it does not +correspond with what is within it. In truth, man knows only the relative, +not the absolute; he must rely on experience, not on creative reason. + +George Eliot would have us believe that the sources of life are not inward, +but outward; not dependent on the deep affirmations of individual reason, +or on the soul's inherent capacity to see what is true, but on the effects +of environment and the results of social experience. Man is not related to +an infinite world of reason and spiritual truth, but only to a world of +universal law, hereditary conditions and social traditions. Invariable law, +heredity, feeling, tradition; these words indicate the trend of George +Eliot's mind, and the narrow limitations of her philosophy. Man is not only +the product of nature, but, according to this theory, nature limits his +moral capacity and the range of his mental activity. Environment is +regarded as all-powerful, and the material world as the _source_ of such +truth as we can know. In her powerful presentation of this philosophy of +life George Eliot indicates her great genius and her profound insight. At +the same time, her work is limited, her genius cramped, and her imagination +crippled, by a philosophy so narrow and a creed so inexpansive. + + + + +XI. + + +RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES. + +As a great literary creator, George Eliot holds a singular position in +reference to religious beliefs. To most literary artists religion is a +vital part of life, which enters as a profound element into their teachings +or into their interpretations of character and incident. Religion deeply +affects the writings of Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin; its problems, its +hopes, its elements of mystery and infinity touch all their pages. In an +equal degree, though with a further departure from accredited beliefs, and +with a greater effect from philosophical or humanitarian influences, has it +wrought itself into the genius of Goethe, Carlyle and Hugo. Even the pages +of Voltaire, Shelley and Heine have been touched by its magic influence; +their words glow with its great interests, and bloom into beauty through +its inspiration. None of these is more affected by religion than George +Eliot has been; nor does it form a greater element in their writings than +in hers. + +What is singular about George Eliot's position is, that she both affirms +and denies; she is deeply religious and yet rejects all religious +doctrines. No writer of the century has given religion a more important +relation to human interests or made it a larger element in his creative +work; and yet no other literary artist has so completely rejected all +positive belief in God and immortality. In her books she depicts every +phase of religious belief and life, and with sympathy and appreciation. A +very large proportion of her characters are clergymen or other religious +persons, who are described with accuracy and sympathy. Her own faith, the +theory of religion she accepts, is not given to any of her characters. What +she believes, appears only in her comments, and in the general effect which +life produces on the persons she describes. She believed Christianity is +subjectively true, that it is a fit expression of the inner nature and of +the spiritual wants of the soul. She did not propagate the pantheism of +Spinoza or the theism of Francis Newman, because she did not regard them as +so near the truth as the Christianity of Paul. As intellectual theories +they may have been preferable to her, but from the outlook of feeling which +she ever occupied, Paul was the truer teacher, and especially because his +teachings are linked with the spiritual desires and outpourings of many +generations. The spontaneous movements of the human mind, which have taken +possession of vast numbers of people through long periods of time, have a +depth of meaning which the speculations of no individual theorizer can ever +possess. Especially did she regard Christianity as a pure and noble +expression of the soul's inner wants and aspirations. It is an objective +realization of feeling and sentiment, it gives purpose and meaning to man's +cravings for a diviner life, it links generation to generation in a +continued series of beautiful traditions and noble inspirations. Her +intellectual view of the subject was expressed to a friend in these words: + + Deism seems to me the most incoherent of all systems, but to + Christianity I feel no objection but its want of evidence. + +She also expressed more sympathy with the simple faith of the multitude +than with the intellectual speculations of philosophers and theologians; +and again, she said that she felt more sympathy with than divergence from +the narrowest and least cultivated believer in Christianity. As a vehicle +of the accumulated hopes and traditions of the world's feeling and sorrow +she appreciated Christianity, saw its beauty, felt deeply in sympathy with +its spirit of renunciation, accepted its ideal of a divine life. She +learned from Feuerbach that religion, that Christianity, gives fit +expression to the emotional life and spiritual aspirations of man, and that +what it finds within in no degree corresponds with that which surrounds man +without. + +Barren and lifeless as this view must seem to most persons, it was a source +of great confidence and inspiration to George Eliot. It enabled her to +appreciate the religious experiences of men, to portray most accurately and +sympathetically a great variety of religious believers, and to give this +side of life its place and proportion. At the same time, it was a personal +satisfaction to her to be able to keep in unbroken sympathy with the +religious experiences of her childhood and youth while intellectually +unable to accept the beliefs on which these experiences rested. More than +this, she believed that religion and spirituality of life are necessary +elements of human existence, that man can never cast them off, and that man +will lead a happy and harmonious life only when they have a true and +fitting expression in his culture and civilization. She maintained, with +Sara Hennell, that we may retain the religious sentiments in all their glow +and in all their depth of influence, at the same time that the doctrines of +theology and all those conceptions of nature and man on which they rest are +rejected; that we may have a disposition of the heart akin to that of the +prophets and saints of religion, while we intellectually cast aside all +which gave meaning to their faith and devotion. According to George Eliot, +religion rests upon feeling and the relations of man to humanity, as well +as upon his irreversible relations to the universe. In _The Mill on the +Floss_ she has given a definition of it, in speaking of Maggie's want of + + that knowledge of the irreversible laws within and without her, which, + governing the habits, becomes morality, and developing the feelings of + submission and dependence, becomes religion. [Footnote: Book IV., + chapter III.] + +It is the human side of religion which interests George Eliot, its +influence morally, its sympathetic impulse, its power to comfort and +console. Its supernatural elements seem to have little influence over her +mind, at least only so far as they serve the moral aims of life. It is +humanity which attracts her mind, inspires her ideal hopes, kindles her +enthusiasms. Religion, apart from human encouragement and elevation, the +suppression of human sin and sorrow, and the increase of human sympathy and +joy, has little attraction for her. She takes no ground of opposition to +the beliefs of others, expresses no contempt for any form of belief in God; +but she measures all beliefs by their moral influence and their power to +enkindle the enthusiasm of humanity. + +The pantheistic theism defended by Lewes in his book on Comte, in 1853, +seems to have been also accepted by George Eliot. We are told that her mind +long wavered between the two, though pantheism was less acceptable than +theism, on account of its moral indifference. It was undoubtedly the moral +bearings of the subject which all the time had the greatest weight with +her, and probably Kant's position had not a little effect on her opinions. +She came, at least, to find final satisfaction in agnosticism, to believe +that all intellectual speculations on the subject are in vain. At the same +time, her moral convictions grew stronger, and she believed in the power of +moral activity to work out a solution of life when no other can be found. +At this point she stood with Kant rather than with Comte, in accepting the +moral nature as a true guide. She very zealously believed with Fichte in a +moral order of the world, approving of the truth which underlies the words +of Fichte's English disciple, Matthew Arnold, when he discourses of "the +Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Her positive +convictions and beliefs on the subject lie in this direction, and she +firmly accepted the idea of a moral order and purpose. So much she thought +we can know and rely on; beyond this she believed we can know nothing. Her +later convictions on this subject have been expressed in a graphic manner +by one of her friends. "I remember how," says this person, "at Cambridge, +I walked with her once in the Fellows' Garden, of Trinity, on an evening +of rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her +text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring +trumpet-calls of man,--the words _God, Immortality, Duty_,--pronounced, +with terrible emphasis, how inconceivable was the _first_, how unbelievable +the _second_, and yet how peremptory and absolute the _third_. Never, +perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and +unrecompensed law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic +countenance turned towards me like a sibyl's in the gloom; it was as though +she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and +left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates." [Footnote: +F.W.H. Myers in The Century Magazine for November, 1881.] All her later +writings, at least, confirm this testimony to her assertion of the +inconceivableness of God, and her open denial of faith in theism. She +cannot have gone so far as to assert the non-existence of God, affirming +only that she could not conceive of such a being as actually existing. She +could not believe in a personal God, but Lewes's conception of a dynamic +life was doubtless acceptable. + +With as much emphasis she pronounced immortality unbelievable. She early +accepted the theory of Charles Bray and Sara Hennell, that we live +hereafter only in the life of the race. The moral bearings of the subject +here also were most effective over her mind, for she felt that what we +ought most of all to consider is our relations to our fellow-men, and that +another world can have little real effect upon our present living. In her +_Westminster Review_ article on "Evangelical Teaching" as presented in +Young's _Night Thoughts_, she criticises the following declaration:-- + + "Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, + What'er his boast, has told me he's a knave. + His duty 'tis to love himself alone, + Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles." + +Her comments on these lines of Young's are full of interest, in view of her +subsequent teachings, and they open an insight into her tendencies of mind +very helpful to those who would understand her fully. Her interest in all +that is human, her craving for a more perfect development of human sympathy +and co-operation, are very clearly to be seen. + + We may admit that if the better part of virtue consists, as Young + appears to think, in contempt for mortal joys, in "meditation of our + own decease," and in "applause" of God in the style of a congratulatory + address to Her Majesty--all which has small relation to the well-being + of mankind on this earth--the motive to it must be gathered from + something that lies quite outside the sphere of human sympathy. But, + for certain other elements of virtue, which are of more obvious + importance to untheological minds,--a delicate sense of our neighbor's + rights, an active participation in the joys and sorrows of our + fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for + ourselves when it is the condition of good to others,--in a word, the + extension and intensification of our sympathetic nature,--we think it + of some importance to contend that they have no more direct relation + to the belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in the + lungs has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable + that in some minds the deep pathos lying in the thought of human + mortality--that we are here for a little while and then vanish away, + that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved ones and to + our many suffering fellow-men--lies nearer the fountains of moral + emotion than the conception of extended existence. And surely it ought + to be a welcome fact, if the thought of _mortality_, as well as of + immortality, be favorable to virtue. Do writers of sermons and + religious novels prefer that we should be vicious in order that there + may be a more evident political and social necessity for printed + sermons and clerical fictions? Because learned gentlemen are + theological, are we to have no more simple honesty and good-will? We + can imagine that the proprietors of a patent water-supply have a dread + of common springs; but, for our own part, we think there cannot be too + great security against a lack of fresh water or of pure morality. To us + it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of + healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its + evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as + the evolution of science or art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin + ray, melting into them with undefinable limits. + +The considerations here presented are very effective ones, and quite as +truthful as effective. There are human supports for morality of the most +important and far-reaching character, and such as are outside of any +theological considerations. We ought, as George Eliot so well says, to +rejoice that the reasons for being moral are manifold, that sympathy with +others, as well as the central fires of personality, or the craving to be +in harmony with the Eternal, is able to conduce to a righteous conduct. Her +objections to Young's narrow and selfish defence of immortality are well +presented and powerful, but they do not touch such high considerations as +those offered by Kant. The craving for personal freedom and perfection is +as strong and as helpful to the race as sympathy for others and yearning to +lift up the weak and fallen. When the sense of personality is gone, man +loses much of his character; and personality rests on a deep spiritual +foundation which does not mean egotism merely, but which does mean for the +majority a conviction of a continued existence. The tendency of the present +time is to dwell less upon the theological and more upon the human motives +to conduct; but it is to be doubted if the highest phases of morality can +be retained without belief in God and a future life. The common virtues, +the sympathetic motives to conduct, the spirit of helpfulness, may be +retained intact, and even increased in power and efficiency, by those +motives George Eliot presents; but the loftier virtues of personal heroism +and devotion to truth in the face of martyrdom of one form or another, the +saintly craving for purity and holiness, and the sturdy spirit of liberty +which will suffer no bonds to exist, can be had in their full development +only with belief that God calls us to seek for perfect harmony with +himself. Kant's view that a divine law within, the living word of God, +calls ever to us as personal beings to attain the perfection of our natures +in the perfection of the race, and in conformity to the eternal law of +righteousness, is far nobler and truer than that which George Eliot +accepted. + +She was not a mere unbeliever, however, for she did not thrust aside the +hope of immortality with a contemptuous hand. This problem she left where +she left that concerning God, in the background of thought, among the +questions which cannot be solved. She believed that the power to contribute +to the future good of the race is hope and promise enough. At the same +time, she was very tender of the positive beliefs of others, and especially +of that yearning so many feel after personal recognition and development. +Writing to one who passionately clung to such a hope, she said,-- + + I have no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the + depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help + in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the + absence of what has been called consolatory belief. But all the while I + gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits + or negations in my own moral powers and life experience which may + screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering + human nature. The most melancholy thought surely would be that we in + our own persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual + good. But we know the poor help the poor. + +These words seem to be uttered in quite another tone than that in which she +asserted the unbelievableness of immortality, though they do not indicate +anything more than a tender yearning for human good and a belief that she +could not herself measure all the possibilities of such good. The +consolation of which she writes, comes only of human sympathy and +helpfulness. In writing to a friend suffering under the anguish of a recent +bereavement, she said,-- + + For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort;--whatever goodness may + surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly + the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living + affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn + initiation preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship + with the fullest human lot which, I must think, no one who has tasted + it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to + know what the last parting is, seems needful to give the utmost + sanctity of tenderness to our relations with each other. It is that + above all which gives us new sensibilities to "the web of human things, + birth and the grave, that are not as they were." And by that faith we + come to find for ourselves the truth of the old declaration, that there + is a difference between the ease of pleasure and blessedness, as the + fullest good possible to us wondrously mixed mortals. + +In these words she suggests that sorrow for the dead is a solemn initiation +into that full measure of human sympathy and tenderness which best fits us +to be men. Looking upon all human experience through feeling, she regarded +death as one of the most powerful of all the shaping agents of man's +destiny in this world. She speaks of death, in _Adam Bede, as "the great +reconciler" which unites us to those who have passed away from us. In the +closing scenes of _The Mill on the Floss it is presented as such a +reconciler, and as the only means of restoring Maggie to the affections of +those she had wronged. It is in _The Legend of Jubal, however, that George +Eliot has expressed her thought of what death has been in the individual +and social evolution of mankind. The descendants of Cain + + in glad idlesse throve, + Nor hunted prey, nor with each other strove; + +but all was peace and joy with them. There were no great aspirations, no +noble achievements, no tending toward progress and a higher life. On an +evil day, Lamech, when engaged in athletic sport, accidentally struck and +killed his fairest boy. All was then changed, the old love and peace passed +away; but good rather than evil came, for man began to lead a larger life. + + And a new spirit from that hour came o'er + The race of Cain: soft idlesse was no more, + But even the sunshine had a heart of care, + Smiling with hidden dread--a mother fair + Who folding to her breast a dying child + Beams with feigned joy that but makes sadness mild. + Death was now lord of Life, and at his word + Time, vague as air before, new terrors stirred, + With measured wing now audibly arose + Throbbing through all things to some unknown close. + Now glad Content by clutching Haste was torn, + And Work grew eager, and Devise was born. + It seemed the light was never loved before, + Now each man said, "'Twill go and come no more." + No budding branch, no pebble from the brook, + No form, no shadow, but new dearness took + From the one thought that life must have an end; + And the last parting now began to send + Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss, + Thrilling them into finer tenderness. + Then Memory disclosed her face divine, + That like the calm nocturnal lights doth shine + Within the soul, and shows the sacred graves, + And shows the presence that no sunlight craves, + No space, no warmth, but moves among them all; + Gone and yet here, and coming at each call, + With ready voice and eyes that understand, + And lips that ask a kiss, and dear responsive hand. + Thus to Cain's race death was tear-watered seed + Of various life and action-shaping need. + But chief the sons of Lamech felt the stings + Of new ambition, and the force that springs + In passion beating on the shores of fate. + They said, "There comes a night when all too late + The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand, + The eager thought behind closed portals stand, + And the last wishes to the mute lips press + Buried ere death in silent helplessness. + Then while the soul its way with sound can cleave, + And while the arm is strong to strike and heave, + Let soul and arm give shape that will abide + And rule above our graves, and power divide + With that great god of day, whose rays must bend + As we shall make the moving shadows tend. + Come, let us fashion acts that are to be, + When we shall lie in darkness silently, + As our young brother doth, whom yet we see + Fallen and slain, but reigning in our will + By that one image of him pale and still." + +Death brings discord and sorrow into a world once happy and unaspiring, but +it also brings a spiritual eagerness and a divine craving. Jabal began to +tame the animals and to cultivate the soil, Tubal-Cain began to use fire +and to work metals, while Jubal discovered song and invented musical +instruments. Out of the longing and inner unrest which death brought, came +the great gift of music. It had power to + + Exult and cry, and search the inmost deep + Where the dark sources of new passion sleep. + +Jubal passes to other lands to teach them the gift of song, but at last +returns an old man to share in the affections of his people. He finds them +celebrating with great pomp the invention of music, but they will not +accept him as the Jubal they did honor to and believed dead. Then the voice +of his own past instructs him that he should not expect any praises or +glory in his own person; it is enough to live in the joy of a world +uplifted by music. Thus instructed, his broken life succumbs. + + Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, + The All-creating Presence for his grave. + +In this poem George Eliot regards death as a means of drawing men into a +deeper and truer sympathy with each other. The same thought is more fully +presented when she exultingly sings,-- + + O may I join the choir invisible + Of those immortal dead who live again + In minds made better by their presence: live + In pulses stirred to generosity, + In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn + For miserable aims that end with self. + In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, + And with their mild persistence urge man's search + To vaster issues. + +Death teaches us to forget self, to live for others, to pour out unstinted +sympathy and affection for those whose lives are short and difficult. It is +the same thought as that given in reply to Young; mortal sorrows and pains +should move us as hopes of immortality cannot. There accompanies this idea +the larger one, that our future life is to be found in the better life we +make for those who come after us. George Eliot believed with Comte, that we +are to live again in minds made better by what we have done and been, that +an influence goes out from every helpful and good life which makes the +lives of those who come after us fairer and grander. + +She rests this belief on no sentimental or ideal grounds. Its justification +is to be found in science, in the law of hereditary transmission. Darwin +and Spencer base the great world-process of evolution on the two laws of +transmission and variation. The fittest survives, and the world advances. +The survival of every fit and positive form of life in the better forms +which succeed it is in accordance with a process or a law which holds true +up into all the highest and subtlest expressions of man's inner life. +Heredity is as true morally and spiritually as physically, and our moral +and spiritual offspring will partake of our own qualities; and, standing on +the vantage ground of our lives, will rise higher than we. What George +Eliot regards as the positive teaching of science becomes also an inspiring +religious belief to her. + +George Eliot accepted the belief of an immortality in the race with a deep +and earnest conviction. It gave a great impulse to her life, it satisfied +her craving for closer harmony and sympathy with her fellows, it satisfied +her longing for the power to assuage sorrow and to comfort pain. + + So to live is heaven; + To make undying music in the world, + +and to have an influence for good result from our lives far down the +future. Through the beneficent influences we can awake in the world + + All our rarer, better, truer self. + That sobbed religiously in yearning song, + That watched to ease the burthen of the world, + ... shall live till human time + Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky + Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb + Unread forever. + +It was this belief, so satisfying to her and so ardently entertained, which +inspired the best and noblest of her poems. With an almost exultant joy, +with the enthusiasm of an old-time devotee, she sings of that immortality +which consists in renouncing all which is personal. The diffusive good +which sweetens life for others through all time is the real heaven she +sought. + + This is life to come, + Which martyred men have made more glorious + For us who strive to follow. May I reach + That purest heaven, be to other souls + The cup of strength in some great agony, + Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, + Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-- + Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, + And in diffusion ever more intense. + So shall I join the choir invisible + Whose music is the gladness of the world. + +Believing that humanity represents an organic life and development, it was +easy for George Eliot to accept the idea of immortality in the race. She +reverenced the voice of truth + + Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead. + +It was to her a divine voice, full of tenderness, sympathy and strength. +She was fascinated by this thought of the solemn, ever-present and +all-powerful influence of the dead over the living; there was mystery and +inspiration in this belief for her. All phases of religious history, all +religious experiences, were by her interpreted in the light of this +conception. The power of Jesus's life is, that his trancendent beauty of +soul lives in the "everlasting memories" of men, and that the cross of his +shame has become + + The sign + Of death that turned to more diffusive life + +His influence, his memory, has lifted up the world with a great effect, and +made his life, spirit and ideas an inherent part of humanity. He has been +engrafted into the organic life of the race, and lives there a mighty and +an increasing influence. What has happened in his case happens in the case +of all the gifted and great. According to what they were living they enter +into the life of the world for weal or woe. To become an influence for good +in the future, to leave behind an undying impulse of thought and sympathy, +was the ambition of George Eliot; and this was all the immortality she +desired. + +The religious tendencies of George Eliot's mind are rather to be noted in +her conception of renunciation than in her beliefs about God and +immortality. These latter beliefs were of a negative character as she +entertained them, but her doctrine of renunciation was of a very positive +nature. The central motive of that belief was not faith in God, but faith +in man. It gained all its charm and power for her out of her conception of +the organic life of the race. Her thought was, that we should live not for +self, but for humanity. What so many ardent souls have been willing to do +for the glory of God she was willing to do for the uplifting of man. The +spirit of renunciation with her took the old theologic form of expression +to a considerable extent, associated itself in her thought with the lofty +spiritual consecration and self-abnegation of other ages. So ardently did +she entertain this doctrine, so fully did she clothe it with the old forms +of expression, that many have been deceived into believing her a devoted +Christian. A little book was published in 1879 for the express purpose of +showing that "the doctrine of the cross" is the main thought presented +throughout all George Eliot's books. [Footnote: The Ethics of George +Eliot's Works. By the late John Crombie Brown. Edinburgh: William Blackwood +and Sons. 1879.] This book was read by George Eliot with much delight, and +was regarded by her as the only criticism of her works which did full +justice to her purpose in writing them. She is presented in that book as +the writer of fiction who "stands out as the deepest, broadest and most +catholic illustrator of the true ethics of Christianity; the most earnest +and persistent expositor of the true doctrine of the cross, that we are +born and should live to something higher than love of happiness." +"Self-sacrifice as the divine law of life, and its only true fulfilment; +self-sacrifice, not in some ideal sphere sought out for ourselves in the +vain spirit of self-pleasing, but wherever God has placed us, amid homely, +petty anxieties, loves and sorrows; the aiming at the highest attainable +good in our own place, irrespective of all results of joy or sorrow, of +apparent success or failure--such is the lesson" that is conveyed in all +her books. George Eliot is presented as a true teacher of the doctrine +which admonishes us to love not pleasure but God, to forsake all things +else for the sake of obedience and devotion, to shun the world and to +devote ourselves perpetually to God's service. The Christian doctrine of +renunciation has always bidden men put their eyes on God, forget everything +beside, and seek only for that divine life which is spiritual union with +the Eternal. + +That doctrine was not George Eliot's. Christianity bids men renounce the +world for the sake of a perfect union with God; George Eliot desires men to +renounce selfishness for the sake of humanity. The Christian idea includes +the renunciation of all self-seeking, it bids us give ourselves for others, +it even teaches us that others are to be preferred to ourselves. Yet all +this is to be done, not merely for the sake of the present, but in view of +an eternal destiny, and because we can thus only fulfil God's will and +attain to holy oneness with him. George Eliot did, however, throughout her +writings, identify the altruist impulse to live for others with the +Christian doctrine of the cross. To her, the life of devotion to humanity, +which she has so beautifully presented in the poem, "O may I join the Choir +Invisible," was the true interpretation of the Christian doctrine of +self-sacrifice. She accepted this world-old religious belief, consecrated +with all the tears and sacrifices and martyrdoms of the world, as a true +expression of a want of the soul, as the poetic expression of emotions and +aspirations which ever live in man. It is a beautiful symbolism of that +need of his fellows man ever has, of the conviction which is growing +stronger, that man must live for the race and not for himself. The +individual is nothing except as he identifies himself with the corporate +body of humanity; the true fulfilment of life comes only to those who in +some way recognize this fact, and give themselves for the good of the +world. George Eliot even goes so far in her willingness to renounce self +that she says in _Theophrastus Such_, "I am really at the point of finding +that this world would be worth living in without any lot of one's own. Is +it not possible for me to enjoy the scenery of earth without saying to +myself, I have a cabbage-garden in it?" + +The relations of the individual to the past and the present of the race +make duties and burdens and woes for him which he has not created, but +which are given him to bear. The sins of others bring pain and sorrow to +us; we are a part of all the good and evil of the world. The present is +determined by the past; we must accept the lot created for us by those who +have gone before us. "He felt the hard pressure of our common lot, the yoke +of that mighty, resistless destiny laid upon us by the past of other men." +says George Eliot of one of her characters. The past brings us burdens and +sorrows difficult to bear; it also brings us duties. We owe to it many +things; our debt to the race is an immense one. That debt can only be +discharged by a life of devotion and loyalty, by doing what we can to make +humanity better. The Christian idea of a debt owed to God, which we can +only repay by perfect loyalty and self-abnegation, becomes to George Eliot +a debt owed to humanity, which we can only repay in the purest altruistic +spirit. + +The doctrine of renunciation has been presented again and again by George +Eliot; her books are full of it. It is undoubtedly the central theme of all +her teaching. In the conversation between Romola and Savonarola when she is +escaping from her home and is met by him, it is vividly expressed. +Savonarola speaks as a Christian, as a Catholic, as a monk; but the words +he uses quite as well serve to express George Eliot's convictions. The +Christian symbolism laid aside, and all was true to her; yet her feelings, +her sense of corporate unity with the past, would not even suffer her to +lay aside the symbolism in presenting her thoughts on this subject. Romola +pleads that she would not have left Florence as long as she could fulfil a +duty to her father: but Savonarola reminds her that there are other duties, +other ties, other burdens. + + "If your own people are wearing a yoke, will you slip from under it, + instead of struggling with them to lighten it? There is hunger and + misery in our streets, yet you say, 'I care not; I have my own sorrows; + I will go away, if peradventure I can ease them.' The servants of God + are struggling after a law of justice, peace and charity, that the + hundred thousand citizens among whom you were born may be governed + righteously; but you think no more of that than if you were a bird, + that may spread its wings and fly whither it will in search of food to + its liking. And yet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my + daughter. As if you, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind + choice, were not below the humblest Florentine woman who stretches + forth her hands with her own people, and craves a blessing for them; + and feels a close sisterhood with the neighbor who kneels beside her, + and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the mighty purpose that God + has for Florence; and waits and endures because the promised work is + great, and she feels herself little." + +She then asserts her purpose not to go away to a life of ease and +self-indulgence, but rather to one of hardship; but that plea is not +suffered to pass. + + "You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some good + other than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you find good? + It is not a thing of choice: it is a river that flows from the foot of + the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again, + man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties, + and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. But you will go forth; + and what will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty--bitter herbs, + and no bread with them." + +Savonarola bids her draw the crucifix from her bosom, which she secretly +carries, and appeals to her by that symbol of devotion and self-sacrifice +to remain true to her duties, to accept willingly the burdens given her to +bear, not to think of self, but only of others. He condemns the pagan +teaching she had received, of individual self-seeking, and the spirit of +culture, refinement and ease which accompanied that teaching. She looks on +the image of a suffering life, a life offered willingly as a sacrifice for +others' good, and he says,-- + + "Conform your life to that image, my daughter; make your sorrow an + offering; and when the fire of divine charity burns within you, and you + behold the need of your fellow-men by the light of that flame, you will + not call your offering great. You have carried yourself proudly, as one + who held herself not of common blood or of common thoughts; but you + have been as one unborn to the true life of man. What! you say your + love for your father no longer tells you to stay in Florence? Then, + since that tie is snapped, you are without a law, without religion; you + are no better than a beast of the field when she is robbed of her + young. If the yearning of a fleshly love is gone, you are without love, + without obligation. See, then, my daughter, how you are below the life + of the believer who worships that image of the Supreme Offering, and + feels the glow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that + offering was made, and beholds the history of the world as the history + of a great redemption, in which he is himself a fellow-worker, in his + own place and among his own people! If you held that faith, my beloved + daughter, you would not be a wanderer flying from suffering, and + blindly seeking the good of a freedom which is lawlessness. You would + feel that Florence was the home of your soul as well as your + birthplace, because you would see the work that was given you to do + there. If you forsake your place, who will fill it? You ought to be in + your place now, helping in the great work by which God will purify + Florence and raise it to be the guide of the nations. What! the earth + is full of iniquity--full of groans--the light is still struggling with + a mighty darkness, and you say, 'I cannot bear my bonds; I will burst + them asunder; I will go where no man claims me?' My daughter, every + bond of your life is a debt: the right lies in the payment of that + debt; it can lie nowhere else. In vain will you wander over the earth; + you will be wandering forever away from the right." + +Romola hesitates, she pleads that her brother Dino forsook his home to +become a monk, and that possibly Savonarola may be wrong. He then appeals +to her conscience, and assures her that she has assumed relations and +duties which cannot be broken from on any plea. The human ties are forever +sacred; there can exist no causes capable of annulling them. + + "You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-will and anger, + not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them. The higher + life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own will to bow + before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of + wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before + you. That wisdom is the religion of the cross. And you stand aloof from + it; you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, 'I am as the wise men + who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth was crucified.' And + that is your wisdom! To be as the dead whose eyes are closed, and whose + ear is deaf to the work of God that has been since their time. What has + your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter? It has left you without a + heart for the neighbors among whom you dwell, without care for the + great work by which Florence is to be regenerated and the world made + holy; it has left you without a share in the Divine life which quenches + the sense of suffering self in the ardors of an ever-growing love. And + now, when the sword has pierced your soul, you say, 'I will go away; I + cannot bear my sorrow.' And you think nothing of the sorrow and the + wrong that are within the walls of the city where you dwell; you would + leave your place empty, when it ought to be filled with your pity and + your labor. If there is wickedness in the streets, your steps should + shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my + daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry, should be there to + still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come to teach you a new + worship; the sign of it hangs before you." + +This teaching of renunciation is no less distinctly presented in _The Mill +on the Floss_, the chief ethical aim of which is its inculcation. It is +also there associated with the Catholic form of its expression, through +Maggie's reading of _The Imitation of Christ_, a book which was George +Eliot's constant companion, and was found by her bedside after her death. +It was the spirit of that book which attracted George Eliot, not its +doctrines. Its lofty spirit of submission and renunciation she admired; and +she believed that altruism can be made real only through tradition, only as +associated with past heroisms and strivings and ideals. As an embodiment of +man's craving for perfect union with humanity, for full and joyous +submission to his lot, the old forms of faith are sacred. They carry the +hopes of ages; they are a pictured poem of man's inward strivings. To break +away from these memories is to forsake one's home, is to repudiate one's +mother. We cannot intellectually accept them, we cannot assent to the +dogmas associated with them; but the forms are the spontaneous expressions +of the heart, while the dogmas are an after-thought of the inquiring +intellect. The real meaning of the cross of Christ is self-sacrifice for +humanity's sake; that was its inspiration, that has ever been its true +import. It was this view of the subject which made George Eliot so +continuously associate her new teachings with the old expressions of faith. + +In altruism she believes is to be found the hope of the world, the cure of +every private pain and grief. Altruism means living for and in the race, as +a willing member of the social organic life of humanity, as desiring not +one's own good but the welfare of others. That doctrine she applies to +Maggie's case. This young girl was dissatisfied with her life, out of +harmony with her surroundings, and could not accept the theories of life +given her. + + She wanted some explanation of this hard, real life; the + unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull breakfast-table; the + childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid tasks that filled the + hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless leisure; the + need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel sense that Tom + didn't mind what she thought or felt, and that they were no longer + playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things that had + come to _her_ more than to others--she wanted some key that would + enable her to understand, and in understanding endure, the heavy weight + that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught "real + learning and wisdom, such as great men knew," she thought she should + have held the secrets of life; if she had only books, that she might + learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had never + interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. She know little of saints + and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her teaching, + that they were a temporary provision against the spread of Catholicism, + and had all died at Smithfield. + +Into the darkness of Maggie's life a light suddenly comes in the shape of +the immortal book of Thomas a Kempis. Why that book; why along such a way +should the light come? The answer is, that George Eliot meant to teach +certain ideas. It is this fact which justifies her reader in taking these +scenes of her novels, these words spoken in the interludes, as genuine +reflections and transcripts of her own mind. Maggie turns over a parcel of +books brought her by Bob Jakin, to find little in them-- + + but _Thomas a Kempis_. The name had come across her in her reading, and + she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas + to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the + little old clumsy book with some curiosity; it had the corners turned + down in many places, and some hand, now forever quiet, had made at + certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. + Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed. + "Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the + world.... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to + enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free + from care; for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every + place there will be some that will cross thee.... Both above and below, + which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the + cross; and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou + wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou + desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and + lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that + hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and + earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, + almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which + evil being once overcome and subdued, there will presently ensue great + peace and tranquillity.... It is but little thou sufferest in + comparison of them that have suffered so much, were so strongly + tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. + Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of + others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little adversities. And if + they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause + thereof.... Blessed are those ears that receive the whispers of the + divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed + are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth + outwardly, but unto the Truth which teacheth inwardly." + + A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she + had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of + beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on + from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, + hardly conscious that she was reading--seeming rather to listen while a + low voice said,-- + + "Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy + rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to + be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away, + and thou together with them. Beware thou cleave not unto them lest thou + be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his substance, yet + it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but + little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. + And if he should be of great virtue and very fervent devotion, yet is + there much wanting; to wit, one thing which is most necessary for him. + What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out + of himself, and retain nothing of self-love.... I have often said unto + thee, and now again I say the same. Forsake thyself, resign thyself, + and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace.... Then shall all vain + imaginations, evil perturbations and superfluous cares fly away; then + shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." + + Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see + a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that + would enable her to renounce all other secrets--here was a sublime + height to be reached without the help of outward things--here was + insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within + her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It + flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a + problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing + her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity of + the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of + shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her + own desires, of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own + life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She read on + and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the + invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength; + returning to it after she had been called away, and reading until the + sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination + that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight + forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness, and, in the + ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into + that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had + not perceived--how could she until she had lived longer?--the inmost + truth of the old monk's outpourings, that renunciation remains sorrow, + though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for + happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it. + She knew nothing of doctrines and systems--of mysticism or quietism; + but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct + communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to + Maggie as an unquestioned message. I suppose that is the reason why the + small, old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a + book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into + sweetness, while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave + all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that + waited for the heart's promptings; it is the chronicle of a solitary + hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph,--not written on velvet + cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding + feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of + human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages + ago, felt, and suffered, and renounced,--in the cloister, perhaps, with + serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and + with a fashion of speech different from ours,--but under the same + silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same + strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. [Footnote: The Mill + on the Floss, Book IV., chapter III.] + +Life now has a meaning for Maggie, its secret has been in some measure +opened. Only by bitter experiences does she at last learn the full meaning +of that word; but all her after-life is told for us in order that the depth +and breadth and height of that meaning may be unfolded. Very soon Maggie is +heard saying, + + "Our life is determined for us--and it makes the mind very free when we + give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and + doing what is given us to do." + +It is George Eliot who really speaks these words; hers is the thought which +inspires them. + +Yet Maggie has not learned to give up wishing; and the sorrow, the tragedy +of her life comes in consequence. She is pledged in love to Philip, the son +of the bitter enemy of her family, and is attracted to Stephen, the lover +of her cousin Lucy. A long contest is fought out in her life between +attraction and duty; between individual preferences and moral obligations. +The struggle is hard, as when Stephen avows his love, and she replies,-- + + "Oh, it is difficult--life is very difficult. It seems right to me + sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but, then, such + feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has + made for us--the ties that have made others dependent on us--and would + cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have + been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward + whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, + love would be a sign two people ought to belong to each other. But I + see--I feel that it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in + life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark + to me, but I see one thing quite clearly--that I must not, cannot seek + my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely + pity, and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live + in me still and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted + by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned." + +Against her will she elopes with Stephen, or her departure with him is so +understood; but us soon as she realizes what she has done, her better +nature asserts itself, and she refuses to go on. Stephen pleads that the +natural law which has drawn them together is greater than every other +obligation; but Maggie replies,-- + + "If we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery + and cruelty. We should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can + ever be formed on earth." + +He then asks what is outward faithfulness and constancy without love. +Maggie pleads the better spirit. + + "That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is + not right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing + what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing + whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us--whatever would + cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent + on us. If we--if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have + been so strongly present with me--I should have felt them pressing on + my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my + conscience is awake, that the opposite feeling would never have grown + in me as it has done: it would have been quenched at once. I should + have prayed for help so earnestly--I should have rushed away as we rush + from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself--none. I should never + have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been + weak, selfish and hard--able to think of their pain without a pain to + myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh. what is Lucy + feeling now? She believed in me--she loved me--she was so good to me! + Think of her!" + +She can see no good for herself which is apart from the good of others, no +joy which is the means of pain to those she holds dear. The past has made +ties and; memories which no present love or future joy can take away; she +must be true to past obligations as well as present inclinations. + + "There are memories and affections, and longing after perfect goodness, + that have such a strong hold on me, they would never quit me for long; + they would come back and be pain to me--repentance. I couldn't live in + peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I + have caused sorrow already--I know--I feel it; but I have never + deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They shall suffer + that I may have joy.'" + +And again, she says,-- + + "We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we + can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will + indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce + that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us--for the sake + of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this + belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have + felt that if I let it go forever I should have no light through the + darkness of this life." + +In these remarkable passages from _Romola_ and _The Mill on the Floss_, +George Eliot presented her own theory of life. One of her friends, in +giving an account of her moral influence, speaks of "the impression she +produced, that one of the greatest duties of life was that of resignation. +Nothing was more impressive as exhibiting the power of feelings to survive +the convictions which gave them birth, than the earnestness with which she +dwelt, on this as the great and real remedy for all the ills of life. On +one occasion she appeared to apply it to herself in speaking of the short +space of life that lay before her, and the large amount of achievement +that must be laid aside as impossible to compress into it--and the sad, +gentle tones in which the word _resignation_ was uttered, still vibrate on +the ear." [Footnote: Contemporary Review, February, 1881.] Not only +renunciation but resignation was by her held to be a prime requisite of a +truly moral life. Man must renounce many things for the sake of humanity, +but he must also resign himself to endure many things because the universe +is under the dominion of invariable laws. Much of pain and sorrow must come +to us which can in no way be avoided. A true resignation and renunciation +will enable us to turn pain and sorrow into the means of a higher life. In +_Adam Bede_ she says that "deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called +a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state." She teaches +that man can attain true unity with the race only through renunciation, +and renunciation always means suffering. Self-sacrifice means hardship, +struggle and sorrow; but the true end of life can only be attained when +self is renounced for that higher good which comes through devotion to +humanity. Her noblest characters, Maggie Tulliver, Romola, Jubal, Fedalma, +Armgart, attain peace only when they have found their lives taken up in the +good of others. To her the highest happiness consists in being loyal to +duty, and it "often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it +from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because +our souls see it is good." + +George Eliot's religion is without God, without immortality, without a +transcendent spiritual aim and duty. It consists in a humble submission to +the invariable laws of the universe, a profound love of humanity, a +glorification of feeling and affection, and a renunciation of personal and +selfish desires for an altruistic devotion to the good of the race. Piety +without God, renunciation without immortality, mysticism without the +supernatural, everywhere finds eloquent presentation in her pages. Offering +that which she believes satisfies the spiritual wants of man, she yet +rejects all the legitimate objects of spiritual desire. Even when her +characters hold to the most fervent faith, and use with the greatest +enthusiasm the old expressions of piety, it is the human elements in that +faith which are made to appear most prominently. We are told that no +radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for Romola in her +moment of direst distress and need. Then we are told that many such see no +angels; and we are made to realize that angelic voices are to George Eliot +the voices of her fellows. + + In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or + heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought + confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs + of unfailing wing and piercing vision--men who believed falsities as + well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping + hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and + often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other + choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance + and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness + and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. + +The same thought is expressed in _Silas Marner_, that man is to expect no +help and consolation except from his fellow-man. + + In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led + them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels + now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is + put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and + bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may he a + little child's. + +Even more explicit in its rejection of all sources of help, except the +human, is the motto to "The Lifted Veil." + + Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns + To energy of human fellowship; + No powers beyond the growing heritage + That makes completer manhood. + +The purpose of this story is to show that supernatural knowledge is a curse +to man. The narrator of the story is gifted with the power of divining even +the most secret thoughts of those about him, and of beholding coming +events. This knowledge brings him only evil and sorrow. His spiritual +insight did not save him from folly, and he is led to say,-- + + "There is no short cut, no patent tram-road to wisdom. After all the + centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny + wilderness, which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding + feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time." + +He also discourses of the gain which it is to man that the future is hidden +from his knowledge, + + "So absolute is our soul's need of something hidden and uncertain for + the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which are the breath + of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us beyond + to-day, the interest of all mankind would be bent on the hours that + lie between; we should pant after the uncertainties of our one morning + and our one afternoon; we should rush fiercely to the exchange for + our last possibility of speculation, of success, of disappointment; + we should have a glut of political prophets foretelling a crisis or + a no-crisis within the only twenty-four hours left open to prophecy. + Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever + were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at + the close of a summer's day, but in the mean time might be the subject + of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature + and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition that had + the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their + enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual + activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future + reality than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our + muscles." + +All is hidden from man that does not grow out of human experience, and +it is better so. Such is George Eliot's method of dealing with our craving +for a higher wisdom and a direct revelation. Such wisdom and such +revelation are not to be had, and they would not help man if he had them. +The mystery of existence rouses his curiosity, stimulates his powers, +develops art, religion, sympathy, and all that is best in human life. In +her presentations of the men and women most affected by religious motives +she adheres to this theory, and represents them as impelled, not by the +sense of God's presence, but by purely human considerations. She makes +Dorothea Brooke say,-- + + "I have always been thinking of the different ways in which + Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a + wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean + that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most + people as sharers in it." + +Of the same character is the belief which comforts Dorothea, and takes the +place to her of prayer. + + "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know + what it is and cannot do what we would, we are a part of the divine + power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the + struggle with darkness narrower." + +Mr. Tryan, in _Janet's Repentance_, is a most ardent disciple of +Evangelicalism, and accepts all its doctrines; but George Eliot contrives +to show throughout the book, that all the value of his work and religion +consisted in the humanitarian spirit of renunciation he awakened. + +George Eliot does not entirely avoid the supernatural, but she treats it as +unexplainable. Instances of her use of it are to be found in Adam Bede's +experience while at work on his father's coffin, in the visions of +Savonarola, and in Mordecai's strange faith in a coming successor to his +own faith and work. For Adam Bede's experience there is no explanation +given, nor for that curious power manifest in the "Lifted Veil." On the +other hand, the spiritual power of Savonarola and Mordecai have their +explanation, in George Eliot's philosophy, in that intuition which is +inherited insight. In her treatment of such themes she manifests her +appreciation of the great mystery which surrounds man's existence, but she +shows no faith in a spiritual world which impinges on the material, and +ever manifests itself in gleams and fore-tokenings. + +It is to be noted, however, that many traces of mysticism appear in her +works. This might have been expected from her early love of the +transcendentalists, as well as from her frequent perusal of Thomas a +Kempis. More especially was this to be expected from her conception of +feeling as the source of all that is best in man's life. The mystics always +make feeling the source of truth, prefer emotion to reason. All thinkers +who lay stress on the value of feeling are liable to become mystics, even +if materialists in their philosophy. Here and there in her pages this +tendency towards mysticism, which manifests itself in some of the more +poetic of the scientists of the present time, is to be seen in George +Eliot. Some of her words about love, music and nature partake of this +character. Her sayings about altruism and renunciation touch the border of +the mystical occasionally. Had she been less thoroughly a rationalist she +would doubtless have become a mystic in fact. Her tendency in this +direction hints at the close affinity between the evolutionists of to-day +and the idealists of a century ago. They unite in making matter and mind +identical, and in regarding feeling as a source of truth. These are the two +essential thoughts on which all mysticism rests. As modern science becomes +the basis of speculation about religion, and gives expression to these +doctrines, it will develop mysticism. Indeed, it is difficult to know +wherein much that George Eliot wrote differs from mysticism. Her subjective +immortality derived much of its acceptableness and beauty from those poetic +phases given to it by idealistic pantheism. Her altruism caught the glow of +the older humanitarianism, Her conception of feeling and emotional sympathy +is touched everywhere with that ideal glamour given it by the mystical +teachings of an earlier generation. Had she lived half a century earlier +she might have been one of Fichte's most ardent disciples, and found in his +subjective idealism the incentive to a higher inspiration than that +attained to under the leadership of Comte. Her religion would then have +differed but little from what it did in fact, but there would have been a +new sublimity and a loftier spirit at the heart of it. + +George Eliot retains the traditional life, piety and symbolism of +Christianity, but she undertakes to show they have quite another meaning +than that usually given them. Her peculiarity is that she should wish to +retain the form after the substance is gone. Comte undertook to give a new +outward expression to those needs of the soul which lead to worship and +piety; but George Eliot accepted the traditional symbolisms as far better +than anything which can be invented. If we would do no violence to feeling +and the inner needs of life, we must not break with the past, we must not +destroy the temple of the soul. The traditional worship, piety and +consecration, the poetic expression of feeling and sentiment, must be kept +until new traditions, a new symbolism, have developed themselves out of the +experiences of the race. God is a symbol for the great mystery of the +universe and of being, the eternity and universality of law. Immortality is +a symbol for the transmitted impulse which the person communicates to the +race. The life and death of Christ is a symbol of that altruistic spirit of +renunciation and sorrow willingly borne, by which humanity is being lifted +up and brought towards its true destiny. Feeling demands these symbols, the +heart craves for them. The bare enunciation of principles is not enough; +they must be clothed upon by sentiment and affection. The Christian symbols +answer to this need, they most fitly express this craving of the soul for a +higher and purer life. The spontaneous, creative life of humanity has +developed them as a fit mode of voicing its great spiritual cravings, and +only the same creative genius can replace them. The inquiring intellect +cannot furnish substitutes for them; rationalism utterly fails in all its +attempts to satisfy the spiritual nature. + +Such is George Eliot's religion. It is the "Religion of Humanity" as +interpreted by a woman, a poet and a genius. It differs from Comte's as the +work of a poet differs from that of a philosopher, as that of a woman +differs from that of a man. His _positive religion_ gives the impression of +being invented; it is artificial, unreal. Hers is, at least, living and +beautiful and impressive; it is warm, tender and full of compassion, He +invents a new symbolism, a new hierarchy, and a new worship; that is, he +remodels Catholicism to fit the Religion of Humanity. She is too sensible, +too wise, or rather too poetic and sympathetic, to undertake such a +transformation, or to be satisfied with it when accomplished by another. +She gives a new poetic and spiritual meaning to the old faith and worship; +and in doing this makes no break with tradition, rejects nothing of the old +symbolism. + +It was her conviction that nothing of the real meaning and power of +religion escaped by the transformation she made in its spiritual contents. +She believed that she had dropped only its speculative teachings, while all +that had ever made it of value was retained. That she was entirely mistaken +in this opinion scarcely needs to be said; or that her speculative +interpretation, if generally accepted, would destroy for most persons even +those elements of religion which she accepted. A large rich mind, gifted +with genius and possessed of wide culture, as was hers, could doubtless +find satisfaction in that attenuated substitute for piety and worship which +she accepted. There certainly could be no Mr. Tryan, no Dinah Morris, no +Savonarola, no Mordecai, if her theories were the common ones; and it would +be even less possible for a Dorothea, a Felix Holt, a Daniel Deronda, or a +Romola to develop in such an atmosphere. What her intellectual speculations +would accomplish when accepted as the motives of life, is seen all too well +in the case of those many radical thinkers whom this century has produced. +Only the most highly cultivated, and those of an artistic or poetic +temperament, could accept her substitute for the old religion. The motives +she presents could affect but a few persons; only here and there are to be +found those to whom altruism would be a motive large enough to become a +religion. To march in the great human army towards a higher destiny for +humanity may have a strong fascination for some, and is coming to affect +and inspire a larger number with every century; but it is not enough to +know that the race is growing better. What is the end of human progress? +we have a right to ask. Does that progress go on in accordance with some +universal purpose, which includes the whole universe? We must look not +only for a perfect destiny for man, but for a perfect destiny for all +worlds and beings throughout the infinitude of God's creative influence. A +progressive, intellectual religion such as will answer to the larger needs +of modern life, must give belief in a universal providence, and it must +teach man to trust in the spiritual capacities of his own soul. Unless the +universe means something which is intelligible, and unless it has a purpose +and destiny progressive and eternal, it is impossible that religion will +continue to inspire men. That is, only a philosophy which gives such an +interpretation to the universe can be the basis of an enduring and +progressive religion. + +If religion is to continue, it is also necessary that man should be able to +believe in the soul as something more than the product of environment and +heredity. It is not merely the belief in immortality which has inspired the +greatest minds, but the inward impulse of creative activity, resting on the +conviction that they were working with God for enduring results. Absorption +into the life of humanity can be but a feeble motive compared with that +which grows out of faith in the soul's spiritual eternity in co-operation +with God. + +George Eliot's religion is highly interesting, and in many ways it is +suggestive and profitable. Her insistence on feeling and sympathy as its +main impulses is profoundly significant; but that teaching is as good +for Theism or Christianity as for the Religion of Humanity, and needs +everywhere to be accepted. In like manner, her altruistic spirit may +be accepted and realized by those who can find no sympathy for her +intellectual speculations. Love of man, self-sacrifice for human good, +cannot be urged by too many teachers. The greater the number of motives +leading to that result, the better for man. + + + + +XII. + + +ETHICAL SPIRIT. + +Whatever may be said of George Eliot's philosophy and theology, her moral +purpose was sound and her ethical intent noble. She had a strong passion +for the ethical life, her convictions regarding it were very deep and +earnest, and she dwelt lovingly on all its higher accomplishments. Her +books are saturated with moral teaching, and her own life was ordered after +a lofty ethical standard. She seems to have yearned most eagerly after a +life of moral helpfulness and goodness, and she has made her novels the +teachers of a vigorous morality. + +Her friends bear enthusiastic testimony to the nobleness of her moral life +and to her zeal for ethical culture. We are told by one of them that "she +had upbuilt with strenuous pains a resolute virtue," conquering many +faults, and gaining a lofty nobleness of spirit. Another has said, that +"precious as the writings of George Eliot are and must always be, her life +and character were yet more beautiful than they." Her zeal for morality was +very great; she was an ethical prophet; the moral order of life roused her +mind to a lofty inspiration. If she could not conceive of God, if she could +not believe in immortality, yet she accepted duty as peremptory and +absolute. Her faith in duty and charity seemed all the more vigorous and +confident because her religion was so attenuated and imperfect. Love of man +with her grew into something like that mighty and absorbing love of God +which is to be seen in some of the greatest souls. Morality became to her a +religion, not so intense as with saints and prophets, but more sympathetic +and ardent than with most ethical teachers. She was no stoic, no teacher +of moral precepts, no didactic debater about moral duties, no mere +_dilettante_ advocate of human rights. She was a warm, tender, yearning, +sympathetic, womanly friend of individuals, who hoped great things for +humanity, and who believed that man can find happiness and true culture +only in a moral life. + +She was distinctively a moral teacher in her books. The novel was never to +her a work of art alone. The moral purpose was always present, always +apparent, always clear and emphatic. There was something to teach for her +whenever she took the pen in hand; some deep lesson of human experience, +some profound truth of human conduct, some tender word of sympathy for +human sorrow and suffering. She seems to have had no sympathy with that +theory which says that the poet and the novelist are to picture life as it +is, without regard to moral obligations and consequences. In this respect +she was one of the most partisan of all partisans, an absolute dogmatist; +for she never forgot for a moment the moral consequences of life. She was +one of the most ardent of modern preachers, her books are crowded with +teaching of the most positive character. In her way she was a great +believer, and when she believed she never restrained her pen, but taught +the full measure of her convictions. She did not look upon life as a scene +to be sketched, but as an experience to be lived, and a moral order to be +improved by sympathy and devotedness. Consequently the artist appears in +the teacher's garb, the novelist has become an ethical preacher. She does +not describe life as something outside of herself, nor does she regard +human sorrows and sufferings and labors merely as materials for the +artist's use; but she lives in and with all that men do and suffer and +aspire to. Hers is not the manner of Homer and Scott, who hide their +personality behind the wonderful distinctness of their personalities, +making the reader forget the author in the strength and power of the +characters described. It is not that of Shakspere, of whom we seem to get +no glimpse in his marvellous readings of human nature, who paints other men +as no one else has done, but who does not paint himself. Hers is rather the +manner of Wordsworth and Goethe, who have a theory of life to give us, and +whose personality appears on every page they wrote. She has a philosophy, a +morality and a religion to inculcate. She had a vast subjective intensity +of conviction, and a strong individualism of purpose, which would not hide +itself behind the scenes. Her philosophy impregnates with a strong +personality all her classic utterances; her ethics present a marked purpose +in the development of her plots and in her presentation of the outcome of +human experience; and her religion glows in the personal ardor and sympathy +of her noblest characters, and in their passion for renunciation and +altruism. + +Her ethical passion adds to the strength and purpose of George Eliot's +genius. No supreme literary creator has been devoid of this characteristic, +however objective and impersonal he may have been. Homer, Virgil, Dante, +Cervantes, Shakspere, Scott, were all earnest ethical teachers. The moral +problems of life impressed them profoundly, and they showed a strong +personal preference for righteousness. The literary masters of all times +and countries have loved virtue, praised purity, and admired ethical +uprightness. Any other attitude than this argues something less than +genius, though genius may be far from didactic and not given to preaching. +The moral intent of life is so inwoven with all its experiences, that the +failure of any mind to be impressed with it, and profoundly affected, +proves it wanting in insight, poetic vision and genius. George Eliot is +entirely in harmony, in this respect, with all the masters of the literary +art. Her ethical passion is a clear sign of her genius, and proves the +vigor of her intellectual vision. No one who rightly weighs the value of +her books, and fairly estimates the nature of her teaching, can regret that +she had so keen a love of ethical instruction. The vigor, enthusiasm and +originality of her teaching compensate for many faults. + +Her teachings have a special interest because they afford a literary +embodiment of the ethical theories of the evolution philosophy. They +indicate the form which is likely to be given to ethics if theism and +individualism are discarded, and the peculiar effects upon moral life which +will be induced by agnosticism. She applied agnosticism to morals, by +regarding good and evil as relative, and as the results, of man's +environment. For her, ethics had no infinite sanctions, no intuitive +promulgation of an eternal law; but she regarded morality as originating in +and deriving its authority from the social relations of men to each other. +Our intuitive doing of right, or sorrow for wrong, is the result of +inherited conditions. In _Romola_ she speaks of Tito as affected by-- + + the inward shame, the reflex of that outward law which the great heart + of mankind makes for every individual man, a reflex which will exist + even in the absence of the sympathetic impulses that need no law, but + rush to the deed of fidelity and pity as inevitably as the brute mother + shields her young from the attack of the hereditary enemy. [Footnote: + Chapter IX.] + +This teaching is often found in her pages, and in connection with the +assertion of the relativity of morals. There is no absolute moral law for +her, no eternal ideal standard; but what is right is determined by the +environment. Instead of Kant's categorical imperative of the moral law, +proclaimed as a divine command in every soul, George Eliot found in the +conscience and in the moral intuitions simply inherited experiences. In +_Daniel Deronda_ she says, "Our consciences are not all of the same +pattern, an inner deliverance of fixed laws; they are the voice of +sensibilities as various as our memories." + +George Eliot's rejection of any absolute standard of moral conduct or of +happiness continually asserts itself in her pages. We must look at the +individual, his inherited moral power, his environment, his special +motives, if we would judge him aright. In the last chapters of _The Mill on +the Floss_, when writing of Maggie's repentance, this idea appears. Maggie +is not to be tried by the moral ideal of Christianity, nor by any such +standard of perfection as Kant proposed, but by all the circumstances of +her place in life and her experience. We are accordingly told that-- + + Moral judgments must remain false and hollow unless they are checked + and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances + that mark the individual lot. + +George Eliot says in one of the mottoes in _Felix Holt_ that moral +happiness is "mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions." +Even more explicit is her assertion, in one of the mottoes of _Daniel +Deronda_, of the relativity of moral power. + + Looking at life in the growth of a single lot, who having a practised + vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and + false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled--like that + falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing + that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp-- + precipitate the mistaken soul on destruction? + +She does not teach, however, that man is a mere victim of circumstances, +that he is a creature ruled by fate. His environment includes his own moral +heredity, which may overcome the physical circumstances which surround him. +In _Middlemarch_ she says, "It always remains true that if we had been +greater, circumstances would have been less strong against us." The same +thought appears in Zarca's appeal to Fedalma to be his true daughter, in +one of the most effective scenes of _The Spanish Gypsy_. Moral devotedness +is the strongest of all forces, he argues, even when it fails of its +immediate aim; and even in failure the inherited life of the race is +enlarged. + + No great deed is done + By falterers who ask for certainty. + No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, + The undivided will to seek the good: + 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings + A human music from the indifferent air. + The greatest gift the hero leaves his race + Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!-- + We feed the high tradition of the world, + And leave our spirit in our children's breasts. + +George Eliot never goes so far as to say that man may, by virtue of his +inward life, rise superior to all circumstances, and maintain the +inviolable sanctity of his own moral nature. She does not forget that +defeat is often the surest victory, that moral faithfulness may lead to +disgrace and death; but even in these cases it is for the sake of the race +we are to be faithful. The inward victory, the triumph of the soul in +unsullied purity and serenity, she does not dwell upon; and it may be +doubted if she fully recognized such a moral result. Her mind is so +occupied with the social results of conduct as to overlook the individual +victories which life ever brings to those who are faithful unto death. +George Eliot has put her theory of morality into the mouth of Guildenstern, +one of the characters in "A College Breakfast Party." + + Where get, you say, a binding law, a rule + Enforced by sanction, an Ideal throned + With thunder in its hand? I answer, there + Whence every faith and rule has drawn its force + Since human consciousness awaking owned + An Outward, whose unconquerable sway + Resisted first and then subdued desire + By pressure of the dire impossible + Urging to possible ends the active soul + And shaping so its terror and its love. + Why, you have said it--threats and promises + Depend on each man's sentence for their force: + All sacred rules, imagined or revealed, + Can have no form or potency apart + From the percipient and emotive mind. + God, duty, love, submission, fellowship, + Must first be framed in man, as music is, + Before they live outside him as a law. + And still they grow and shape themselves anew, + With fuller concentration in their life + Of inward and of outward energies + Blending to make the last result called Man, + Which means, not this or that philosopher + Looking through beauty into blankness, not + The swindler who has sent his fruitful lie + By the last telegram: it means the tide + Of needs reciprocal, toil, trust and love-- + The surging multitude of human claims + Which make "a presence not to be put by" + Above the horizon of the general soul. + Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, + And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?-- + The outward reason has the world in store, + Regenerates passion with the stress of want, + Regenerates knowledge with discovery, + Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, + Widens dependence, knits the social whole + In sensible relation more defined. + +As these words would indicate, George Eliot's faith in the moral meaning +and outcome of the world is very strong. All experience is moral, she would +have us believe, and capable of teaching man the higher life. That is, all +experience tends slowly to bring man into harmony with his environment, and +to teach him that certain actions are helpful, while others are harmful. +This teaching is very definite and emphatic in her pages, often rising into +a lofty eloquence and a rich poetic diction, as her mind is wrought upon by +the greatness and the impressiveness of the moral lessons of life. + +However effective the outward order of nature may be in creating morality, +it is to be borne in mind that ethical rules can have no effect "apart from +the percipient and emotive mind." It is, in reality, the social nature +which gives morality its form and meaning. It is a creation of the social +organism. Its basis is found, indeed, in the invariable order of nature, +but the superstructure is erected out of and by society. "Man's individual +functions," says Lewes, "arise in relations to the cosmos; his general +functions arise in relations to the social medium; thence moral life +emerges. All the animal impulses become blended with human emotions. In the +process of evolution, starting from the merely animal appetite of +sexuality, we arrive at the purest and most far-reaching tenderness. The +social instincts tend more and more to make sociality dominate animality, +and thus subordinate personality to humanity.... The animal has sympathy, +and is moved by sympathetic impulses, but these are never altruistic; the +ends are never remote. Moral life is based on sympathy; it is feeling for +others, working for others, aiding others, quite irrespective of any +personal good beyond the satisfaction of the social impulse. Enlightened by +the intuition of our community of weakness, we share ideally the universal +sorrows. Suffering harmonizes. Feeling the need of mutual help, we are +prompted by it to labor for others." [Footnote: Foundations of a Creed, +vol. I., pp. 147, 153.] Morality is social, not personal; the result of +those instincts which draw men together in community of interests, +sympathies and sufferings. Its sanctions are all social; its motives are +purely human; its law is created by the needs of humanity. There is no +outward coercive law of the divine will or of invariable order which is to +be supremely regarded; the moral law is human need as it changes from age +to age. The increase of human sympathies in the process of social evolution +gives the true moral ideal to be aspired after. What will increase the +social efficiency of the race, what will promote altruism, is moral. + +Alike because of the invariable order of nature, and the social dependence +of men on each other, are the effects of conduct wrought out in the +individual. George Eliot believes in "the orderly sequence by which the +seed brings forth a crop after its kind." All evil is injurious to man, +destructive of the integrity of his life. She teaches the doctrine of +Nemesis with as much conviction, thoroughness and eloquence as the old +Greek dramatists, making sin to be punished, and wrong-doing to be +destructive. Sometimes she presents this doctrine with all the stern, +unpitying vigor of an Aeschylus, as a dire effect of wrong that comes upon +men with an unrelenting mercilessness. In _Janet's Repentance_ she says,-- + + Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and + sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her + huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but + the victim totters under the dire clutch. + +Her doctrine of Nemesis resembles that of the old Greeks more than that of +the modern optimists and theists. Hers is not the idealistic conception of +compensation, which measures out an exact proportion of punishment for +every sin, and of happiness for every virtuous action. Wrong-doing injures +others as well as those who commit the evil deed, and moral effects reach +far beyond those who set them in operation. Very explicitly is this fact +presented in _The Mill on the Floss_. + + So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer + for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that + even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that + does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain. + +In _Adam Bede_, Parson Irwine says to Arthur,-- + + Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences + quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that + are hardly ever confined to ourselves. + +Yet wrong-doing does not go unpunished, for the law of moral cause and +effect ever holds good. This is the teaching of the first chapter of _Felix +Holt_. + + There is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it some + downfall of blindly climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering, some + quickly satiated desire that survives, with the life in death of old + paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny--some tragic + mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life that + went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has raised + the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern between + will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the world, for + there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make + human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying + existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of + murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and + joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer--committed to no sound except that + of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the + face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. + Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into + no human ear. + +In the same novel we are told, that-- + + To the end of men's struggles a penalty will remain for those who sink + from the ranks of the heroes into the crowd for whom the heroes fight + and die. + +The same teaching is to be found in the motto of _Daniel Deronda_, where we +are bidden to fear the evil tendencies of our own souls. + + Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: + There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires + That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, + Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible + As exhalations laden with slow death, + And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys + Breathes pallid pestilence. + +The manner in which George Eliot believes Nemesis works out her results has +already been indicated. Her effects do not appear in any outward and +palpable results, necessarily; her method is often unknown to men, hidden +even from the keenest eyes. Evil causes produce evil results, that is all; +and these are shown in the most subtle and secret results of what life is. +One of her methods is indicated in _Adam Bede_. + + Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences-- + out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused; there + is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral + sense learns the manners of good society, and smiles when others smile; + but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt + to take part against us. + +_The Mill on the Floss_ reflects this thought. + + Retribution may come from any voice; the hardest, crudest most imbruted + urchin at the street-corner can inflict it. + +More effective still is that punishment which comes of our own inward sense +of wrong-doing. George Eliot makes Parson Irwine say that "the inward +suffering is the worst form of Nemesis." This is well illustrated in the +experience of Gwendolen, who, after the death of her husband at Geneva, is +anxious to leave that place. + + For what place, though it were the flowery vale of Enna, may not the + inward sense turn into a circle of punishment where the flowers are no + better than a crop of flame-tongues burning the soles of our feet? + +Even before this, Gwendolen had come to realize the dire effects of selfish +conduct in that dread and bitterness of spirit which subdued her and mocked +all her hopes and joys. + + Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending + to a predominance which determines all currents toward itself, and + makes the whole life its tributary. And the intensest form of hatred is + that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and drives vehemence into + a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the + deserted object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with + which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed + their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the + secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect--rather with + the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her + husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the + pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse. The vision of her past + wrong-doing, and what it had brought on her, came with a pale ghastly + illumination over every imagined deed that was a rash effort at + freedom, such as she had made in her marriage. [Footnote: Chapter LIV.] + +The way in which wrong-doing affects us to our hurt is suggested also in +_Romola_, where its results upon the inward life are explicitly revealed. + + Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, + whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The + contaminating effect of deeds lies less in the commission than in + the consequent adjustment of our desires--the enlistment of our + self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the + purifying effect of public confession springs from the fact that by it + the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble + attitude of simplicity. + +In the same novel the effect of wrong-doing is regarded as an inward and +subduing fear of the consequences of our conduct. This dread so commonly +felt, and made a most effective motive by all religions, George Eliot +regards as the soul's testimony to the great law of retribution. Experience +that moral causes produce moral effects, as that law is every day taught +us, takes hold of feeling, and becomes a nameless dread of the avenging +powers. + + Having once begun to explain away Baldassarre's claim, Tito's thought + showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way + through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that + dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher + than a man's animal care for his own skin; that awe of the divine + Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more + positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind + simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such + terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it + will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a + moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of + imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have + any sanctity in the absence of feeling. "It is good," sing the old + Eumenides, in Aeschylus, "that fear should sit as the guardian of the + soul, forcing it into wisdom--good that men should carry a threatening + shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else how shall they + learn to revere the light?" That guardianship may become needless; but + only when all outward law has become needless--only when duty and love + have united in one stream and made a common force. [Footnote: Chapter + XI.] + +Another form in which Nemesis punishes us is described in the essay on "A +Half-Breed" in _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Mixtus was a man +with noble aims, but he was fascinated by Scintilla, and realized none of +his ideals. He was captivated by her prettiness, liveliness and music, and +then he was captured on his worldly side. She did not believe in "notions" +and reforms, and he succumbed to her wishes. As a result, his life was +crippled, he was always unsatisfied with himself. Of this form of +retribution George Eliot says,-- + + An early deep-seated love to which we become faithless has its + unfailing Nemesis, if only in that division of soul which narrows all + newer joys by the intrusion of regret and the established presentiment + of change. I refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love + of ideas, practical beliefs and social habits. And faithlessness here + means not a gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a + yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original + choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a + growing desire. In this sort of love it is the forsaker who has the + melancholy lot; for an abandoned belief may be more effectively + vengeful than Dido. The child of a wandering tribe, caught young and + trained to polite life, if he feels a hereditary yearning, can run away + to the old wilds and get his nature into tune. But there is no such + recovery possible to the man who remembers what he once believed + without being convinced that he was in error, who feels within him + unsatisfied stirrings toward old beloved habits and intimacies from + which he has far receded without conscious justification or unwavering + sense of superior attractiveness in the new. This involuntary renegade + has his character hopelessly jangled and out of tune. He is like an + organ with its stops in the lawless condition of obtruding themselves + without method, so that hearers are amazed by the most unexpected + transitions--the trumpet breaking in on the flute, and the oboe + confounding both. + +With a strong and eloquent energy, George Eliot teaches the natural +consequences of conduct. Every feeling, thought and deed has its effect, +comes to fruition. Desire modifies life, shapes our destiny, moulds us into +the image of its own nature. Actions become habits, become controlling +elements in our lives, and tend to work out their own legitimate results. +The whole of George Eliot's doctrine of retribution is, that human causes, +as much as any other, lead to their appropriate effects. Her frequent use +of the word _Nemesis_ indicates the idea she had of the inevitableness of +moral consequences, that a force once set in motion can never be recalled +in its effects, which make a permanent modification of human life in its +present and in its past. It was not the old doctrine of fate which she +presented, not any arbitrary inflictment from supernatural powers. The +inevitableness of moral consequences influenced her as a solemn and fearful +reality which man must strictly regard if he would find true manhood. + +The doctrine of retribution is very clearly taught by George Eliot in her +comments. With a still greater distinctness it is taught in the development +of her characters. As we follow the careers of Hetty, Maggie, Tito, +Fedalma, Lydgate and Gwendolen we see how wonderful was George Eliot's +insight into the moral issues of life. Not only with these, but with all +her characters, we see a righteous moral unfoldment of character into its +effects. There is no compromise with evil in her pages; all selfishness, +wrong and crime comes to its proper results. The vanity and selfishness of +Hetty leads to what terrible crime and shame for her, and what misery for +others! Tito's selfishness and want of resolute purpose carries him +inevitably downward to a hideous end. What is so plain in the case of these +characters is as true, though not so palpable, in that of many others in +her books. Dorothea's conduct is clearly shown to develop into consequences +(as did Lydgate's) which were the natural results of what she thought, did +and was. Maggie's misery was the product of her conduct, the legitimate +outcome of it. + +George Eliot goes beyond the conduct of any one person and its results, and +attempts to show how it is affected by the person's environment. It was +Maggie's family, education, social standing and personal qualities of mind +and heart which helped to determine for her the consequences of her +conduct. It was Dorothea's education and social environment which largely +helped to shape her career and to leave her bereaved of the largest +possibilities of which her life was capable. Gwendolen's life was largely +determined by her early training and by her social surroundings. Yet with +all these, life has its necessary issues, and Nemesis plays its part. +Retribution is for all; it is ever stern, just and inevitable. Just, +however, only in the sense that wrong-doing cannot escape its own effects, +but not just in the sense that the guiltless must often share the fate +of the guilty. Wrong-doing drags down to destruction many an innocent +person. It is to be said of George Eliot, however, that she never presents +any of her characters as doomed utterly by the past. However strong the +memories of the ages lay upon them, they are capable of self-direction. +Not one of her characters is wholly the victim of his environment. There +is no hint in _Middlemarch_ that Dorothea was not capable of heroism and +self-consecration. Her environment gave a wrong direction to her moral +purpose; but that purpose remained, and the moral nobleness of her mind was +not destroyed. Still, it is largely true, that in her books the individual +is sacrificed to his social environment. He is to renounce his own +personality for the sake of the race. Consequently his fate is linked with +that of others, and he must suffer from other men's deeds. + +With all its limitations and defects, George Eliot's teaching concerning +the moral effects of conduct is wholesome and healthy. It rests on a solid +foundation of experience and scientific evidence. Her books are full of +moral stimulus and strengthening, because of the profound conviction with +which she has presented her conception of moral cause and effect. With her, +we must believe that moral sequences are as inevitable as the physical. + +It would be very unjust to George Eliot to suppose that she left man in the +hands of a relentless moral order which manifests no tenderness and which +is incapable of pity and mercy. She did not believe in an Infinite Father, +full of love and forgiveness; that faith was not for her. Yet she did +believe in a providence which can assuage man's sorrows and deal tenderly +with his wrong-doing. While nature is stern and the moral sequences of life +unbending, man may be sympathetic and helpful. Man is to be the providence +of man; humanity is to be his tender forgiving Friend. A substitute so +poor for the old faith would seem to have little power of moral renovation +or sympathetic impulse in it; but it quickened George Eliot's mind with +enthusiasm and ardor. The "enthusiasm of humanity" filled her whole soul, +was a luminous hope in her heart and an inspiring purpose to her mind. +With Goethe and Carlyle she found in work for humanity the substitute +for all faith and the cure for all doubt. Faust finds for his life a +purpose, and for the universe a solution, when he comes to labor for the +practical improvement of humanity. This was George Eliot's own conclusion, +that it is enough for us to see the world about us made a little better +and more orderly by our efforts. All her noblest characters find in +altruism a substitute for religion, and they find there a moral anchorage. +She says very plainly in _Middlemarch_, that every doctrine is capable of +"eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct +fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men." To the same effect is her +saying in _Romola_, that "with the sinking of the high human trust the +dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, +since that also is a part of the common nature which is degraded in +our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled." In +_Janet's Repentance_ she has finely presented this faith in sympathetic +humanitarianism, showing how Janet found peace in the sick-room where all +had been doubt and trial before. + + Day after day, with only short intervals of rest, Janet kept her place + in that sad chamber. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so + often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt--a place of + repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all + creeds and all philosophies are at one:--here, at least, the conscience + will not be dogged by doubt--the benign impulse will not be checked by + adverse theory: here you may begin to act without settling one + preliminary question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through + the long night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the + helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond + the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye--these + are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent + to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls + where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is + subdued,--where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender + mercies of his fellow,--the moral relation of man to man is reduced to + its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory + cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute + nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed all the forces of our + nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience and of love, and + sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, + our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires. This blessing + of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple, + direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is + often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there + are of a hard and terrible kind. [Footnote: Chapter XXIV.] + +The basis of such sympathetic helpfulness she finds in the common sorrows +and trials of the world. All find life hard, pain comes to all, none are to +be found unacquainted with sorrow. These common experiences draw men +together in sympathy, unite them in a common purpose of assuagement and +help. The sorrow of Adam Bede made him more gentle and patient with his +brother. + + It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at + work within him. For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, + working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable + nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a + temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God + forbid! It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling + if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could + return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same + light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over + blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown toward + which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us + rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible + force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into + sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our + best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had + completely taken place in Adam yet; there was still a great remnant of + pain, which he felt would subsist as long as _her_ pain was not a + memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with + the light of every morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as + bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it; it + becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of + perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission; + and we are contented with our day when we are able to bear our grief in + silence, and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods + that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations + beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the + centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert. + +Armgart finds that "true vision comes only with sorrow." Sorrow and +suffering create a sympathy which sends us to the relief of others. "Pain +must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into +compassion," we are told in _Middlemarch_. In the trying hours of Maggie +Tulliver's life she came to know-- + + that new sense which is the gift of sorrow--that susceptibility to the + bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving + fellowship. + +Again, she learns that "more helpful than all wisdom is one draught of +simple human pity that will not forsake us." Man is in this way brought to +live for man, to suffer in his sufferings, to be mercifully tender and +pitiful with him in his temptations and trials. Sympathy builds up the +moral life, gives an ethical meaning to man's existence. Thus humanity +becomes a providence to man, and it is made easier for him to bear his +sufferings and to be comforted in his sorrows. Nemesis is stern, but man is +pitiful; retribution is inexorable, but humanity is sympathetic. Nature +never relents, and there is no God who can so forgive us our sins as to +remove their legitimate effects; but man can comfort us with his love, and +humanity can teach us to overcome retribution by righteous conduct. + +All idealistic rights are to be laid aside, according to her theory, all +personal claims and motives are to be renounced. In the duties we owe to +others, life is to find its rightful expression. In _Janet's Repentance_ +she says,-- + + The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond + the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition + of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to + mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order + of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has + been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of + impressions, desires and impulses. + +To live for self, George Eliot seems to regard as immoral; self is to be +ignored except in so far as it can be made to serve humanity. As rights are +individual they are repudiated, and the demand for them is regarded as +revolutionary and destructive. + +That man is a moral being because he is a social being she carries to its +farthest extreme in some of her teachings, as when she makes public opinion +the great motive power to social improvement. Felix Holt pronounces public +opinion--the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is +wrong, what is honorable and what is shameful--to be the greatest power +under heaven. In the "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt," published in +_Blackwood's Magazine_, Felix is made to say to his fellows,-- + + Any nation that had within it a majority of men--and we are the + majority--possessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the + bad practices, the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous + adulteration of goods, the retail cheating and the political bribery + which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A majority has the + power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and his-s before we + had the franchise: if we had groaned and hissed in the right place, if + we had discerned better between good and evil, if the multitude of us + artisans and factory hands and miners and laborers of all sorts had + been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober--and I don't + see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere without these + qualities--we should have made an audience that would have shamed the + other classes out of their share in the national vices. We should have + had better members of Parliament, better religious teachers, honester + tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence in infamous and + brutal men; and we should not have had among us the abomination of men + calling themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-gotten + gains. I say it is not possible for any society in which there is a + very large body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our + society is--to have as low a standard of right and wrong, to have so + much belief in falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a notion + of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above his fellows. + Therefore let us have done with this nonsense about our being much + better than the rest of our countrymen, or the pretence that that was a + reason why we ought to have such an extension of the franchise as has + been given to us. + +The essay on "Moral Swindlers," in _Theophrastus Such_, clearly indicates +George Eliot's point of view in ethics. She makes those moral traits which +are social of greater importance than those which are personal. She +complains that a man who is chaste and of a clean personal conduct is +regarded as a moral man when his business habits are not good. To her, his +relations to his fellows in all the social and business affairs of life are +of higher importance than his personal habits or his family relations. She +rebels against that deep moral instinct of the race which identifies +morality with personal character, and is indignant that the altruism she so +much believed in is not everywhere made identical with ethics. To her, the +person is nothing; the individual is thought of only as a member of a +community. She forgot that any large and noble moral life for a people must +rest upon personal character, upon a pure and healthy state of the moral +nature in individuals. Nations cannot be moral, but persons can. Public +corruption has its foundation in personal corruption. The nation cannot +have a noble moral life unless the individuals of which it is composed are +pure in character and noble in conduct. She complains that sexual purity is +made identical with morality, while business integrity is not. Every social +and moral bond we have, she says, "is a debt; the right lies in the payment +of that debt; _it can lie nowhere else_." It is a debt owed, not to God, +but to humanity; it is therefore to be paid, not by personal holiness, but +by human sympathy and devotion. + +The higher social morality, that which inspires nations with great and +heroic purposes, George Eliot believes is mainly due, as she says in the +essay on "The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" "to the divine gift of a memory which +inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, and gives the +sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more +respectable and innocent brute." The memories of the past lie mainly in the +direction of national movements, and hence the higher moral life of the +present must be associated with national memories. The glorious +commonplaces of historic teaching, as well as of moral inspiration, are to +be found in the fact "that the preservation of national memories is an +element and a means of national greatness, that their revival is a sign of +reviving nationality, and that every heroic defender, every patriotic +restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has made them his +watchword." To reject such memories, such social influences, she regards as +"a blinding superstition," and says that the moral visions of a nation are +an effective bond which must be accepted by all its members. Two of her +most characteristic books are written to inculcate this teaching. In _The +Spanish Gypsy_ we learn that there is no moral strength and purpose for a +man like Don Silva, who repudiates his country, its memories and its +religion. The main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is to show how binding and +inspiring is the vision of moral truth and life which comes from +association even with the national memories of an outcast and alien people. + +She wished to see individuals helped and good done in the present. She +makes Theophrastus Such, in the essay on "Looking Backward," speak her own +mind. + + "All reverence and gratitude for the worthy dead on whose labors we + have entered, all care for the future generations whose lot we are + preparing; but some affection and fairness for those who are doing the + actual work of the world, some attempt to regard them with the same + freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we + may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the + looking before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in + danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more + illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the + ascetic's contemplation of heaven." + +Again, she says that "the action by which we can do the best for future +ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for +contemporaries." And this was not merely the teaching of her books, it was +the practice of her life. Miss Edith Simcox has made it clear that she was +zealously anxious to help men and women by personal effort. She tells us +that "George Eliot's sympathies went out more readily towards enthusiasm +for the discharge of duties than for the assertion of rights. It belonged +to the positive basis of her character to identify herself more with what +people wished to do themselves than with what they thought somebody else +ought to do for them. Her indignation was vehement enough against dishonest +or malicious oppression, but the instinct to make allowance for the other +side made her a bad hater in politics, and there may easily have been some +personal sympathy in her description of Deronda's difficulty about the +choice of a career. She was not an inviting auditor for those somewhat +pachydermatous philanthropists who dwell complacently upon 'cases' and +statistics which represent appalling depths of individual suffering. Her +imagination realized these facts with a vividness that was physically +unbearable, and unless she could give substantial help, she avoided the +fruitless agitation. At the same time, her interest in all rational good +works was of the warmest, and she was inclined to exaggerate rather than +undervalue the merits of their promoters, with one qualification only. +'Help the millions, by all means,' she has written; 'I only want people not +to scorn the narrower effect.' Charity that did not begin at home repelled +her as much as she was attracted by the unpretentious kindness which +overlooked no near opportunity; and perhaps we should not be far wrong in +guessing that she thought for most people the scrupulous discharge of all +present and unavoidable duties was nearly occupation enough. Not every one +was called to the high but difficult vocation of setting the world to +rights. But on the other hand, it must be remembered that her standard of +exactingness was 'high, and some of the things that in her eyes it was +merely culpable to leave undone might be counted by others among virtues of +supererogation. Indeed, it is within the limits of possibility that a +philanthropist wrapped in over-much conscious virtue might imagine her cold +to the objects proposed, when she only failed to see uncommon merit in +their pursuit. No one, however, could recognize with more generous fervor, +more delighted admiration, any genuine unobtrusive devotion in either +friends or strangers, whether it were spent in making life easier to +individuals, or in mending the conditions among which the masses live and +labor.' This writer gives us further insight into George Eliot's character +when we are told that 'she came as a very angel of consolation to those +persons of sufficiently impartial mind to find comfort in the hint that the +world might be less to blame than they were as to those points on which +they found themselves in chronic disagreement with it. But she had nothing +welcome for those whose idea of consolation is the promise of a _deus ex +machina_ by whose help they may gather grapes of thorns and figs of +thistles. She thought there was much needed doing in the world, and +criticism of our neighbors and the natural order might wait at all events +until the critic's own character and conduct were free from blame.' She had +faith in ordinary lives, and these she earnestly desired to help and +encourage. Those who themselves struggle with difficulties are best +capable, she thought, of helping others out of theirs. In _Daniel Deronda_ +she said, 'Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless; as if those were not +often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their +mistakes.'" + +George Eliot's interest in the present amelioration of human conditions was +strengthened by her faith in the future of the race. She expected no rapid +improvement, no revolutionizing development; but she believed the past of +mankind justifies faith in a gradual attainment of perfect conditions. This +conviction was expressed when she said,-- + + What I look to is a time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be + as immediate and irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something + firm if I am falling. + +She saw too much evil and suffering to be an optimist; she could not see +that all things are good or tending towards what is good. Yet her faith in +the final outcome was earnest, and she looked to a slow and painful +progress as the result of human struggles. When called an optimist, she +responded, "I will not answer to the name of optimist, but if you like to +invent Meliorist, I will not say you call me out of my name." She trusted +in that gradual development which science points out as the probable result +of the survival of the fittest in human life. In "A Minor Prophet" she has +presented her conception of human advancement, and tenderly expressed her +sympathy with all humble, imperfect lives. + + Bitterly + I feel that every change upon this earth + Is bought with sacrifice. My yearnings fail + To reach that high apocalyptic mount + Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world, + Or enter warmly into other joys + Than those of faulty, struggling human kind, + That strain upon my soul's too perfect wing + Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall + Into short-sighted pity for the men + Who, living in those perfect future times, + Will not know half the dear imperfect things + That move my smiles and tears--will never know + The fine old incongruities that raise + My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits + That like a needless eyeglass or black patch + Give those who wear them harmless happiness; + The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, + That touch me to more conscious fellowship + (I am not myself the finest Parian) + With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout, + To whom raw onions give prospective zest, + Consoling hours of dampest wintry work, + Could hardly fancy any regal joys + Quite unimpregnate with the onion's scent: + Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear + Of waftings from that energetic bulb: + 'Tis well that onion is not heresy. + Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout. + A clinging flavor penetrates ray life-- + My onion is imperfectness: I cleave + To nature's blunders, evanescent types + Which sages banish from Utopia. + "Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend! + I worship in the temple with the rest; + But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook + For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves + Who stitched and hammered for the weary man + In days of old. And in that piety + I clothe ungainly forms inherited + From toiling generations, daily bent + At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, + In pioneering labors for the world. + Nay, I am apt, when floundering confused + From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox, + And pity future men who will not know + A keen experience with pity blent, + The pathos exquisite of lovely minds + Hid in harsh forms--not penetrating them + Like fire divine within a common bush + Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest, + So that men put their shoes off; but encaged + Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell, + Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars; + But having shown a little dimpled hand, + Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts + Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls. + A foolish, nay, a wicked paradox! + For purest pity is the eye of love, + Melting at sight of sorrow; and to grieve + Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love + Warped from its truer nature, turned to love + Of merest habit, like the miser's greed. + But I am Colin still: my prejudice + Is for the flavor of my daily food. + Not that I doubt the world is growing still, + As once it grew from chaos and from night; + Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope + Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn, + With earliest watchings of the rising light + Chasing the darkness; and through many an age + Has raised the vision of a future time + That stands an angel, with a face all mild, + Spearing the demon. I, too, rest in faith + That man's perfection is the crowning flower + Towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree + Is pressing--seen in puny blossoms now, + But in the world's great morrows to expand + With broadest petal and with deepest glow. + +With no disgust toward the crude and wretched life man everywhere lives +to-day, but with pity and tenderness for all sorrow, suffering and +struggle, she yet believed that the world is being shaped to a glorious +and a mighty destiny. This faith finds full and clear expression in the +concluding lines of the poem just quoted. + + The faith that life on earth is being shaped + To glorious ends, that order, justice, love, + Mean man's completeness, mean effect as sure + As roundness in the dewdrop--that great faith + Is but the rushing and expanding stream + Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past. + Our finest hope is finest memory, + As they who love in age think youth is blest + Because it has a life to fill with love. + Full souls are double mirrors, making still + An endless vista of fair things before + Repeating things behind: so faith is strong + Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink. + It comes when music stirs us, and the chords + Moving on some grand climax shake our souls + With influx new that makes new energies. + It comes in swellings of the heart and tears + That rise at noble and at gentle deeds-- + At labors of the master-artist's hand + Which, trembling, touches to a finer end, + Trembling before an image seen within. + It comes in moments of heroic love, + Unjealous joy in love not made for us-- + In conscious triumph of the good within, + Making us worship goodness that rebukes. + Even our failures are a prophecy, + Even our yearnings and our bitter tears + After that fair and true we cannot grasp; + As patriots who seem to die in vain + Make liberty more sacred by their pangs, + Presentiment of better things on earth + Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls + To admiration, self-renouncing love, + Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one: + Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night + We hear the roll and dash of waves that break + Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide, + Which rises to the level of the cliff + Because the wide Atlantic roils behind, + Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs. + +George Eliot did all that could be done to make the morality she taught +commendable and inspiring. In her own direct teachings, and in the +development of her characters and her plots, she has done much to make it +acceptable. Her strong insistence on the social basis of morality is to be +admired, and the truth presented is one of great importance. Even more +important is her teaching of the stern nature of retribution, that every +thought, word and deed has its effect. There is need of such teaching, and +it can be appropriated into the thought and life of the time with great +promise of good. Yet the outcome of George Eliot's morality was rather +depressing than otherwise. While she was no pessimist, yet she made her +readers feel that life was pessimistic in its main tendencies. She makes on +the minds of very many of her readers the impression that life has not very +much light in it. This comes from the whole cast of her mind, and still +more because the light of true ideal hopes was absent from her thought. A +stern, ascetic view of life appears throughout her pages, one of the +results of the new morality and the humanitarian gospel of altruism. +Unbending, unpitiful, does the universe seem to be when the idea of law and +Nemesis is so strongly presented, and with no relief from it in the theory +of man's free will. Not less depressing to the moral nature is an +unrelieved view of the universe under the omnipotent law of cause and +effect, which is not lighted by any vision of God and a spiritual order +interpenetrating the material. Her teaching too often takes the tone of +repression; it is hard and exacting. She devotes many pages to showing the +effects of the law of retribution; she gives comparatively few to the +correlative law that good always has its reward. Renunciation is presented +as a moral force, and as duty of supreme importance; life is to be +repressed for the sake of humanity. The spontaneous tendencies of the mind +and heart, the importance of giving a free and healthy development to human +nature, is not regarded. Her morality is justly to be criticised for its +ascetic and pessimistic tendencies. + + + + +XIII. + + +EARLIER NOVELS. + +The first four novels written by George Eliot form a group by themselves; +and while all similar to each other in their main characteristics, are in +important respects different from her later works. This group includes +_Clerical Scenes, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss_ and _Silas Marner_. +With these may also be classed "Brother Jacob." They are all alike novels +of memory, and they deal mainly with common life. Her own life and the +surroundings of her childhood, the memories and associations and +suggestions of her early life, are drawn upon. The simple surroundings and +ideas of the midland village are seldom strayed away from, and most of the +characters are farmers and their laborers, artisans or clergymen. _The Mill +on the Floss_ offers a partial exception to this statement, for in that +book we touch upon the border of a different form of society, but we +scarcely enter into it, and the leading characters are from the same class +as those in the other books of this group. "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" alone +enters wholly within the circle of aristocratic society. There is more of +the realism of actual life in these novels than in her later ones, greater +spontaneity and insight, a deeper sympathy and a more tender pathos. They +came more out of her heart and sympathies, are more impassioned and +pathetic. + +Throughout the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ are descriptions of actual scenes +and incidents known to George Eliot in her girlhood. Mrs. Hackit is a +portrait of her own mother. In the first chapter of "Amos Barton," +Shepperton Church is that at Chilvers Colon, which she attended throughout +her childhood. It is from memory, and with an accurate pen, she describes-- + + Shepperton Church as it was in the old days with its outer court of + rough stucco, its red-tiled roof, its heterogeneous windows patched + with desultory bits of painted glass, and its little flight of steps + with their wooden rail running up the outer wall, and leading to the + school-children's gallery. Then inside, what dear old quaintnesses! + which I began to look at with delight, even when I was so crude a + member of the congregation that my nurse found it necessary to + provide for the reinforcement of my devotional patience by smuggling + bread-and-butter into the sacred edifice. There was the chancel, + guarded by two little cherubims looking uncomfortably squeezed between + arch and wall, and adorned with the escutcheons of the Oldinport + family, which showed me inexhaustible possibilities of meaning in their + blood-red hands, their death's-heads and cross-bones, their leopards' + paws and Maltese crosses. There were inscriptions on the panels of the + singing-gallery, telling of benefactions to the poor of Shepperton, + with an involuted elegance of capitals and final flourishes which my + alphabetic erudition traced with ever-new delight. No benches in those + days; but huge roomy pews, round which devout churchgoers sat during + "lessons," trying to look everywhere else than into each others' eyes. + No low partitions allowing you, with a dreary absence of contrast and + mystery, to see everything at all moments; but tall dark panels, under + whose shadow I sank with a sense of retirement through the Litany, only + to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public + life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the + singing. + +Not only is this description of Shepperton Church accurate in every +particular, but a subject of neighborhood gossip is made the basis of the +story of "Amos Barton." When George Eliot was about a dozen years old a +strange lady appeared at the Cotou parsonage, and became a subject of much +discussion on the part of the parishioners. Much pity was felt for the wife +of the curate, an intimate friend of Marian Evans's mother, whose poverty, +seven children and poor health made her burdens far from easy. She died not +long after, and her grave may be seen at Chilvers Coton. The Knebley Church +of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is located only a short distance from Chilvers +Coton, and is the chancel of the collegiate church founded by Sir Thomas de +Astley in the time of Edward III. Its spire was very high, and served as a +landmark to travellers through the forest of Arden, and was called "The +lanthorn of Arden." The spire fell in the year 1600, but was rebuilt later. +The present church was repaired by the patron of George Eliot's father, Sir +Roger Newdigate. She describes it in the first chapter of "Mr. Gilfil's +Love Story" as-- + + a wonderful little church, with a checkered pavement which had once + rung to the iron tread of military monks, with coats of arms in + clusters on the lofty roof, marble warriors and their wives without + noses occupying a large proportion of the area, and the twelve apostles + with their heads very much on one side, holding didactic ribbons, + painted in fresco on the walls. + +A delightful lane, overshadowed with noble trees, that ran by Griff House, +the birthplace of George Eliot, led to the lodge of Arbury Hall, the home +of Sir Roger Newdigate. Arbury Hall was situated in the midst of a fine old +forest, and it was originally a large quadrangular brick house. Sir Roger +rebuilt it, acting as his own architect, and made it into a modern dwelling +of the commodious gothic Order. This house and its owner appear in "Mr. +Gilfil's Love Story" as Cheverel Manor and Sir Christopher Cheverel. In the +fourth chapter the reader is told that,-- + + For the next ten years Sir Christopher was occupied with the + architectural metamorphosis of his old family mansion, thus + anticipating through the prompting of his individual taste that general + re-action from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style towards a + restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth + century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness + of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his + fox-hunting neighbors.... "An obstinate, crotchety man," said his + neighbors. But I, who have seen Cheverel Manor as he bequeathed it to + his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of + his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic + personal exertion, to something of the fervor of genius. + +In this story an incident in the life of Sir Roger Newdigate may have been +made use of by George Eliot. He was childless, and adopted a cottager's +child he and his wife heard singing at its father's door one day. They +educated the child, who proved to have a fine voice and a passionate love +of music. + +_Janet's Repentance_ also has its scenes from actual life. Dr. Dempster was +thought to be recognized by his neighbors as a well-known person in +Nuneaton. Milby and its High street are no other than Nuneaton and its +market-place. The character of the town and the manner of life there are +all sketched from the Nuneaton of George Eliot's childhood. The school she +attended was very near the vicarage. While she was attending this school, +when about nine years old, a young curate from a neighboring hamlet was +permitted by the Bishop to give Sunday-evening lectures in the Nuneaton +church, with the results described in _Janet's Repentance_. + +In _Adam Bede_ there is also a considerable element of actual history. The +heroine, Dinah Morris, is, in some slight particulars at least, sketched +from Elizabeth Evans, an aunt of George Eliot's. Elizabeth Evans was born +at Newbold, Lincolnshire, in 1776. [Footnote: This subject has been fully +worked out in a book published by Blackwood, "George Eliot in Derbyshire: a +volume of gossip about passages in the novels of George Eliot," by Guy +Roslyn. Reprinted from London Society, with alterations and additions, and +an introduction by George Barnett Smith. Its statements are mainly based on +a small book published in London in 1859, by Talbot & Co., entitled "Seth +Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors." Guy Roslyn is a pseudonym for +Joshua Hatton.] She was a beautiful woman when young, with soft gray eyes +and a fine face, and had a very simple and gentle manner. She was a +Methodist preacher, lived at Wirksworth, Derbyshire, and preached wherever +an opportunity occurred. When it was forbidden that women should preach, +she continued to exhort in the cottages, and to visit the poor and the sick +in their homes. She married Samuel Evans, who was born in Boston, and was a +carpenter. He had a brother William, who was a joiner and builder. Their +father was a village carpenter and undertaker, honest and respectable, but +who took to drink in his later years. He was at an ale-house very late one +night, and the next morning was found dead in a brook near his house. +Samuel became a Methodist and a preacher, but was teased about it by his +brother, who criticised his blunders in prayer and preaching. He was gentle +and very considerate at home, and was greatly attached to his brother, +though they could not agree in matters of religion. While they were +partners in business they prospered, but Samuel did not succeed when by +himself. Samuel and Elizabeth were married at St. Mary's Church, +Nottingham. In company with a Miss Richards, Elizabeth attended, in 1801 or +1802, a Mary Voce who had poisoned her child. They visited her in jail, and +were with her when she was hung in Nottingham. Elizabeth wrote an account +of her own life, especially of her conversion and her early work in the +ministry. Concerning the execution of Mary Voce, she gives this account: +"At seven o'clock [on the morning of the execution] we all knelt down in +prayer, and at ten minutes before eight o'clock the Lord in mercy spoke +peace to her soul. She cried out, 'Oh, how happy I am! the Lord has +pardoned all my sins, and I am going to heaven.' She never lost the +evidence for one moment, and always rejoiced in the hope of glory. Is it +not by grace we are saved through faith? And is not the Saviour exalted at +the Father's right hand to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of +sins? If salvation were by works who would be saved? The vilest and worst +may come unto Him. None need despair. None ought to presume. Miss Richards +and I attended her to the place of execution. Our feelings on this occasion +were very acute. We rode with her in the cart to the awful place. Our +people sang with her all the way, which I think was a mile and a half. We +were enabled to lift up our hearts unto the Lord in her behalf, and she was +enabled to bear a public testimony that God in mercy had pardoned all her +sins. When the cap was drawn over her face, and she was about to be turned +off, she cried, 'Glory! glory! glory! the angels are waiting around me.' +And she died almost without a struggle. At this awful spot I lost a great +deal of the fear of man, which to me had been a great hindrance for a long +time. I felt if God would send me to the uttermost parts of the earth I +would go, and at intervals felt I could embrace a martyr's flame. Oh, this +burning love of God, what will it not endure? I could not think I had an +enemy in the world. I am certain I enjoyed that salvation that if they had +smote me on one cheek, I could have turned to them the other also. I lived + + "'The life of heaven above, + All the life of glorious love.' + +"I seemed myself to live between heaven and earth. I was not in heaven +because of my body, nor upon earth because of my soul. Earth was a scale to +heaven, and all I tasted was God. I could pray without ceasing, and in +everything give thanks. I felt that the secret of the Lord is with them +that fear Him. If I wanted to know anything I had only to ask, and it was +given, generally in a moment. Whether I was in the public street, or at my +work, or in my private room, I had continued intercourse with my God; and +many, I think I may say hundreds of times, He shone upon His Word, and +showed me the meaning thereof, that is, texts of scripture, so as to +furnish me with sufficient matter to speak to poor sinners for a sufficient +length of time." + +The life of Elizabeth Evans was only a hint to the mind of the author of +_Adam Bede_. Dinah was not intended as a portrait, and the resemblances +between the two were probably not the result of a conscious purpose on the +part of George Eliot. Soon after the publication of _Adam Bede_, when +gossip had begun to report that Dinah Morris was an accurate sketch of +Elizabeth Evans, and even that her sermon and prayers had been copied from +the writings of the aunt, George Eliot wrote a letter to her intimate +friend, Miss Sara Hennell, in which she explained to what extent she was +indebted to Elizabeth Evans for the portrait of Dinah Morris. + + +HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1850. + +Dear Sara,--I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to +tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt, +Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life +with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six +or seven years before he married my mother.... [Footnote: What is here +omitted of this letter will be found on page 12.] + +As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any +interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one +sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy +girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution, +and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among +the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass_. In her +account of the prison scenes. I remember no word she uttered--I only +remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. +Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she +was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my +mind for years on years as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my +mind a nisus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ +of _Adam Bede_. + +I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and a night with my +father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our +interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less +simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to +see me--when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some +pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude +state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This +is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear +aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not +possible you should see as I do how her entire individuality differed from +Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's +sermon, prayers and speeches were _copied_--when they were written with hot +tears as they surged up in my own mind! + +As to my indebtedness to facts of _locale_, and personal history of a small +kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what +kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those +counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I +more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as +facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect +allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk +about old times. + +As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that +Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is simply the vague, easily +satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It +is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to +enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a +portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with +_mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as +representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach +to the truth. + +Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am +prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years _Adam Bede_ and all +that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not +be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you. + +Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving + +MARIAN. + +When, in 1876, a book was published to show the identity of Dinah Morris +and Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot wrote to the author to protest against +such a conclusion. She said to him that the one was not intended to +represent the other, and that any identification of the two would be +protested against as not only false in fact and tending to perpetuate +false notions about art, but also as a gross breach of social decorum. Yet +these declarations concerning Elizabeth Evans have been repeated, and to +them has been added the assertion that she actually copied in _Adam Bede_ +the history and sermons of Dinah Morris. [Footnote: "Dinah Morris and +Elizabeth Evans," an article by L. Buckley in The Century for August, +1882.] During visits to her aunt in 1842 we are told they spent several +hours together each day. "They used to go to the house of one of Mrs. +Evans's married daughters, where they had the parlor to themselves and had +long conversations. These secret conversations excited some curiosity in +the family, and one day Mrs. Evans's daughter said, 'Mother, I can't think +what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans +replied, 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to +tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all +down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.' While at +Wirksworth, Miss Evans made a note of everything people said in her +hearing; no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which +seemed never out of her hand. These notes she transcribed every night +before going to rest. After her departure Mrs. Evans said to her daughter, +'Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and +that is the notes of the first sermon I preached on Ellaston Green.' The +sermon preached by Dinah on Hayslope Green has been recognized as one of +Mrs. Evans's." The purpose here seems to be to convey the impression that +George Eliot actually carried away one of Mrs. Evans's sermons, and that +she afterwards copied it into _Adam Bede_. George Eliot's own positive +statement on this subject ought to be sufficient to convince any candid +mind the sermon was not copied. The evidence brought forward so far in +regard to the relations of Dinah Morris to Elizabeth Evans is not +sufficient to prove the one was taken from the other. George Eliot's +declarations, written soon after _Adam Bede_ was published, when all was +perfectly fresh in her mind, and after her relatives had made their +statements about Mrs. Evans, ought to settle the matter forever. Unless +new and far more positive evidence is brought forward, Dinah Morris ought +to be regarded as substantially an original creation. + +That some features of Elizabeth Evans's character were sketched into that +of Dinah Morris seems certain. It is also said that the names of Mrs. +Poyser and Bartle Massey were the names of actual persons, the latter being +the schoolmaster of her father. As showing her power of local coloring, +Miss Mathilde Blind relates this incident: "On its first appearance, _Adam +Bede_ was read aloud to an old man, an intimate associate of Robert Evans +in his Staffordshire days. This man knew nothing concerning either author +or subject beforehand, and his astonishment was boundless on recognizing so +many friends and incidents of his own youth portrayed with unerring +fidelity, he sat up half the night listening to the story in breathless +excitement, now and then slapping his knees as he exclaimed, 'That's +Robert, that's Robert, to the life.'" + +In _Adam Bede_, as well as in the _Clerical Scenes_ and _The Mill on the +Floss_, she describes types of character instead of actual personages; and +yet so much of the realistic is embodied that more than one of her +characters has been identified as being in a considerable degree a sketch +from life. This is true of _The Mill on the Floss_ even more fully than of +her previous books. In Maggie she has portrayed one side of her own +character, and made use of much of her early experience. Lucy is said to be +her sister, and two of her aunts are sketched in the aunts of Maggie--Mrs. +Glegg and Mrs. Pullett. Her brother recognized the minute faithfulness of +this story, as he did that of _Adam Bede_. The town of St. Ogg's is a good +description of the tide-water town of Gainesborough in Lincolnshire. The +Hayslope of _Adam Bede_ has been identified as the village of Ellaston, +four miles from Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. It is near Wirksworth, the home +of Elizabeth Evans. + +The local exactness of George Eliot's descriptions is another evidence of +her realism. "It is not unlikely," suggests Mr. Kegan Paul, "that the time +will come when with one or other of her books in their hand, people will +wander among the scenes of George Eliot's early youth, and trace each +allusion, as they are wont to do at Abbotsford or Newstead, and they will +recognize the photographic minuteness and accuracy with which these scenes, +so long unvisited, had stamped themselves on the mind of the observant +girl." The historical setting of her novels is also faithful in even minute +details. The time of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is at the beginning of the +last quarter of the eighteenth century, and it well describes the country +customs of the earlier years of the present century. _Adam Bede_ describes +the first decade of the present century, while _Silas Marner_ is a little +later. With "Amos Barton," and _The Mill on the Floss_ we are in the second +decade of the century, before hand-looms had gone out or railroads had come +in. She has a fondness for these days of rustic simplicity, quiet habits +and homely disingenuousness, and she more than once expresses a doubt if +much has been gained by the introduction of machinery, suffrage and +culture. She regrets that-- + + Human advancement has no moments when conservative reforming intellect + takes a nap, while imagination does a little toryism by the sly, + revelling in regret that dear old brown, crumbling, picturesque + inefficiency is everywhere giving place to sick-and-span, new-painted, + new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, + elevations and sections; but, alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is + not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional tenderness for old + abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal + clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades + of vulgar errors. [Footnote: Amos Barton, chapter I.] + +In _Adam Bede_, when describing a leisurely walk home from church in the +good old days, she bursts out again into enthusiastic praise of the time +before there was so much advancement and culture. + + Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through + the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those + old leisurely times when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, + was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them + old brown leather covers, and opened with a remarkable precision always + in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, + and the pack-horses and the slow wagons and the pedlers who brought + bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell + you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create + leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for + eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for + amusement; prone to excursion trains, art museums, periodical + literature and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and + cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different + personage; he only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was + free from that "periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He + was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion--of + quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis, happy in his inability to + know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived + chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was + fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots + when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself + under the orchard boughs at noon when the summer pears were falling. He + knew nothing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the + Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the + blessing--liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were + the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly + conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal + of beer or port wine--not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and + lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he + fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the + sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going + to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe + upon him and judge him by our modern standard; he never went to Exeter + Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or + _Sartor Resartus_." [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter LII.] + +Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of +dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues +which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his +rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be +seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a +_chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people. +She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they +call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize, +as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and +rusticity of the life presented. + +George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for +she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which +would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not +to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance +be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is +spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, +dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, +plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the _Transactions of +the English_ _Dialect Society_, she has explained her methods of using +dialect. + + It must be borne in mind that my inclination to be as close as I could + to the rendering of dialect, both in words and spelling, was constantly + checked by the artistic duty of being generally intelligible. But for + that check I should have given a stronger color to the dialogue in + _Adam Sede_, which is modelled on the talk of North Staffordshire and + the neighboring part of Derbyshire. The spelling, being determined by + my own ear alone, was necessarily a matter of anxiety, for it would be + as possible to quarrel about it as about the spelling of Oriental + names. The district imagined as the scene of _Silas Marner_ is in North + Warwickshire; but here, and in all my other presentations of English + life except _Adam Bede_, it has been my intention to give the general + physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as + I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand + that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a + puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to + respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not + care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the + drawing-room and the newspaper. + +It may be said of George Eliot's realism that she did not borrow nearly so +much from actual observation as was done by Charlotte Bronte, in whose +novels, scenes, persons and events are described with great accuracy and +fulness. In large measure Charlotte Bronte borrowed her materials from the +life about her. Large as was her invention, original as her mind was, and +unique in its thought, yet she seems to have been unable to create the +plots of her novels without aid from real events and persons. Persons and +scenes and events were so vividly portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ as to be at once +recognized, subjecting the author to much annoyance and mortification. In +_Shirley_ there is even a larger use of local traditions and manners, the +locality of the story being described with great accuracy. George Eliot did +not use such materials to nearly so great an extent, being far less +dependent on them. Nor had she anything of Scott's need of local +traditions. Accurate as she is, she creates her own story, not depending, +as he did, on the suggestive help of the stories of the past. Few of his +novels are the entire creations of his own mind; but he used every hint and +suggestion he could find as the basis of his work. In this, George Eliot is +no more a realist than either of her great predecessors. Even Goldsmith and +Fielding were no more creative and original than she, for they depended as +much as she on the occurrences of real life for their plots. All genuine +novelists have drawn their materials from the life about them, and they +could not attain success otherwise. All depends, however, on how the +material thus used is made to bear its results. If Charlotte Bronte +borrowed more from actual life of event and scenery, yet she was not more a +realist; rather her power lies in something higher than realism, in that +subtle insight and creative power which gives originality to her work. She +was an idealist keeping close to the actual; and in this fact is to be +found her superiority to George Eliot in certain directions. George Eliot +studied life accurately and intimately, but she did not tie herself to any +individual occurrences or persons. She had so absorbed the spirit of the +life amidst which she lived, as to give a true expression to it under an +almost purely fictitious garb. + +There is less of distinct teaching in the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ than in +George Eliot's later novels. Yet even in these earlier stories there is to +be found many a clear indication of her thought. In "Amos Barton" she has +especially set forth her sympathy with humble life. This fundamental canon +of her art is presented more distinctly in this story, and dwelt upon more +fully, than in any of her subsequent novels. It would be difficult to +discover any special teaching in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story;" and this is +perhaps the only production of George Eliot's pen which has not some +distinct object beyond the telling of the story itself. The religious motif +is strong in _Janet's Repentance_, and not to be mistaken by any attentive +reader who now for the first time takes up the story. The value of religion +as a reforming force is plainly inculcated, as well as that the main and +only value of that force is altruistic. It presents a fine picture of the +Evangelical movement and its work, though mainly on its humanitarian side. +Its deeper spirit of devotion, its loftier religious ideal, its craving +after a more intimate realization of the divine presence, is not portrayed. +The real purport of the story is contained in its closing words, where the +reader is told that the true memorial left behind him by Edgar Tryan is to +be found in a life saved to all noble thing's by his efforts. + + It is Janet Dempster, rescued from self-despair, strengthened with + divine hopes, and now looking back on years of purity and helpful + labor. The man who has left such a memorial behind him must have been + one whose heart beat with true compassion, and whose lips were moved by + fervent faith. + +These _Scenes of Clerical Life_ surpass all George Eliot's later novels in +one respect--their pathos. _Adam Bede_ comes nearer them in this particular +than any of the later works, but even that novel does not equal them in +their power to lay hold of feeling and sympathy and in moving the reader to +tears. They differ greatly in this respect from another short story, +written only a few years later, entitled "Brother Jacob." This story has +more of light banter in it than any other novel of George Eliot's, and less +of tenderness and pathos. It is but another lesson on her great theme of +_retribution_. The author says in the last sentence of the story that "we +see in it an admirable instance of the unexpected forms in which the great +Nemesis hides herself." The central thought of the story is, that even in +the lives of the most ordinary persons, and in the case of even the +smallest departures from the right, there is a power of retribution at work +bringing us an unfailing punishment for the evil we do. + +The literary excellences of the _Scenes from Clerical Life_ are many. They +are simple, charming stories, full of life, and delightful in tone. Their +humor is rare and effective, never coarse, but racy and touching. Their +tenderness of tone lays warm hold upon the reader's sympathies and brings +him closer to the throbbing hearts of his fellow-men. There is a pure +idyllic loveliness and homelikeness about these stories that is exquisite. +They all evidently grew out of the tender memories and associations of +George Eliot's girlhood. + +In _Adam Bede_ the author's purpose is concentrated on character and the +moral unfoldment of the lives she describes, while the thorough dramatic +unity is lacking which such a work demands. It is a delightful picture of +country life, and for idyllic loveliness is scarcely equalled, never +surpassed, in English literature. The charm of the narrative is only +rivalled by the deep human interest the characters have for us. This +exquisite picture of rural life is not merely a piece of fine painting; but +the deepest problems, the largest human interests, ever appear as a +perpetual background of spiritual reality, giving a sublimity to the whole +that truly dignifies it. The thoughtful reader soon finds this inweaving of +a larger purpose adding greatly to the idyllic loveliness of these scenes. +The moral tone is clear and earnest, and the religious element gives a +charm and nobility to this delightful picture of rustic simplicity. + +_Adam Bede_ has probably delighted a larger number of her readers than any +other of George Eliot's books, and even a majority of her critics prefer it +to any other. It at once arrests and fixes the attention of the reader. The +first chapter has an immediate interest in its wonderful picture of Adam, +and its most vivid description of the workshop. The second chapter, with +its account of Dinah Morris and her preaching, leaves no possibility of +doubt about the genius and power of the book. The reader is brought at once +face to face with scenes and persons that act as enchantment on him; and +this complete absorption of interest never flags to the end. The elements +of this fascination, which is in itself so simple, natural and human, have +been pointed out by various critics. They are to be found in the +homeliness, pathos and naturalness of the whole story from beginning to +end. Little as the critics have noted it, however, much of this fascination +comes of the high and pure moral tone of the story, its grasp on the higher +motives and interests of life, and its undertone of yearning after a +religious motive and ideal adequate to all the problems of human destiny. +This religious motive is indeed more than a yearning, for it is a fixed and +self-contained confidence in altruism, expressed in sympathy and feeling +and pathos most tender and passionate. This novel is full of an eager +desire to realize to men their need of each other, and of longing to show +them how much better and happier the world would be if we were more +sympathetic and had more of fellow-feeling. Life is full of suffering, and +this can be lessened only as we help and love each other, only as we can +make our feelings so truly tender as to feel the sorrows of others as our +own, causing us to live for the good of those who suffer. It is said of +Adam Bede that-- + + He had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite + of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to + get enough patience and charity toward our stumbling, falling + companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way + in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his + heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share + not only the outward consequence of their error but their inward + suffering. + +This compassion for human suffering is conspicuous throughout, and it is +regarded as the most effective means of binding men together in common +sympathy and helpfulness. Sorrow is regarded as the true means of man's +elevation, as that purifying agent which is indispensable to his true +development. This teaching is fully depicted in the chapter headed "The +Hidden Dread," and in which Hetty's flight is described. We are told in +that chapter that this looks like a very bright world on the surface, but +that as we look closer within man's nature we find sorrow and pain untold. + + What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the + valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign + countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our + English Loamshire: the rich land tilled with just as much care, the + woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come + on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in + Loamshire--an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has + stood, perhaps, by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad + sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear + brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this + world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image + of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this + joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, + or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, + there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps + a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from + swift-advancing shame; understanding no more of this life of ours than + a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on + the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such + things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the + blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came + close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear + with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow + in it; no wonder he needs a Suffering God. + +The remedy for this sorrow, even in the pages of _Adam Bede_, is not the +atoning love of Christ or the blessedness of a divine forgiveness, but the +altruistic compassion of man for man. There is, however, a, deeper +recognition in this novel of Christian belief than in any other by George +Eliot. The prayer and sermon of Dinah Morris have a truly Christian tone +and thought. This is not the case with the teachings of Savonarola, who is +always much more an altruist than a Christian, and into whose mouth +Christian phrases are put, while it is very evident the Christian spirit in +its wholeness was not put into his heart. Sorrow and suffering are regarded +in _Adam Bede_ as the means of baptism into a larger life of sympathy, as +the means of purification from selfishness and individual aims. Along with +this teaching goes the cognate one, that feeling is the true test of the +religious life. A feeling that draws us close to others in helpfulness is +worth more than knowledge, culture and refinement of taste. + +The doctrine of retribution is presented as distinctly and positively in +_Adam Bede_ as in any subsequent book George Eliot wrote. It is given the +form of distinct statement, and it is developed fully in the working out of +the plot. Parson Irwine speaks the thought of the author in these words: + + "There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment + alone; you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in + you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each + other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease. + I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's + has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others + besides those who commit it." + +The tendency of selfishness and wrong to develop misery is fully unfolded. +The terrible law of moral cause and effect is made apparent throughout the +whole work. The folly of Arthur and the vanity of Hetty work them terrible +consequences of evil and bitterness. Many others are made to suffer with +them. The fatal Nemesis is unmasked in these revelations of human nature. + +If the critics are right in pronouncing _Adam Bede_ artistically defective, +it is not difficult to see that there is still less of unity in _The Mill +on the Floss_. Unconnected and unnecessary scenes and persons abound, while +the Tulliver and Dodson families, and their stupidities, are described at a +tedious length. Yet the picture of child-life given here compensates for +all we might complain of in other directions. Maggie is an immortal child, +wonderfully drawn, out of the very heart of nature herself. Her joy in +life, her doubts and fears, her conflicts with self, are delineated with a +master's hand, and justify--such is their faithfulness to child-life--the +supposition that this is George Eliot's own childhood, so delicate and +penetrating is the insight of this description, Swinburne has justly said +that "no man or woman, outside the order of poets, has ever written of +children with such adorable fidelity of affection as the spiritual mother +of Totty, Eppie and of Lillo." Nor have the poets surpassed her in +truthfulness to child-life and intuitive insight into child-nature. The +child Maggie is unsurpassed, not as an ideal being, but as a living child +that plays in the dirt, tears her frocks, and clips her hair in an hour of +childish anger. + +In this novel we first come distinctly upon another element in the writings +of George Eliot, and this is a yearning after a fuller, larger life. It +does not appear as distinctly developed in _Adam Bede_, where there is more +of poise and repose. Maggie represents the restless spirit of the +nineteenth century, intense dissatisfaction with self, and a profoundly +human passion for something higher and diviner. A passionate restlessness +and a profound spiritual hunger are united in this novel to an eager desire +for a deeper and fuller life, and for a satisfactory answer to the soul's +spiritual thirst. The spiritual repose of Dinah, who has found all the +religious cravings of her nature satisfied in Methodism, is abandoned for +the inward yearning of Maggie, whose passionate search for spiritual truth +ends in disaster. + +No other of George Eliot's books has been so severely criticised as this +one, except _Daniel Deronda_, and mainly because of Maggie. The apparent +fall of the heroine, and the crude tragedy of the ending, have been +regarded as serious defects. The moral tone and purpose have been severely +condemned. In his essays on foul and fair fiction, Ruskin puts _The Mill on +the Floss_ into that class of novels which describe life's blotches, burrs +and pimples, and calls it "the most striking instance extant of this study +of cutaneous disease." He says the personages are picked up from behind +the counter and out of the gutter, and he finds "there is not a single +person in the book of the smallest importance to anybody in the world but +themselves, or whose qualities deserved so much as a line of printer's +type in their description." To the same effect is Swinburne's criticism +of Maggie's relations to Stephen Guest. He calls it "the hideous +transformation by which Maggie is debased." He says that most of George +Eliot's admirers would regard this as "the highest and the purest and the +fullest example of her magnificent and matchless powers. The first two +thirds of the book suffice to compose perhaps the very noblest of tragic as +well as of humorous prose idyls in the language; comprising one of the +sweetest as well as saddest and tenderest, as well as subtlest examples of +dramatic analysis--a study in that kind as soft and true as Rousseau's, as +keen and true as Browning's, as full as either's of the fine and bitter +sweetness of a pungent and fiery fidelity. But who can forget the horror of +inward collapse, the sickness of spiritual re-action, the reluctant, +incredulous rage of disenchantment and disgust, with which he came upon the +thrice-unhappy third part? The two first volumes have all the intensity and +all the perfection of George Sand's best work, tempered by all the simple +purity and interfused with all the stainless pathos of Mrs. Gaskell's; they +carry such affluent weight of thought, and shine with such warm radiance of +humor, as invigorates and illuminates the work of no other famous woman; +they have the fiery clarity of crystal or of lightning; they go near to +prove a higher claim and attest a clearer right on the part of their author +than that of George Sand herself to the crowning crown of praise conferred +on her by the hand of a woman ever greater and more glorious than either in +her sovereign gift of lyric genius, to the salutation given as by an angel +indeed from heaven, of 'large-brained woman and large-hearted man.'" In the +momentary lapse of Maggie, Swinburne finds a fatal defect, which no +subsequent repentance atones for. He says that "here is the patent flaw, +here too plainly is the flagrant blemish, which defaces and degrades the +very crown and flower of George Eliot's wonderful and most noble work; no +rent or splash on the raiment, but a cancer in the very bosom, a gangrene +in the very flesh. It is a radical and mortal plague-spot, corrosive and +incurable." + +Such criticism has little if any value, because there is no point of +sympathy between the critic and his author. That real life contains such +errors as Maggie's cannot be doubted, and George Eliot wished to paint no +ideal scenes or heroines. To portray a passionate, eager, yearning nature, +full of poetry, longing for a diviner spiritual life, surrounded by dull +and unpoetic conditions and persons, was her purpose. That the hunger of +such a person for the expression of her inward cravings for joy, music and +beauty should lead her astray and make a sudden lapse possible, is not to +be doubted. The fault of the critics is in supposing that this lapse from +moral conduct was that of a physical depravity. Maggie's passion grew +wholly out of that inward yearning for a fuller life which made all her +difficulties. It was not physical passion but spiritual craving; and in the +purpose of the novelist she was as pure after as before. + +The cause of what must be regarded as the great defect in _The Mill on the +Floss_ is not that George Eliot chose to paint life in a diseased state, +but that she had not the power to make her characters act what they +themselves were. While the delightful inward portraiture of Maggie is in +process all are charmed with her, her soul is as pure and sweet as a rose +new-blown; but when the time arrives for her to act as well as to meditate +and to dream, she is not made equal to herself. Through all her books this +is true, that George Eliot can describe a soul, but she cannot make her men +and women act quite up to the facts of daily life. In this way Dinah and +Adam are not equal to themselves, and settle down to a prosaic life such as +is not in keeping with that larger action of which they were capable. +George Eliot's characters are greater than their deeds; their inward life +is truer and more rounded than their outward life is pure and noble. + +_The Mill on the Floss_ fully develops George Eliot's conception of the +value of self-renunciation in the life of the individual, and gives a new +emphasis to her ideas about the importance of the spiritual life as an +element in true culture. It has been said that she intended to indicate +the nature of physiological attraction between men and women, and how +large an influence it has; but whether that was an aim of hers or not, +she undoubtedly did attempt to indicate how altogether important is +renunciation to a life of true development, how difficult it is to attain, +and that it is the vital result of all human endeavor. She surrounded a +tender, sensitive, musical and poetic soul, one quick to catch the tone of +a higher spiritual faith, with the common conditions of ordinary social +life, to show how such an "environment" cripples and retards a soul full of +aspiration and capable of the best things. Maggie saw the way to the light, +but the way was hard, beset with difficulties individual and social, and +she could neither overcome herself nor the world. She was taken suddenly +away, and the novel comes to a hasty conclusion, because the author desired +to indicate the causes of spiritual danger to ardent souls, and not to +inculcate a formula for their relief. Maggie had learned how difficult it +is for the individual to make for himself a new way in life, how benumbing +are the conditions of ordinary human existence; and through her death we +are to learn that in such difficulties as hers there is no remedy for the +individual. Only through the mediation of death could Maggie be reconciled +to those she had offended; death alone could heal the social wounds she had +made, and restore her as an accepted and ennobled member of the corporate +existence of humanity. This seems to be the idea underlying the hurried +conclusion of this novel, that the path of renunciation once truly entered +on, brings necessarily such difficulties as only death can overcome; and +death does overcome them when those we have loved and those we have helped, +forget what seem to them our wrong deeds in the loving memories which +follow the dead. Over the grave men forget all that separated them from +others, and the living are reconciled to those who can offend them no more. +All that was good and pure and loving is then made to appear, and memory +glorifies the one who in life was neglected or hated. Through death Maggie +was restored to her brother, and over her grave came perfect reconciliation +with those others from whom she had been alienated. That renunciation may +lead to cruel martyrdoms is what George Eliot means; but she would say it +has its lofty recompense in that restoration which death brings, when the +individual becomes a part of the spiritual influence which surrounds and +guides us all. For those who can accept such a conclusion as this the unity +of the novel may seem complete. + +The poetry of Maggie's nature found itself constantly dragged down to +conditions of vulgar prose by the life about her. That life was prosy and +hard because those ideal aims which come from a recognition of the past and +its traditions were absent from it. Maggie tried to overcome them by +renunciation, but by renunciation which did not rest on any genuine sorrow +and pain. At last these came, and the real meaning of renunciation was made +clear to her. Her bitter sorrow taught her the great lesson which George +Eliot ever strives to inculcate, that what is hard, sorrowful and painful +in the world should move us to more and more of compassion and help for our +fellows who also find life sad and burdensome. At the last Maggie learned +this greatest of all lessons which life can give us. + + She sat quite still far on into the night, with no impulse to, change + her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of + prayer--only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It + came with the memories that no passion could long quench: the long past + came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and + affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by + the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by + heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a + low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against + the window, and the loud moan and roar of the wind: "I have received + the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear + it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me." + + But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob: + "Forgive me, Stephen. It will pass away. You will come back to her." + + She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly + on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of + parting. + + "I will bear it, and bear it till death... But how long it will be + before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have + patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall, and repent again? + Has life other trials as hard for me still?" With that cry of + self-despair Maggie fell on her knees against the table, and buried + her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that + would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught + her by this experience of great need, and she must be learning a secret + of human tenderness and long-suffering that the less erring could + hardly know. "O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and + comfort--" + +Then the flood came, and death. Maggie could repent, she could acquire the +true spirit of renunciation, she could even give herself to a life of +altruism; but death only could restore her to the world. Death, says George +Eliot, is the great reconciler. + +_Silas Marner_ is the only one of these earlier novels in which there is a +continuous unity of purpose and action. Its several parts are thoroughly +wrought into each other, the aim of the narrative is adhered to throughout, +and there are no superfluous incidents. The plot is simple, cause and +effect flow on steadily to the end in the unfoldment of character and +action, and the design of the author is easily grasped. One of her critics, +himself a novelist of a high order, has said that in its unity of purpose +and dramatic expression _Silas Marner_ is more nearly a masterpiece than +any other of George Eliot's novels; "it has more of that simple, rounded, +consummate aspect, that absence of loose ends and gaping issues, which +marks a classical work." [Footnote: Henry James, Jr.] In this novel, too, +her humor flows out with a richer fulness, a racier delight and a more +sparkling variety of expression than in any other book of hers, not +excepting _Adam Bede_. She has here reached the very height of her +qualities as a humorist, for in _Silas Marner_ her humor is constantly +genial and delightful. + +Certain ethical ideas appear very distinctly in this novel. It illustrates +man's need of social ties and connections. Silas forsook his old life, the +life of his childhood and youth, and the world was a blank for him in +consequence. With the sundering of the ties which bound him to the +traditional environment amidst which he was reared, all the purpose and +meaning of his life was gone. The old ties, obligations and associations +gone, his life was without anchorage, its ideal aims perished, and he lived +a selfish and worthless creature. When new social ties were formed by the +young child he found then his life opened up to a larger meaning again, and +he recovered the better things in his nature. He was then led back again +into his relations to society, he became once more a man, a fresh life was +opened to him. This brought a new confidence in religion, a new trust in +the moral motives of life. In this way George Eliot presents the social +basis of the higher life in man, and her theory that it cannot be broken +off from its traditional surroundings without grave injury to the finer +elements of our nature. The law of retribution manifests itself clearly in +these pages. Godfrey deserts wife and child. In after years he would fain +restore the child to its rightful place, but he finds it has grown up under +conditions which alienate it from any sympathy with him. He pronounces his +own condemnation: + + "There's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the + years that have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting + off, the trees have been growing--it's too late now. Marner was in the + right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his + door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless once, + Nancy--I shall pass for childless now against my wish." + +A pure moral tone, a keen ethical instinct, mark all these earlier novels +by George Eliot. Quite as noticeable is their spiritual atmosphere and +their high place assigned to the religious life. Their teaching in these +directions has a conservative tendency, and it is based on the most +vigorous convictions. + + + + +XIV. + + +ROMOLA. + +Whatever differences there may exist between George Eliot's earlier and +later books are due rather to the materials used than to any change in +purpose, methods or beliefs. In writing of the distinction drawn between +her earlier and later books, she said,-- + + Though I trust there is some growth in my appreciation of others and in + my self-distrust, there has been no change in the point of view from + which I regard our life since I wrote my first fiction, the _Scenes of + Clerical Life_. Any apparent change of spirit must be due to something + of which I am unconscious. The principles which are at the root of my + effort to paint Dinah Morris are equally at the root of my effort to + paint Mordecai. + +Her later books grow more out of conscious effort and deliberate study than +the earlier, are more carefully wrought out, and contain less of +spontaneity. The spiritual and ethical purpose, however, is not more +distinct and conscious in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _The Mill on the Floss_, +in _Romola_ than in _Adam Bede_. The ethical purpose may be more apparent +in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _Adam Bede_, more on the surface, and clearer +to the view of the general reader, but this is because it takes an unusual +form, rather than because it is really any more distinctly present. In _The +Mill on the Floss_ her teaching first became known to her readers, and in +_Romola_ this purpose to use the novel as the vehicle for propagating ideas +became fully apparent. Her aim having once come clearly to view, it was not +difficult to see how large an element it was in her earlier books, where it +had not been seen before. If she had written nothing but _Adam Bede_ her +teachings might not have come to light, though some of those she has most +often insisted on are to be found clearly stated in that book. Her +doctrinal aim, however, became more clear and pronounced as she went on in +her career as a novelist, and became more thoroughly conscious of her own +powers and of the purposes which she wished to work out in her novels. She +gained courage to express her ideas, and their importance was more deeply +impressed upon her mind and heart. + +In _Romola_ it was first made clear that George Eliot is to be judged as a +moralist as well as a literary artist. That she is a great literary artist, +surpassed only by a select few, is to be borne constantly in mind; but as a +moralist she surpasses most others in the amount of her teaching, and +teaching which is thoroughly incorporated into the literary fibre of her +work. She much resembles Wordsworth in this, that while she is an original +creator of artistic forms and ideas, her books will be sought for their +views of life as well for their qualities as novels. Wordsworth is a poet +of vast original powers, but the poetic fire in him often burns low and his +verses become mere prose. Yet his ideas about nature, life and morals +command for him a place higher than that occupied by any other poet of his +time, and a school of thinkers and critics has been developed through his +influence. In much the same way, George Eliot is likely to attract +attention because of her teachings; and it is probable her books will be +resorted to and interpreted largely with reference to her moral and +philosophical ideas. Should such a movement as this ever spring up, +_Romola_ will necessarily become one of the most important of all her +books. Some of her principal ideas appear therein more distinctly, in +clearer outline, and with a greater fulness of expression, than they obtain +in any other of her books. The foreign setting of her story enabled her to +give a larger utterance to her thoughts, while there was less of personal +and pathetic interest to impede their expression. This is also true of _The +Spanish Gypsy_, that it has more of teaching and less of merely literary +attraction than any other of her longer poems. The purpose to do justice to +the homely life of rustic England was no longer present, and she was free +to give her intellectual powers a deliberate expression in the form of a +thoughtful interpretation of a great historic period. Mr. Henry James, Jr., +has recognized the importance of this effort, and says of _Romola_, that +he regards it, "on the whole, as decidedly the most important of her +works,--not the most entertaining nor the most readable, but the one in +which the largest things are attempted and grasped. The figure of +Savonarola, subordinate though it is, is a figure on a larger scale than +any which George Eliot has elsewhere undertaken; and in the career of Tito +Melema there is a fuller representation of the development of a character. +Considerable as are our author's qualities as an artist, and largely as +they are displayed in _Romola_, the book is less a work of art than a work +of morals. Like all of George Eliot's works, its dramatic construction is +feeble; the story drags and halts,--the setting is too large for the +picture." + +The book lacks in spontaneity, is too deliberate, contemplative and +ethical. While its artistic elements are great, and even powerful, it is +too consciously moral in its purpose to satisfy the literary requirements +of a work of art. It wants the sensuous elements of life and the _abandon_ +of poetic genius. There is little which is sensational about the book; too +little, perhaps, of that vivid imaginative interest which impels the reader +headlong through the pages of a novel to the end. It is, however, a high +merit in George Eliot, that she does not resort to factitious elements of +interest in her books, but works honestly, conscientiously, and with a pure +purpose. If the reader is not drawn on by the sensational, he is amply +repaid by the more deliberate and natural interest which gives a meaning to +every chapter. + +George Eliot selected for her book one of the most striking and picturesque +periods of modern history, in the great centre of culture and art in the +fifteenth century. Florence was the intellectual capital of the world in +the renaissance period, and the truest representative of its spirit. It was +the time also of that remarkable monk-prophet, Savonarola, whose voice was +raised so powerfully against the corruptions of that most corrupt age. This +unique character, doubtless, had much to do in causing George Eliot to take +this city and time for her story. No one of the reformers of the fifteenth +and sixteenth centuries was more in earnest, had a loftier purpose, worked +in a nobler spirit, than this Dominican monk of Florence. His opposition to +the Medici, his conflict with Rome, his visions and prophecies, his +leadership of the politics of Florence, his powerful preaching, his +untimely death, all give a romantic and a tragic interest to his life, and +conspire to make him one of the most interesting figures in modern history. +His moral purpose was conspicuous even when tainted by personal ambition. +His political influence was supreme while it lasted, and was wielded in the +interests of Florence, for its liberties and its moral regeneration. As a +religious teacher he was profoundly in earnest; a prophet in his own belief +as well as in the depth of his religious insight, he accepted with the most +thorough intensity of conviction the spiritual truths he inculcated. In his +own belief he was constantly in communion with the spiritual world, and was +guided and taught by it. He swayed the people of Florence as the wind sways +the branches of a tree, and they bowed utterly to his will for the moment, +when he put forth all his moral and intellectual powers in the pulpit. A +puritan in morals, he had a most vivid realization of the terrible evils of +his time; and he could make his congregation look at the world with his own +faith and moral purpose. His influence on literature and art was also +great, and it was felt for many years after his death. + +Savonarola spoke in the pulpit with the authority of the profoundest +personal conviction, and his hearers were impressed by his preaching with +the feeling that they listened to one who knew whereof he spoke. Whenever +he preached there was a crowd to hear; people came three or four hours +before the time, and they came in throngs from the surrounding country. He +held separate services for men, for women, for children, in order that all +might hear. And this eagerness to listen to him was not for a few weeks, +but it continued for years. The greatest enthusiasm was awakened by his +influence, the people were melted into tears, every person listened with +bated breath to his words. Thousands were converted, and among them many of +the most learned of the poets, artists and statesmen of the time. The most +remarkable changes in the modes of life took place, money was restored, +and contributed freely to buy bread when famine threatened, and the +confessional was daily crowded with penitents. One of his biographers says +that "the most remarkable change that was apparent in the manners of the +people, in their recreations and amusements, was the abandonment of +demoralizing practices, of debauchery of all kinds, of profane songs of a +licentious character which the lower grades of the people especially were +greatly addicted to; and the growth of a new taste and passion for +spiritual hymns and sacred poetry that had succeeded that depraved taste." + +On one side of his nature, Savonarola seems to have been of a remarkably +pure and noble character, with high aims, noble ambitions and a clear moral +insight. Looked at on its better side, his religious reformation was +wholesome and salutary, and dictated by a genuine desire to elevate worship +and to purify faith. There was a very different side to his life and work, +however, and in some features of his character he seems to have been a +fanatic and enthusiast of the most dangerous sort. He was credulous, +superstitious and visionary. He had no clear, strong and well-reasoned +purpose to which he could hold consistently to the end. An earnest +Catholic, he only sought to reform the Church, not to supersede it; but his +moral aims were not high enough to carry him to the logical results of his +position. Involved by his visionary faith in claims of miraculous power and +supernatural communication, he had not the intellectual honesty to carry +those claims to their legitimate conclusion. Weakness, hesitation and +inconsistency marked his character in his later years, and have made him a +puzzle to modern students. These inconsistencies of character have led to +widely divergent conclusions about the man, his sincerity of purpose and +the outcome of his work. + +Another influence of the time, more powerful because more permanent, was +the renaissance movement, which was at this period working its greatest +changes and inspiring the most fervid enthusiasm. A new world had been +disclosed to the people of the fifteenth century in the revival of +knowledge concerning classic literature and art, and there came to be an +absorbing, passionate interest in whatever pertained to the ancients. +Manuscripts were eagerly sought after, translations were diligently made, +literature was modelled after the classic writers, to quote and to imitate +the ancients became the habit of the day. A change the most striking was +produced in the modes of thought and of life. The love of nature was +revived, and with it a graceful abandonment to the dominion of the senses. +Paganism seemed likely to return upon the world again and to reconquer from +Christianity all that it had once lost. The pagan spirit revived, its +tastes and modes of life came back again. Plato was restored to his old +place, and in the minds of the cultured seemed worthier of homage than +Christ. With such as Lorenzo Medici and his literary friends, Platonism was +regarded as a religion. + +The recovery of classic literature came to the men of this period as a +revelation. It opened a new world to them, it operated upon them like a +galvanic shock, it kindled the most fervid enthusiasms. It also had the +effect to restore the natural side of life, to liberate men from a false +spiritualism and an excessive idealism. From despising the human faculties, +men came back to an acceptance of their dictation, and even to an animal +delight in the senses and passions. The natural man was deified; but not in +the manner of the Greeks, in simplicity and with a pure love of beauty. +An artificial love of nature and the natural in man was the result of +the renaissance; a hothouse culture and a corrupting moral development +followed. Passion was given loose rein, the senses took every form of +indulgence. Yet the Church was even worse, while many of the classic +scholars were stoic in their moral purity and earnestness. This movement +developed individualism in thought, a selfish moral aim, and intellectual +arrogance. The men who came under its influence cared more for culture +than for humanity, they were driven away from the common interests of +their fellows by their new intellectual sympathies. It was the desire of +Savonarola to restore the old Christian spirit of brotherhood and +helpfulness. In this his movement was wide apart from that of the +renaissance, which gave such tyrants as the Medici a justification for +their deliberate attacks on the liberties of the people. He loved man, +they loved personal development. + +George Eliot shows these two influences in antagonism with each other; on +the one hand a reforming Christianity, on the other the renaissance +movement. She admirably contrasts them in their spirit and influence, +though she by no means indicates all of the tendencies of either. Her +purpose is not that of the historical novelist, who wishes simply to give a +correct and living picture of the time wherein he lays his plot. She vises +this portion of history because it furnishes an excellent opportunity to +unfold her ideas about life, rather than because it gives an abundance of +picturesque material to the novelist. Her primary object is not the +interpretation of Florentine life in the time of Savonarola; and this +subordination of the historical material must be kept fully in mind by the +reader or he will be misled in his judgment on the book. It has well been +said that the historical characters in _Romola_ are not so well sketched as +the original creations. Savonarola is not so lifelike as Tito. She seems to +have been cramped by the details of history; and she has not thoroughly +conquered and marshalled subordinate to her thought the mass of local +incidents she introduces. Her account of Savonarola is inadequate, because +it does not enter fully enough into his history, and because it omits much +which is necessary to a full understanding of the man and his influence. + +So far as the book has an historical purpose it is that of describing the +general life of the time rather than that of portraying Savonarola. Because +of this purpose much is introduced into the story which is irrelevant to +the plot itself. Not only did the author desire to contrast a man like +Savonarola, led by the spirit of self-denial and renunciation, with one +like Tito Melema led by the spirit of self-love and personal gratification; +but she wished to contrast worldliness and spirituality, or individualism +and altruism, as social forces. Lorenzo and the renaissance give one form +of life, Savonarola and Christianity give another; and these two appear +as affecting every class in society and every phase of the social order. +To bring out this contrast requires a broad stage and many scenes. Much +which seems quite irrelevant to the plot has its place in this larger +purpose, and serves to bring out the final unity of impression which the +author sought to produce. Nor is the purpose of the book merely that of +contrasting two great phases of thought and of social influence, but rather +to show them as permanent elements in human, nature and the nature of the +effect which each produces. + +_Romola_ demands for its thorough appreciation that the reader shall have a +considerable acquaintance with Italian history in the fifteenth century and +with the social and literary changes of that period. Whether it is read +with a keen interest and relish will much depend on this previous +information. To the mere novel-reader it may seem dull and too much +encumbered by uninteresting learning. To one who is somewhat familiar with +the renaissance period, and who can appreciate the ethical intention of the +book, it will be found to be a work of genius and profound insight. It will +help such a reader to a clearer comprehension of this period than he could +well obtain in any other manner, and the ethical purpose will add a new and +living interest to the story of Florentine life. He will be greatly helped +to comprehend the moral and intellectual life of the time, with its-- + + strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic + dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude + passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination toward a + self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human + conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was filling the air + with strange prophecies and presentiments. [Footnote: _Proem to + Romola_.] + +The artistic features of this period were many and striking, but George +Eliot has not made so large a use of them as could have been wished; at +least they appear in her book too much under the influence of historic +information. She could not be content merely to absorb and reflect an +historic period; but her active intellect, full of ideas concerning the +causes of human changes, must give an explanation of what was before her. +This philosophic tendency mars the artistic effect and blurs the picture +which would otherwise have been given. Yet the critic must not be too sure +of this, and he must be content simply to note that George Eliot was too +energetic a thinker to be willing to portray the picturesque features of +Florentine life in the fifteenth century and to do no more. She had at +least three objects,--to give a picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth +century, to show the influence of the renaissance in conflict with +Christianity, and to inculcate certain ethical ideas about renunciation, +tradition and moral retribution. While the book thus gains in breadth and +in a certain massive impression which it produces, yet it loses in that +concentration of effect which a more limited purpose would have secured. It +gives the impression of having been written by a vigorous thinker rather +than by a genius of the first order. The critic has no right to complain of +this, however, or even to assume that genius might do other work than it +has done. Had George Eliot been less thoughtful than she was, she would not +have been George Eliot. _Romola_ grew out of a genius so large and original +that it can well endure the criticisms caused by any defects it may have. + +The ideas of the time appear subtly expressed in the influence they produce +on the persons who entertain them. Savonarola's mysticism and high moral +purpose made him at once a prophet and a reformer, but he was not able to +separate the spiritual realities of life from devotion to his party. His +courage, purity and holiness cannot but be admired, while his fanaticism is +to be deplored. George Eliot has well conceived and expressed the effect +produced in all but the very greatest minds by the assumption of +supernatural powers. Savonarola was strong and great as a preacher and a +reformer, weak only on the side of his visions and his faith that his party +represented the kingdom of God. Not that his visions were weak, nor are +they assumed to be untrue; but his mysticism clouded his intellect, and his +fanaticism led him to overlook the practical truths to be inculcated by a +genuine reformer. He is a true type of the mystical churchman of the time, +who saw the corruption about him and desired a better order of things, +but who hoped to secure it by reviving the past in all its imagined +supernatural features. He would have ruled the world by visions to be +received by monks, and he would have made Jesus Christ the head of the +republic. Yet his visions entangled his clear intellect and perverted his +moral purpose. + +On the other hand, Tito Melema was intended to represent the renaissance +movement on its Greek, or its aesthetic and social side. He was not a bad +man at heart, but he had no moral purpose, no ethical convictions. He had +the Greek love of ease, enjoyment and unconcern for the morrow; a spirit +which the renaissance revived in many of its literary devotees. He lived +for the day, for self, in the delight of music, art, social intercourse and +sensual enjoyment. He had the renaissance quickness of assuming all parts, +its love of wide and pretentious learning, its superficial scholarship, +its social and political deftness and flexibility. The dry, minute, +unprofitable spirit of criticism is well indicated by Bardo Bardi, which +had no originality and no fresh vitality, but which loved to comment on the +classic writers at tedious length, and to collate passages for purposes the +most foreign from any practical aim life could possibly afford. In the +conception of Tito, George Eliot has quite surpassed herself, and in all +literature there is no delineation of a character surpassing this. One of +her critics says there is no character in her novels "more subtly devised +or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning +graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, +his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his +cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as +of a faithless summer sea, make up a being that at once fascinates and +repels, that invites love, but turns our love into loathing almost before +we have given it." [Footnote: Westminster Review, July, 1881.] Mr. R.H. +Hutton has expressed his conviction that this is one of the most skilfully +painted of all the characters in fictitious literature. He says, "A +character essentially treacherous only because it is full of soft placid +selfishness is one of the most difficult to paint;" but in sketching Tito's +career, "the same wonderful power is maintained throughout, of stamping on +our imagination with the full force of a master hand a character which +seems naturally too fluent for the artist's purpose. There is not a more +masterly piece of painting in English romance than this figure of Tito." + +Romola represents the divided interests of one who was affected by both the +renaissance and Christianity. Brought up to know only what the renaissance +had to teach, to delight in culture and to ignore religion, her contact +with Savonarola opened a new world to her mind. Her experience in life led +her to seek some deeper moral anchorage than was afforded by the culture of +her father and husband, yet she could not follow Savonarola into the region +of mystical visions and other-worldliness. Her life having broken loose +from the ties of love through the faithlessness of Tito, and from the ties +of tradition through the failure of culture to satisfy her heart, she +drifts out into the world, to find, under the leadership of the great +preacher, that life's highest duty is renunciation. His influence over the +noblest souls of his time is indicated in Romola's trust in him, and in her +acceptance of him as a master and a guide. When this guide failed, as all +human guides must fail, she found peace in the service of others. In living +for humanity, her sorrows were turned into strength, and her renunciation +became a religion. It is Romola who represents George Eliot in this book, +gives voice to her ideas, and who preaches the new gospel she would have +the world learn. If Romola has her limitations as a conception of womanly +character, is too "passionless and didactic," yet she does admirably +represent the influence on a thoughtful woman of a contention between +culture and religion, and how such a person may gradually attain to a +self-poised life in loving service toward others. She is not an ideal +woman. She was given a character which prevents her being quite attractive, +because she was made to represent ideas and social tendencies. + +The altruistic doctrine of renunciation, and of living for others, is more +fully developed in _Romola_ than in any other of George Eliot's books +except _The Mill on the Floss_. That the truest satisfaction life can +afford is to be found in work done for human good is conspicuously shown in +the experiences of Romola. She finds no peace as a follower of Savonarola, +she finds no abiding content in philosophy; but toil for others among the +sick, suffering and dying, brings heavenly joy and a great calm. She had no +special love for this work, her early education had even made it repulsive; +but Savonarola had shown her that in this direction lay life's true aim. He +communicated to her his own enthusiasm for humanity, and she retained this +faith even after her loss of confidence in him had loosened her hold on his +religious teachings. She went beyond her teacher and inspirer, learned his +lessons better than he did himself, and came to see that a true religion is +not of a sect or party, but humanitarian. When she warned him against his +fanatical devotion to his party, he attempted to justify his narrow policy +by identifying true Christianity with his own work, Romola replied,-- + + "Do you then know so well what will further the coming of God's + kingdom, father, that you will dare to despise the plea of mercy--of + justice--of faithfulness to your own teaching? Take care, father, lest + your enemies have some reason when they say that, in your visions of + what will further God's kingdom, you see only what will strengthen your + own party." + + "And that is true!" said Savonarola, with flashing eyes. Romola's voice + had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies. "The cause + of my party _is_ the cause of God's kingdom." + + "I do not believe it!" said Romola, her whole frame shaken with + passionate repugnance. "God's kingdom is something wider--else let + me stand outside it with the beings that I love." + + The two faces were lit up, each with an opposite emotion, each with an + opposite certitude. Further words were impossible. Romola hastily + covered her head and went out in silence. [Footnote: Chapter LIX.] + +Savonarola forgot the better spirit of his own teachings, he sought to +become a political leader. It was his ruin, for his purpose was vitiated, +and his influence waned. George Eliot well says that "no man ever struggled +to retain power over a mixed multitude without suffering vitiation; his +standard must be their lower needs, and not his own best insight." This was +the sad fate of the great Florentine preacher and reformer. He lost his +faith, and he spoke without the moment's conviction. When this result came +about, all hope for Savonarola as a reformer was gone. He was then only the +leader of a party. George Eliot has well painted the effect upon Romola of +this fall, and given deep insight into the results of losing our trust in +those great souls who have been our guides. All the ties of life had +snapped for Romola; her marriage had proved a failure, her friend had +become unworthy of her confidence; and she fled. + +Romola went away, found herself in the midst of a plague-stricken people, +gave her life to an assuagement of suffering and sorrow. Then she could +come back to her home purified, calm and noble. In the "Epilogue," we find +her speaking the word which gives meaning to the whole book. Tessa's child, +whom she had rescued, says to her that he would like to lead a life which +would give him a good deal of pleasure. Romola says to him,-- + + "That is not easy, my Lille. It is only a poor sort of happiness that + could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We + can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a + great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of + the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings + so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being + what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it + is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that + no man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless + he gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards, and gets strength + to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that + belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than + falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow + sacred; _he_ had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in + struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the + highest deeds they are capable of, And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act + nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, + you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will + happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose + something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own + pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just + the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the + one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man + say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.' I + will tell you something, Lillo." + + Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her hands, + and his young eyes were meeting hers. + + "There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great + deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was + young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle + and kind. I believe when I first knew him, he never thought of anything + cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that + was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, + he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds--such as make men + infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed + every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe + and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him." + +Aside from this altruistic teaching which is developed in connection with +the life of Romola, the doctrine of retribution is vigorously unfolded +in the history of Tito Melema. The effects of selfishness and personal +self-seeking have nowhere been so wonderfully studied by George Eliot as in +this character. His career is minutely traced from step to step of his +downfall, and with a remarkable faithfulness and courage. The effects of +vice and sin are nowhere so finely presented and with such profound ethical +insight. A careful study of this character alone will give a clear +comprehension of George Eliot's conception of retribution, how the natural +laws of life drag us down when we are untrue to ourselves and others. It is +a great moral lesson presented in this character, a sermon of the most +powerful kind. Nemesis follows Tito ever onward from the first false step, +lowers the tone of his mind, corrupts his moral nature, drags him into an +ever-widening circle of vice and crime, makes him a traitor, and causes him +to be false to his wife. Step by step, as he gives way to evil, we see the +degradation of his heart and mind, how the unfailing Nemesis is wreaking +its vengeance upon him. He is surely punished, and his death is the fit end +of his career. We are shown how his evil deeds affect others, how the great +law of retribution involves the innocent in his downfall. Here George Eliot +has unfolded for us how true it is that our lives are linked on every side +with the lives of our fellows, and how the deeds of any one must affect for +good or evil the lives of many others. + +Almost every leading thought of George Eliot's philosophy and ethics is +unfolded in greater or less degree in this novel. It is full of brave, +wholesome teaching, and of clear insight into the consequences of conduct. + +_Romola_ is the most thoughtful, the most ambitious, the most philosophical +of George Eliot's works; and it is also the most lacking in spontaneity, +and more than any other shows the evidences of the artist's labors. Yet +by many persons it will be accepted as the greatest of her works, and +not without the best of reasons. It contains some of her most original +characters, gives a remarkable emphasis to great moral laws, and interprets +the spiritual influence of the conflict which is ever waging between +tradition and advancing culture as no other has done. It is a +thought-provoking book, a book of the highest moral aims. + + + + +XV. + + +FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH. + +The scenes of George Eliot's later novels are laid in England, but for the +most part among a town rather than a rural population. Instead of Hayslope +and Raveloe, Mrs. Poyser and Silas Marner, we have Middlemarch and Treby +Magna, Dorothea Brooke and Felix Holt. If Felix Holt is quite as much a +working-man as Adam Bede, occupying a social position higher in no respect +whatever, yet he is a workingman of a far different type. If Adam is the +nobler character, the truer type of man, Felix represents a larger social +purpose and has higher moral aims. In _Adam Bede_, we find rustic +simplicity and contentment, but in _Felix Holt_ we touch social aspirations +and political ambitions. The horizon has widened, the plane of social life +has lifted, there are new motives and larger ideals. + +Very many of her readers and critics regard _Middlemarch_ as George Eliot's +greatest novel. This is said to have been her own opinion. With great +unanimity her readers pronounce _Felix Holt_ her weakest and least +interesting work. So far as the dramatic and artistic execution are +concerned, these judgments are not entirely correct. The machinery of +_Middlemarch_ is clumsy, and the plot desultory in aim and method. On the +other hand, _Felix Holt_ is strongly thought out and skilfully planned. It +has much of passion and enthusiasm in it, and not a little of pure and +noble sentiment, while _Middlemarch_ is never impassioned, but flows on +calmly. The author evidently put herself into _Felix Holt_ with the purpose +of teaching her own views about moral and social life. She lived in the +characters, felt and hoped with them, and wrote out of a deep, spontaneous +purpose. The sensational element has been more fully used, and the unity of +the plot more thoroughly developed, than in any other of her works, while +there is a living, breathing purpose in the story which is absent from her +later works. _Felix Holt_ is one of the two or three novels by George Eliot +which have an affirmative and thoroughly constructive purpose. It is this +purpose which makes the chief interest of the work. It is a story of social +reform, and is to be read as an embodiment of the author's political ideas. +From this point of view it is a story full of interest, and it is the one +of George Eliot's novels which will most strongly impress those who are +fully in sympathy with her ideas of progress and social regeneration. The +purpose of _Middlemarch_ is critical, to show how our modern social life +cramps the individual, limits his energies, and destroys his power of +helpful service to the world. This critical aim runs through the whole work +and colors every feature of it. The impression made by the whole work is +saddening; and the reader, while admiring the artistic power and the +literary finish of the book, is depressed by the moral issue. In strength +of imagination, intellectual insight, keen power of analysis, this novel +surpasses anything else George Eliot has written. + +_Felix Holt_ is a novel with an ethical purpose. It aims to show how social +and political reform can be brought about. Felix is George Eliot's ideal +working-man, a man who remains true to his own class, seeks his own moral +elevation, does not have much faith in the ballot, and who is zealous for +the education of his fellows. He is a radical who believes in heredity, who +is aware of our debt to the past, and who would use the laws of social +inheritance for the elevation of mankind. The account Felix gives of his +conversion contains George Eliot's conception of what is to be done by all +workingmen who rightly understand what social reform is and how it can be +most truly brought about. It is to be secured by each workingman living not +for self and pleasure, but to do what good he can in the world. + + "I'm not speaking lightly," said Felix. "If I had not seen that I was + making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could + have got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have + looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I + laughed out loud at last to think of a poor devil like me, in a Scotch + garret, with my stockings out at heel and a shilling or two to be + dissipated upon, with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and + old women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs--wanting to + turn my life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could + be turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place + for a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't + be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter + the world--that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in + it, And if I don't lie and filch, somebody else will. Well, then, + somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion. + Mr. Lyon, if you want to know it." + +When Felix gives Esther an account of his plans, and describes to her his +purpose to do what he can to elevate his class, we have George Eliot's own +views on the subject of social reform. Felix says,-- + + "I want to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, + who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither + flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage--an order I belong + to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I + want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, + in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions of + his nature, than if he belonged to the grimacing set who have + visiting-cards, and are proud to be thought richer than their + neighbors." + +That the leading aim of _Felix Holt_ is to show the nature of true social +reform may be seen in the address made by Felix at the election, and even +more distinctly in the address put into his mouth in _Blackwood's Magazine_ +for 1868. In the election speech Felix gives it as his belief that if +workingmen "go the right way to work they may get power sooner without +votes" than with them, by the use of public opinion, "the greatest power +under heaven." The novel points out the social complications of life, the +influence of hereditary privileges and abuses, and how every attempt at +reform is complicated by many interests, and is likely to fall into the +hands of demagogues who use the workingmen for their own purposes. The +address of Felix in _Blackwood's_ is really a commentary on the novel, or +rather a fine and suggestive summary of the moral, social and political +idea; it was meant to inculcate. + +In _Felix Holt_, George Eliot would teach the world that true social reform +is not to be secured by act of Parliament, or by the possession of the +ballot on the part of all workingmen. It is but another enforcement of the +theory that it is not rights men are to seek after, but duties; that social +and political reform is not to be secured by insistence on rights, but by +the true and manly acceptance of altruism. Felix Holt is a social reformer +who is not a demagogue, who does not seek office or personal advancement, +but who wishes to show by his own conduct how a larger life is to be won. +He would introduce universal education; he would teach the great principles +of right living, physically and morally; he would inculcate the spirit of +helpfulness and mutual service. As a brave, earnest, self-sacrificing, +pure-minded lover of humanity, he is an inspiring character. George Eliot +evidently wished to indicate in his creation what can be done by workingmen +towards the uplifting of their own class. A better social order, she would +have us believe, cannot be secured from external sources; but it must be +had by an internal impulse moving those whose lives are degraded to seek +for higher things because of their own intrinsic good. The demagogue +seeks the elevation of workingmen because he can use them for his own +advancement; but Felix desires their elevation for the good of the whole +social structure. To this end he would inspire in his fellows a greater +moral ambition and zeal for the common good. He is a Mazzini, Castelar or +John Bright in his own social order; one who loves his own class, wishes to +remain in it, and who desires above all things that it shall do its part in +the work of national elevation. His aim is not to oppose the other classes +in society, but to make his own necessary to the prosperity of his country. +Felix is not an ideal character, for he is rough, uncultured and +headstrong; but he is an inspiring personality, with gifts of intellectual +fascination and moral courage. George Eliot has created no other character +like him, for Deronda and Zarca, whose aims somewhat resemble his, are very +different. He is no hero, he is not altogether an attractive person. He +has, however, the power, which some of the noblest of George Eliot's +characters possess, of attracting and uplifting other persons. He made +Esther realize the wide gulf between self-pleasing and duty, he inspired +her with moral courage and awakened her mind to the higher aims and +satisfactions life has to give us. He was undoubtedly meant for a moral +hero of the working class, a prophet to the laborers. With all his +limitations he is one of the noblest and most helpful characters in George +Eliot's books. + +Other distinctive ideas of George Eliot's appear throughout this book. Her +theories of heredity, altruism and environment affect the whole development +of the story. Perhaps no more striking illustration of the law of +retribution is to be found in her books than in the case of Mrs. Transome. +This woman's sin corrupted her own life, and helped to darken the lives of +others. + +The aim had in view in _Middlemarch_ is to illustrate the impotence of +modern life so far as it relates in moral heroism and spiritual attainment. +High and noble action is hindered and baulked by the social conditions in +the midst of which we live; and those who would live grandly and purely, +and in a supreme unselfishness devote themselves to the world, find that +their efforts are in vain. Dorothea has longings after a life of love +and service; she would live for high purposes and give herself for others' +good. Her hopes end in disaster almost; and she is cramped and baulked +on every side. Lydgate would devote himself to science, to patient +investigations for the sake of alleviating human misery and disease. His +social environment cripples him, and his life comes to nothing compared +with what he had aimed at, and what he was capable of attaining. Dorothea +is presented as capable of becoming a saint, being of an ardent, heroic +nature, a woman who yearned after some lofty conception of the world that +was to be made, not merely poetry, but an actual fact about her; who was +"enamoured of intensity and greatness," and "likely to seek martyrdom." The +difficulties which most beset such a nature are presented in the very first +chapter, where these saintly tendencies are considered as probable +obstacles to her making a good marriage. + + A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a + brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly, as if + she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles--who had strange + whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old + theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with + a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere + with political economy, and the keeping of saddle-horses; a man would + naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship. + +The social life of Tipton really had no room for such a woman, could not +employ her rare gifts, knew not what to make of her yearnings and her +charity. And Tipton is the world and modern life, which spurns the heroic, +has no place for the poetry of existence, can make nothing of yearnings and +longings for high heroism. Because the social order into which she was born +could not use her gifts, because the vision of life in her soul was other +and higher than that which society had marked out for such as she, her life +was wasted in an unhappy marriage. In an earlier age she would have become +a St. Theresa, for society then had a place for such souls. Now she bows in +reverence to a man of learning, dreams great things of tender service to +him; but this proves not to be the place in which she belongs. In the last +paragraphs of the book the author gives her own account of Dorothea's +failure to reach the good she sought. + + Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a + mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in + Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine + girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and + in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry + his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and + not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually + observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would + not have married either the one or the other. + + Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally + beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse + struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on + her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch that + such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which she was + born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly man to a + girl less than half his own age--on modes of education which make a + woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance--on rules of + conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly asserted + beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to + breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life, + where great feelings take the aspect of error, and great faith the + aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so + strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new + Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual + life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in + daring all for the sake of a brother's burial; the medium in which + their ardent deeds took place is forever gone. But we insignificant + people with our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many + Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that + of the Dorothea whose story we know. + + Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were + not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander + broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on + the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was + incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly + dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you + and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived + faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. + +The influence of social environment is also presented in _Felix Holt_ as a +chief determining agent in the lives of individuals. However high the aims +and noble the purposes of the individual, he must succumb to those social +influences which are more powerful than he. In the third chapter we are +told that-- + + This history is chiefly concerned with the private lot of a few men + and women; but there is no private life which has not been determined + by a wider public life, from the time when the primeval milkmaid had + to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the cow she + milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare. Even + in that conservatory existence where the fair Camelia is sighed + for by the noble young Pineapple, neither of them needing to care + about the frost or rain outside, there is a nether apparatus of + hot-water pipes liable to cool down on a strike of the gardeners or + a scarcity of coal. And the lives we are about to look back upon do + not belong to those conservatory species; they are rooted in the + common earth, having to endure all the ordinary chances of past and + present weather. As to the weather of 1832, the Zadkiel of that time + had predicted that the electrical condition of the clouds in the + political hemisphere would produce unusual perturbations in organic + existence, and he would perhaps have seen a fulfilment of his + remarkable prophecy in that mutual influence of dissimilar destinies + which we shall see gradually unfolding itself. For if the mixed + political conditions of Treby Magna had not been acted on by the + passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Harold Transome would not have + presented himself as a candidate for North Loamshire, Treby would + not have been a polling-place, Mr. Matthew Jermyn would not have + been on affable terms with a Dissenting preacher and his flock, and + the venerable town would not have been placarded with handbills, + more or less complimentary and retrospective--conditions in this + case essential to the "where" and the "what," without which, as the + learned know, there can be no event whatever. + +In the case of Lydgate, if the ambition was less noble and pure, the fall +was greater, and the disaster sadder to contemplate. He, too, was hindered +by his "environment," but it was much more of his own creating, the result +of his own nature, than in the case of Dorothea. We are told that "he was +fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an +anatomical conception, and make a link in the chain of discovery." That he +was fully capable of achieving such a result is made to appear by the +author. The account given of the discovery he wished to make, abundantly +confirms this opinion of him; it also shows how large was George Eliot's +learning, and how well she could use it for the novelist's purposes. + +To show how a person capable of such work could be entangled in the +ordinary affairs of life and lose sight of his youthful vision, or at least +the power of realizing it, is the purpose developed in the career of +Lydgate. There were "spots of commonness" in his nature. These-- + + lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in spite of noble + intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary + men of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his + intellectual ardor did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about + furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without + his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons. + +The egotism of his nature, his incapacity for hard, severe economy and the +exclusion of luxury and refined pleasure, proved his destruction. Along +with this egotism went a too susceptible impressiveness in the presence of +beautiful women of soft, delicate ways. He meant to do great things in +science, but he could not endure the discipline, the sacrifice, the long +years of waiting, by which the great result was to be attained. Even if he +could have done this, he lost the power of doing it through the social +environment of marriage. How a man's love for a woman may corrupt the +heroic purposes of his life is hinted at in one of the paragraphs in which +George Eliot describes Lydgate, and the vision which enamoured his young +life until the woman turned all his gold into dross. + + We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to + fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally + parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we + are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom + and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old + Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other + kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious + thought and renunciation of small desires? In the story of this + passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious + marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom + the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the + Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their + vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as + the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant + to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of + their coming to be shapen after the average, and fit to be packed by + the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness for perhaps + their ardor for generous, unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the + ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked + like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. + Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual + change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may + have sent some of our breath toward infecting them when we uttered our + conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions; or perhaps it came + with the vibration from a woman's glance. + +The pathetic and saddening tragedy of a man's failure to realize the +possibilities of his own nature was never more clearly and minutely told +than in the case of Lydgate. We see all the steps of his fall, we know all +the reasons why it came, we comprehend fully what he might have been and +done. The bitterness of his own failure made him call his wife a basil +plant--"a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's +brains." His hair never became white, but having won a large practice in +his profession, he had his life heavily insured, and died at the age of +fifty. He regarded his own life as a failure, though he was outwardly +successful and "his skill was relied on by many paying patients." Against +his will, by ways and causes he could not foresee, through the tenderness +and ease of his own nature, the vision of his youth did not come true. + +Perhaps _Middlemarch_ is the most perfect example among George Eliot's +novels of her purpose to show how we are guided, controlled and modified in +our thought and action by the whole society of which the individual forms a +single atom. Many characters appear in _Middlemarch_, drawn with wonderful +skill and finish, each having some part to perform in the complicated, play +of life, and each some subtle, scarce-understood influence on all. Tragedy +and comedy, selfishness and renunciation, greed and charity, love and +jealousy, mingle here as in life. Many of these characters, such as Caleb +Garth, Farebrother, Mrs. Cadwallader and Mr. Brooke, are remarkable +portraitures, original and well conceived; but they all have their place in +the social structure, and serve a purpose in the moral issue to be worked +out. + +It has been said of _Felix Holt_, and justly, that its characters are too +typical, too much representative of a class, and too little personal in +their natures and individual in their actions. Yet this method of treating +character is consistent with the purpose of the novel, which is quite as +much ethical as literary. Here we have imbruted and ignorant workingmen, +laborers who would elevate their class, pious Dissenters, typical clergymen +of the Church of England, old hereditary families with the smouldering +evils which accumulate about them, ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers, +and all the other phases of character likely to be found in such a town as +Treby Magna. Each person stands for a class; and the aim of the novel is to +indicate how the relative position of the classes represented may be +changed with as little as possible of disorder and disruption. + +It should be borne in mind, however, that the aim of George Eliot is not +exclusively ethical. _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ are not ethical or +socialistic treatises, and the whole purpose does not run in these +directions. She ever keeps in mind, however, the great fact that on the +ethical basis of right and wrong rests all the tragedy and comedy of the +world. Her ideas are made alive with genius, and her ethical purposes take +color in the glow of a brilliant imagination. She never did violence to the +rule which she stated in her essay on the poet Young. + + On its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches science; on its + emotional side, art. Now the products of art are great in proportion as + they result from that immediate prompting of innate power which we call + genius, and not from labored obedience to a theory or rule; and the + presence of genius, or innate prompting, is directly opposed to the + perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is imperious, + and excludes the reflection _why_ it should act. In the same way, in + proportion as morality is emotional, _i.e._, has affinity with art, it + will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling and action, and not + as the recognition of a rule. Love does not say, "I ought to love"--it + loves. Pity does not say, "It is right to be pitiful"--it pities. + Justice does not say, "I am bound to be just"--it feels justly. It is + only where moral emotion is comparatively weak that the contemplation + of a rule or theory habitually mingles with its action; and in + accordance with this; we think experience, both in literature and life, + has shown that the minds which are pre-eminently didactic--which insist + on a "lesson," and despise everything that will not convey a moral, are + deficient in sympathetic emotion. + +The moral and social problems of life seem to fire her creative powers, +kindle her imagination, and give rein to her genius. While the thoughtful +reader may find in _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ more that interests his +speculative faculties than of what will satisfy his sentiments and +imagination, yet he must keep in mind the fact that these are works +depending largely for their effect on the mind to their poetic qualities. +There is in them both a large and thoughtful contemplation of life, but +with a constant reference to its passion, sentiment and ideal aims. If they +are realistic it is not to the exclusion of spiritual elements; and the +poetic, sentimental phases of human existence are never ignored. + + + + +XVI. + + +DANIEL DERONDA. + +The purpose of George Eliot's last novel is distinctly constructive. While +there is much of criticism in its pages, and criticism of the severest +kind, its aim is that of spiritual renewal and upbuilding. It unfolds her +conception of social growth, and of the influence of tradition and the +national idea, much more completely than any other of her works. Moreover, +it is all aglow with moral enthusiasm and spiritual ardor. It indicates a +greater spontaneity than any of her books after _The Mill on the Floss_, +and gives ample evidence that it possessed and absorbed the author's mind +with its purpose and spirit. It is written from a great depth of conviction +and moral earnestness. That it is her greatest book, artistically +considered, there is no reason for believing; that it has its serious +limitations as a literary creation all the critics have said. Yet it +remains also to be said, that for largeness of aim, wealth of sentiment, +and purity of moral teaching, no other book of George Eliot's surpasses +_Daniel Deronda_. Indeed, in its realization of the spiritual basis of +life, and in its portrayal of the religious sentiment, as these are +understood by positivism, this book surpasses every other, by whomsoever +written. + +_Daniel Deronda_ is a romance, and hence differs in kind, conception, +scope, circumstance and form from her other works. It is less a study of +character than most of her other works, has more of adventure and action; +and while it is no less realistic, yet it has higher ideal aims, and seeks +to interpret what ought to be. + +At least three distinct purposes may be seen running through the book, +which blend into and confirm each other: to show the all-powerful influence +of heredity, that blood will assert itself as more effective than any +conditions of social environment or education; to indicate that ideals, +subjective feelings and sentiments form the reality and the substance of +religion, and that tradition affords the true medium of its expression; and +to contrast a form of social life based on individualism with one based on +tradition. The aim of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is many-sided, and cannot +be expressed in a few phrases. It is too vital with life, touches the +emotions and sentiments too often, has an ideal motive too large, to be +dismissed with a quickly spoken word of contempt. Professor Dowden, one of +her best and most sympathetic critics, has said that it is "an homage to +the emotions rather than to the intellect of man. Her feeling finds +expression not only in occasional gnomic utterances in which sentiments are +declared to be the best part of the world's wealth, and love is spoken of +as deeper than reason, and the intellect is pronounced incapable of +ascertaining the validity of claims which rest upon loving instincts of the +heart, or else are baseless. The entire work possesses an impassioned +aspect, an air of spiritual prescience, far more than the exactitude of +science. The main forces which operate in it are sympathies, aspirations, +ardors; and ideas chiefly as associated with these." The object aimed at is +ideal and religious, much more than intellectual and scientific, to show +how necessary is religion, how weak and imperfect is man when the ideal +side of his nature is undeveloped. It makes clear the author's conviction +concerning the importance of religion, that she prized its spiritual hopes, +found satisfaction in its enthusiasms and aspirations. When Gwendolen was +cast down in utter dejection, all of joy and delight the world had afforded +her gone, and she felt the greatest need of something to comfort and +sustain her in her distrust of self and the world, Deronda said to her, +"The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the higher, the +religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our own +appetites and vanities." + +The religion inculcated, to be sure, is not that of faith in a personal God +and a personal immortality, but that which is based on the mystery of life +and nature, impressed on the sensitive soul of man in fears, sorrows, +hopes, aspirations, and built up into great ideals and institutions through +tradition. _Daniel Deronda_ gives us the gospel of altruism, a new +preaching of love to man. _Daniel Deronda_ proves as no other writing has +ever done, what is the charm and the power of these ideas when dissociated +from any spiritual hopes which extend beyond humanity. + +In order to give the most adequate expression to her ideas, and to show +forth the power of the spiritual life as she conceived it, George Eliot +made use of that race and religion which presents so remarkable an +illustration of the influence of tradition and heredity. She saw in Judaism +a striking confirmation of her theories, and a proof of what ideal +interests can do to preserve a nation. To vindicate that race in the eyes +of the world, to show what capacity there is in its national traditions, +was also a part of her purpose. That this was her aim may be seen in what +she said to a young Jew in whom she was much interested. + + I wrote about the Jews because I consider them a fine old race who have + done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as + I do for the Florentines. + +The same idea is to be seen very clearly in the last essay in the +_Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. She regarded the great memories and +traditions of this people as a priceless legacy which may and ought to draw +all the scattered Israelites together and unite them again in a common +national life. + + A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering + thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to + preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small + beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such + as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being + thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's + children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to + great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in + its institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which + makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest + with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their + blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all + calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and + thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual + man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, + if not in actual existence, yet existing in the past, in memory, as a + departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be + restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of + various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for + cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to + suffice for social energy. + +This was one of the favorite ideas of George Eliot, which she has again and +again expressed. She was impressed with the conviction that such a national +life is necessary to the world's growth and welfare, that the era of a +common brotherhood, dissociated from national traditions and hopes, has not +yet come. Hence her belief that Judaism ought to speak the voice of a +united race, occupying the old home of this people, and sending forth its +ideas as a national inheritance and inspiration. This belief inspires the +concluding words of her essay, as well as the last chapters of the novel. + + There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew: not + that he should shut out the utmost illumination which knowledge can + throw on his national history, but that he should cherish the store of + inheritance which that history has left him. Every Jew should be + conscious that he is one of a multitude possessing common objects of + piety in the immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of ancestors + who have transmitted to them a physical and mental type strong enough, + eminent enough in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar promise, to + constitute a new beneficent individuality among the nations, and, by + confuting the traditions of scorn, nobly avenge the wrongs done to + their fathers. + + There is a sense which the worthy child of a nation that has brought + forth industrious prophets, high and unique among the poets of the + world, is bound by their visions. + + Is bound? + + Yes; for the effective bond of human action is feeling, and the worthy + child of a people owning the triple name of Hebrew, Israelite and Jew, + feels his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and + the possible renovation of his national family. + + Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling and call his + doctrine a philosophy? He will teach a blinding superstition--the + superstition that a theory of human well-being can be constructed in + disregard of the influences which have made us human. + +The purpose of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is not merely to vindicate +Judaism. This race and its religion are used as the vehicles for larger +ideas, as an illustration of the supreme importance to mankind of spiritual +aims concentrated into the form of national traditions and aspirations. Her +own studies, and personal intercourse with the Jews, helped to attract her +to this race; but the main cause of her use of them in this novel is their +remarkable history. Their moral and spiritual persistence, their wonderful +devotedness to their own race and its aims, admirably adapted them to +develop for her the ideas she wished to express. What nation could she have +taken that would have so clearly illustrated her theory of national +memories and traditions? In the forty-second chapter of _Daniel Deronda_ +she has put into the month of Mordecai her own theories on this subject. He +vindicates his right to call himself a _rational_ Jew, one who accepts what +is reasonable and true. + + "It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that bind and + consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea, consecrate it with + kinship; the past becomes my parent, and the future stretches toward me + the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of + special kindred that makes the families of man rich in interchanged + wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the + cedar and the palm?" + +He declares that each nation has its own work to do in the world, in the +uplifting and maintenance of some special idea which is necessary to the +welfare and development of humanity. The place he assigns to Judaism is +precisely that which made it dear to George Eliot, because it embodied her +conception of religion and its social functions. + + "Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of + affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the + reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life + into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and + weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us." + +Again, he utters words which are simply an expression of George Eliot's own +sentiments. + + "Where else is there a nation of whom it may be as truly said that + their religion and law and moral life mingled as the stream of blood in + the heart and made one growth--where else a people who kept and + enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they were hunted + with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast + from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman that, swimming to save + his life, he held the roll of his writings between his teeth and saved + them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our race? + They struggled to keep their place among the nations like heroes--yea, + when the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but when the + plow and the harrow had passed over the last visible signs of their + national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with + the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, 'The spirit is alive, + let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because movable--so that + it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn + may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on + an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though + often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded + amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the + Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of + them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he + diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines + of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The native spirit + of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed, + and draw out the compressed virtues of law and prophecy." + +Then Mordecai unfolds his theory of national unity and of a regenerated +national life; and it is impossible to read his words attentively without +accepting them as an expression of George Eliot's own personal convictions. +As an embodiment of her conception of the functions of national life they +are full of interest aside from their place in the novel. + + "In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our + rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity, the soul of Judaism + is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which + has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. + Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the + ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a + voice among the peoples of the East and the West--which will plant the + wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, us of old, a medium of + transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living + warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition + will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the + illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge + alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.... The effect of our + separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation + unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is + the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people, + whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me + that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the + children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as + a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; + they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled + breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the + learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the + political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which + has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew + genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, 'We will + lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like + that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the + long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, + refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the + soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the + statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there + no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle + with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk + gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena? + There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, + simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality of + protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our + ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western + freedom amidst the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an + organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the + outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the + outraged Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Israel + gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East which + carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its + bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a + neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West. Difficulties? I + know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement + move in the great among our people, and the work will begin.... + + "What is needed is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The + heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in + their veins as a power without understanding, like the morning + exultation of herds; it is the inborn half of memory, moving as in a + dream among writings on the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot + divide into speech. Let the torch of visible community be lighted! Let + the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let + there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a + nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, + even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, + but who still have a national hearth, and a tribunal of national + opinion. Will any say, 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinoza had not a + faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect + at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's nakedness + and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' Yet Baruch + Spinoza confessed he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen + nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are dead? + Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and + Home, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe + and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dug + from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver + in millions of human frames.... + + "I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but + the good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our + religious life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of + aught but wrong. The masters have said an offence against man is worse + than an offence against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the + breasts of Jews who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what + wonder, since there is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Our + national life was a growing light. Let the central fire be kindled + again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our + race will learn to think of their sacred land not as a place for + saintly beggary to await death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic + where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the + old, purified, enriched by the experience our greatest sons have + gathered from the life of the ages. How long is it?--only two centuries + since a vessel earned over the ocean the beginning of the great North + American nation. The people grew like meeting waters; they were various + in habit and sect. There came a time, a century ago, when they needed a + polity, and there were heroes of peace among them. What had they to + form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected by the vision of a + better? Let our wise and wealthy show themselves heroes. They have the + memories of the East and West, and they have the full vision of a + better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art + and wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised between East and West--a + covenant of reconciliation. Will any say the prophetic vision of your + race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry; the angel of + progress hag no message for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the + paid workers to lay open--the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken + field? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human + choice. The sons of Judah have to choose, that God may again choose + them. The Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the + planting of the national ensign. The Nile overflowed and rushed onward; + the Egyptian could not choose the overflow, but he chose to work and + make channels for the fructifying waters, and Egypt became the land of + corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and + resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or + purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine principle + of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the + blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future + of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us be as if we + were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage, claim + the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with + the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there: it will be + fulfilled." + +These words put into the mouth of Mordecai, indicate how thoroughly George +Eliot entered into the spirit of Judaism. She read Hebrew with ease, and +had delved extensively in Jewish literature, besides being familiar with +the monumental works in German devoted to Jewish history and opinions. The +religious customs, the home life, the peculiar social habits of the race, +she carefully studied. The accuracy of her information has been pointed out +by her Jewish critics, by whom the book has been praised with the utmost +enthusiasm. One of these, Prof. David Kaufmann, of Buda-Pesth, in an +excellent notice of _Daniel Deronda_, bears testimony to the author's +learning and to the faithfulness of her Jewish portraitures. He says that, +"led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish +national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish characters, +and to recognize and give presentment to the influences which Jewish +education is wont to exercise--to prove by types that Judaism is an +intellectual and spiritual force, still misapprehended and readily +overlooked, but not the less an effective power, for the future of which it +is good assurance that it possesses in the body of its adherents a noble, +susceptible and pliant material which only awaits its final casting to +appear in a glorious form." He also says of the author's learning, that it +is loving and exact, that her descriptions of Jewish life are always +faithful and her characters true to nature. + +"Leader of the present so-called realistic school, our author keeps up in +this work the reputation she has won of possessing the most minute +knowledge of the subjects she handles, by the manner in which she has +described the Jews--the great unknown of humanity. She has penetrated into +their history and literature affectionately and thoroughly; and her +knowledge in a field where ignorance is still venial if not expressly +authorized, has astonished even experts. In her selection of almost always +unfamiliar quotations, she shows a taste and a facility of reference really +amazing. When shall we see a German writer exhibiting the courteous +kindliness of George Eliot, who makes Deronda study Zunz's _Synagogale +Poesie_, and places the monumental words which open his chapter entitled +'Leiden,' at the head of the passage in which she introduces us to Ezra +Cohen's family, and at the club-meeting at which Mordecai gives utterance +to his ideas concerning the future of Israel? She is familiar with the +views of Jehuda-ha-Levi as with the dreams and longings of the cabalists, +and as conversant with the splendid names of our Hispano--Arabian epoch as +with the moral aphorisms of the Talmud and the subtle meaning contained in +Jewish legends.... It is by the piety and tenderness with which she treats +Jewish customs that the author shows how supreme her cultivation and +refinement are; and the small number of mistakes which can be detected in +her descriptions of Jewish life and ritual may put to blush even writers +who belong to that race." Again this critic says of the visionary Mordecai, +who has been pronounced a mere dreamer and untrue to nature, that he is an +altogether probable character and portrayed with a true realistic touch." +Mordecai is carved of the wood from which prophets are made, and so far as +the supersensuous can be rendered intelligible, it may even be said that in +studying him we are introduced into a studio or workshop of the prophetic +mind. He is one of the most difficult as well as one of the most successful +essays in psychological analysis ever attempted by an author; and in his +wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or +reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic +profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united +to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making +Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy +of commoner metal, and by giving the angelic likeness features which are +familiar to us all." + +Another Jew has borne equally hearty testimony to the faithfulness with +which George Eliot has described Jewish life and the spirit of the Jewish +religion. "She has acquired," this writer says, "an extended and profound +knowledge of the rites, aspirations, hopes, fears and desires of the +Israelites of the day. She has read their books, inquired into their modes +of thought, searched their traditions, accompanied them to the synagogue; +nay, she has taken their very words from their lips, and, like Asmodeus, +has unroofed their houses. To say that some slight errors have crept into +_Daniel Deronda_ is to say that no human work is perfect; and these +inaccuracies are singularly few and unimportant." [Footnote: James +Picciotto, author of "sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," in the Gentleman's +Magazine for November, 1876.] Still another Jewish critic says that in her +gallery of portraits she "gives in a marvellously full and accurate way all +the many sides of the Jewish complex national character." He also says that +Mordecai is a true successor of the prophets and moral leaders of the race, +that the national spirit and temper are truly represented in him. +[Footnote: Joseph Jacobs, in Macmillian's Magazine for 1877.] + +That the main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is not that of defending Judaism, +must be apparent to every attentive reader. The Jewish race is made use of +for purposes of illustration, as a notable example in proof of her +theories. There is a deeper purpose conspicuous throughout the hook, which +rests on her conceptions of the spiritual life as a development of +tradition. This larger purpose also jests on her altruistic conception of +the moral and spiritual life. As Professor Kaufmann has pointed out, the +story falls into two widely separated portions, in one of which the Jewish +element appears, in the other the English. Jewish life and its religious +spirit are contrasted with English life and a common type of its religion. +This is not a contrast, however, which is introduced for the purpose of +disparaging Christianity or English social life, but with the object of +comparing those whose life is anchored in the spiritual traditions of a +great people, with those who find the centre of their life in egotism and +an individualistic spirit. Grandcourt is a type of pure egotism; Gwendolen +is a creature who lives for self and with no law outside of her own +happiness. This is the spirit of the society in which they both move. On +the other hand, Mordecai lives in his race, Deronda gives his life +constantly away for others, and Mirah is unselfishness and simplicity +itself. So distinctly is this contrast drawn, so clearly are these two +phases of life brought over against each other, that the book seems to be +divided in the middle, and to be two separate works joined by a slender +thread. This artistic arrangement has been severely criticised, but its +higher purpose is only understood when this comparison and antagonism is +recognized. Then the true artistic arrangement vindicates itself, and the +unity of the book becomes apparent. Deronda moves in both these worlds, and +their influence on him is finely conceived. He finds no spiritual aim and +motive for his life until he is led into the charmed circle of a +traditional environment, and learns to live in and for his race. Living for +self, the life of Gwendolen is blasted, her hopes crushed, and she finds no +peace or promise except in the steadfast spiritual strength yielded her by +Deronda. That such a contrasting of the two great phases of life was a part +of George Eliot's purpose she has herself acknowledged. A comparison of the +spiritual histories of Gwendolen and Deronda will show how earnest was this +purpose of the author. Gwendolen is a type of those souls who have no +spiritual anchorage in the religious life and traditions of their people. +At the opening of chapter third we are told she had no home memories, that +"this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been wanting +in Gwendolen's life." At the end of the sixth chapter we are also told that +she had no insight into spiritual realities, that the bonds of spiritual +power and moral retribution had not been made apparent to her mind. + + Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers, + both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her + ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of + circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of + twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as + in any position which would lack the tribute of respect. She had no + permanent consciousness of other fetters, or of more spiritual + restraints, having always disliked whatever was presented to her under + the name of religion, in the same way that some people dislike + arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her, no + alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it, had + not occurred to her, any more than it had occurred to her to inquire + into the conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she + had had many opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was + dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been ready to + admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state. What she + unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad for others to be + unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual dread, + though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into + connection with the religion taught her, or with any human relations. + She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in + remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for + example, she was walking without companionship and there came some + rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her + with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in + the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself. + The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her + imagination at work in a way that made her tremble; but always when + some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in + which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world, in which + her will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to + this world was no more identified for her with those uneasy impressions + of awe than her uncle's surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With + human ears and eyes about her, she had always hitherto recovered her + confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire. + +Her difficulties all came out of this egoistic spirit, this want of +spiritual anchorage and religious faith. Gradually her bitter experiences +awakened in her a desire for a purer life, and the influence of Deronda +worked powerfully in the same direction. She is to be regarded, however, as +simply a representative of that social, moral and spiritual life bred in +our century by the disintegrating forces everywhere at work. No moral +ideal, no awe of the divine Nemesis, no spiritual sympathy with the larger +life of the race, is to be found in her thought. The radicalism of the +time, which neglects religious training, which scorns the life of the past, +which lives for self and culture, is destroying all that is best in modern +society. Gwendolen is one of the results of these processes, an example of +that impoverished life which is so common, arising from religious rebellion +and egotism. + +Another motive and spirit is represented in the character of Deronda. As a +boy, his mind was full of ideal aspirations, he was chivalrous and eager to +help and comfort others. He would take no mean advantages in his own +behalf, he loved the comradeship of those whom he could help, he was always +ready with his sympathy. + + He was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those + heights. + +He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means +whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for +comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge +that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving +after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness. +Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those +which helped to form Gwendolen's character, yet a very different result was +produced in him because of his _inherited_ tendencies of mind. After he had +seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai,-- + + "It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited + yearning--the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in my ancestors-- + thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather. + Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a + city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and + born blind--the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing + for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their + inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument + never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious + moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives + music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I + began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task in + which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude--some + social captainship which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven + for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for + me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy." + +This inherited sense of a larger life made Deronda what he was, and +developed in him qualities absent in Gwendolen. This inherited power made +him a new Mazzini, a born leader of men, a new saviour of society, a +personal magnet to attract and inspire other souls. A magnetic power of +influence drew Gwendolen to him from the first time they met, he shamed her +narrow life by his silent presence, and he quickened to life in her a +desire for a purer and nobler existence. George Eliot probably meant to +indicate in his character her conception of the true social reformation +which is needed to-day, and how it is to be brought about. The basis on +which it is to be built is the traditional and inherited life of the past, +inspired with new energies and meanings by the gifted souls who have +inherited a large and pure personality, and who are inspired by a quickened +sense of what life ought to be. On the one side a life of altruism, on the +other a life of egotism, teach that the liner social and moral qualities +come out of an inheritance in the national ideals and conquests of a worthy +people, while the coarser qualities come of the neglect of this source of +spiritual power and sustenance. Two letters written to Professor David +Kaufmann indicate that this was the purpose of the hook. At the same time, +they show George Eliot's mind on other sides, and give added insights into +her character. As an indication of her attitude towards Judaism, and her +faith in the work she had done in Daniel Deronda, they are of great value. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, +May 31, '77. + +MY DEAR SIR,--Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper +satisfaction, I may say a more heartfelt joy, than you have given me in +your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_. [Footnote: George Eliot and Judaism: an +Attempt to Appreciate Daniel Deronda. By Prof. David Kaufmann, of the +Jewish Theological Seminary, Buda-Pesth.] + +I must tell you that it is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the +criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary +to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged +praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far +worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work, +is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no +discernment of good and evil. + +My husband reads any notices of me that come before him, and reports to me +(or else refrains from reporting) the general character of the notice, or +something in particular which strikes him as showing either an exceptional +insight or an obtuseness that is gross enough to be amusing. Very rarely, +when he has read a critique of me, he has handed it to me, saying, "_You_ +must read this." And your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_ made one of these +rare instances. + +Certainly, if I had been asked to choose _what_ should be written about my +book and _who_ should write it, I should have sketched--well, not anything +so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a +Jew who showed not merely sympathy with the best aspirations of his race, +but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the +artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent +praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating +sensibility, the perfect response to the artist's intention, which must +make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and +not in compliance with current fashions. Such a response holds for an +author not only what is best in "the life that now is," but the promise of +"that which is to come." I mean that the usual approximative, narrow +perception of what one has been intending and professedly feeling in one's +work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff +without roots to hike any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any +instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative +prompting has foreshadowed, and will continue to satisfy, a need in other +minds. + +Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt +in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the +prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute +something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian +community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a +moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that +the effort has been needed,--yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hanger +for certain signs of sympathetic discernment, which you only have given. I +may mention as one instance your clear perception of the relation between +the presentation of the Jewish element and those of English social life. + +I work under the pressure of small hurries; for we are just moving into the +country for the summer, and all things are in a vagrant condition around +me. But I wished not to defer answering your letter to an uncertain +opportunity.... + +My husband has said more than once that he feels grateful to you. For he is +more sensitive on my behalf than on his own. + +Hence he unites with me in the assurance of the high regard with which I +remain + +Always yours faithfully, +M.E. LEWES. + +This first letter was followed a few months later by a second. + + +THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PAKE, +Oct. 12, '77. + +MY DEAR SIR,--I trust it will not be otherwise than gratifying to you to +know that your stirring article on _Daniel Deronda_ is now translated into +English by a son of Prof. Ferrier, who was a philosophical writer of +considerable mark. It will be issued in a handsomer form than that of the +pamphlet, and will appear within this autumnal publishing season, Messrs. +Blackwood having already advertised it. Whenever a copy is ready we shall +have the pleasure of sending it to you. There is often something to be +borne with in reading one's own writing in a translation, but I hope that +in this case you will not be made to wince severely. + +In waiting to send you this news I seem to have deferred too long the +expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew +translations of Leasing and the collection of Hebrew poems, a kindness +which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must +be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, +when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most +gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched the +gift of his work. + +I see by your last letter to my husband that your Theological Seminary was +to open on the 4th of this month, so that this too retrospective letter of +mine will reach you in the midst of your new duties. I trust that this new +institution will be a great good to professor and students, and that your +position is of a kind that you contemplate as permanent. To teach the young +personally has always seemed to me the most satisfactory supplement to +teaching the world through books, and I have often wished that I had such a +means of having fresh, living, spiritual children within sight. + +One can hardly turn one's thought toward Eastern Europe just now without a +mingling of pain and dread; but we mass together distant scenes and events +in an unreal way, and one would like to believe that the present troubles +will not at any time press on you in Hungary with more external misfortune +than on us in England. + +Mr. Lewes is happily occupied in his psychological studies. We both look, +forward to the reception of the work you kindly promised us, and he begs me +to offer you his best regards. + +Believe me, my dear sir, +Yours with much esteem, +M.E. LEWES. + +It was a part of George Eliot's purpose in _Daniel Deronda_ to criticise +the social life of England in the spirit in which she had criticised it in +_Middlemarch_, as being deficient in spiritual power, moral purpose and +noble sentiment. If she made it clear in _Middlemarch_ that the individual +is crippled and betrayed by society, it was her purpose to make it quite as +clear in _Daniel Deronda_ how society may become the true inspirer of the +individual. We may quarrel with her theory of the origin and nature of the +spiritual life in man, but she has somewhat truly conceived its vast +importance and shown the character of that influence it everywhere has over +man's life. As types of spiritual lifts, and as individual conceptions of +human character, the personages of this novel are drawn with marvellous +skill. Mr. E.P. Whipple says that Daniel Deronda is "one of the noblest +and most original characters among the heroes imagined by poets, dramatists +and novelists." With equal or even greater justice can it be said that +Gwendolen Harleth is one of the most powerful and grandly conceived of +imaginary creations in all literature. In the characters, the situations, +and the whole working out of this novel, George Eliot shows herself one of +the great masters of literary creation. + +When the prejudices aroused by the Jewish element in it are allayed, and +_Daniel Deronda_ is read as a work of literary genius, it will be found not +to be the least interesting and important of George Eliot's books. It has +the religious interest and inspiration of _Adam Bede_, the historic value +of _Romola_, and the critical elements of _Middlemarch_; and these are +wrought into a work of lofty insight and imagination, along with a high +spiritual ardor and a supreme ethical purpose. In this novel, for the first +time, as Professor Dowden says, her poetical genius found adequate +expression, and in complete association with the non-poetical elements of +her nature. + + + + +XVII. + + +THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS. + +It was _The Spanish Gypsy_, published in 1868, which brought the name of +George Eliot before the public as a poet. This work is a novel written in +blank verse, with enough of the heroic and tragic in it to make the story +worthy of its poetic form. The story is an excellent one, well conceived +and worked out, and had it been given the prose form would have made a +powerful and original novel. While it would doubtless have gained in +definiteness of detail and clearness of purpose by being presented in the +prose form, yet its condensation into a poem is a gain, and the whole +setting of the story has been made of greater interest by this method of +expression. The poetic form is as original as are the theories of life +which the poem is designed to inculcate. In structure it combines, with a +method quite its own, the descriptive and dramatic forms of poetry. In this +it nearly approaches the method followed in her novels of combining +description and dialogue in a unitary structure of great strength and +perfection. The descriptive passages in her prose works are strong and +impressive, lofty in tone, and yet lovingly faithful in detail. Her +conversations are often highly dramatic and add greatly to the whole +outcome of these novels. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ the surroundings of the +story are first described in verse which, if not always perfectly poetic, +is yet imaginatively thought out and executed in a manner befitting the +subject. Suddenly, however, the narrative and descriptive form ceases and +the dramatic begins. By means also of full "stage directions" to the +dramatic portions of the poem, the story is wrought out quite as much in +detail as it needs to be; and much is gained of advantage over the length +of her novels by this concentration of scene and narrative. While the +narrative portion of the poem is much less in extent than the dramatic, yet +it has in it some of the main elements of the plot, and those without which +the action could not be worked out. The dramatic element gives it a real +and living power. The characters are strongly conceived, and nearly all of +them are individualities of an original type and of an action thoroughly +distinct and human. + +As a work of art, the most serious defect in _The Spanish Gypsy_ is its +doctrinal tone. It is speculative in its purpose quite as much as poetical, +and the speculation is so large an element as to intrude upon the poetry. +Thought overtops imagination, the fervor and enthusiasm of the poet are +more than matched by the ethical aims of the teacher. This ethical purpose +of unfolding in a dramatic form the author's theories of life has filled +the book, as it has her novels, with epigrams which are original, splendid +and instructive. Into a few lines she condenses some piece of wisdom, and +in words full of meaning and purpose. Into the mouth of Sephardo, a +character distinctive and noteworthy, she puts some of her choicest wisdom. +He says,-- + + Thought + Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, + And seizing some fine thread of verity + Knows momentary godhead. + +Again he utters the same idea, but in more expressive words. + + Our growing thought + Makes growing revelation. + +Don Silva is made to use this highly poetic imagery. + + Speech is but broken light upon the depth + Of the unspoken. + +Zarca, that truest and most original character in the poem, says of the +great work he purposes to accomplish, + + To my inward vision + Things are achieved when they are well begun. + +Again, he says,-- + + New thoughts are urgent as the growth of wings. + +Expressive and original as _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, yet it gives the +impression of lacking in some poetic quality which is necessary to the +highest results. Difficult as it may be to define precisely what it is that +is wanting, nearly every reader will feel that something which makes poetry +has been somehow left out. Is it imagination, or is it a flexible poetic +expression, which is absent? While George Eliot has imagination enough to +make a charming prose style, and to adorn her prose with great beauty and +an impressive manner, yet its finer quality of subtle expression is not to +be found in her poetry. Those original and striking shades of meaning which +the poet employs by using words in unique relations, she does not often +attain to. It is the thought, the ethical meaning, in her poetry as in her +prose, which is often of more importance than the manner of expression; and +she is too intent on what is said to give full heed always to how it is +said. She has, however, employed that form of verse which is best suited to +her style, and one which does not demand those lyrical or those imaginative +qualities in which she is deficient. The blank verse is well adapted to her +realism, though it does not always answer well to the more dramatic and +tragical and impassioned portions of the story. + +As a study of an historic period, _The Spanish Gypsy_ is not so great a +success as _Romola_; yet it more perfectly unfolds a unitary moral purpose, +and the various types of character are more originally developed. The +conflict of motives, the contrasted and opposed national interests, are +distinctly brought out, but the aroma of the time and place are wanting. To +describe a poetic and heroic era she is never content to do. Her method is +totally different from that of Scott, who reflects the spirit and life of +the time he depicts with almost absolute faithfulness. No gypsy was ever +such a character as Zarca, no gypsy girl ever had the conscience of +Fedalma. As in the case of _Romola_, so here, an historic period is used, +not so much for artistic as for philosophic purposes, because it is well +designed to present her ideas about heredity and tradition. _The Spanish +Gypsy_ is essentially a romance, and contains much of those more poetic +and ideal elements which distinguish _Daniel Deronda_ from her other +novels. This romantic element, if it does not develop poetry of the highest +quality, does bring out in its most perfect form all the finest +characteristics of her style. + +While _The Spanish Gypsy_ affords many points of attack for the critic, yet +it cannot be dismissed by saying it is not a great poem. Its strong +qualities are too many to permit of its being disposed of in haste. With +all its defects it is a noble piece of work, and genuinely adds to the +author's expression of genius. It is one of those poems which win, not +popularity, but the heartiest admiration of a choice and elect few who find +life and highest inspiration in it, because giving strength to their +thoughts and purpose to their moral convictions. As a study of some of the +deeper problems of the ethical and social life of man, it is unsurpassed, +and the teaching imparted by it is singularly well and impressively +conveyed by the whole make of the poem. It is also remarkable for its large +and impressive style, its rich command of words, and the lofty beauty of +its diction. One of its most striking qualities, as Mr. Henry James, Jr., +suggests, "is its extraordinary rhetorical energy and eloquence," and "its +splendid generosity of diction." The same writer says of the character of +Don Silva, that "nowhere has her marvellous power of expression, the +mingled dignity and pliancy of her style, obtained a greater triumph." The +critics have almost without exception dealt severely with the poem, but +they have applied to it the canons of poetic art as interpreted by +themselves. Genius creates its own laws, makes its own methods, reverses +old decisions and triumphs against the whole brood of critics. The world +accepts what is true and excellent, however defective in technical +requirements. Imperfect meters, and poetic structures not orthodox, may +disturb those who deal in criticism, but such limitations as these are not +sufficient to fix the final acceptance of a poem. More than one of the +greatest poems could not endure such tests. That _The Spanish Gypsy_ has +vitality of purpose, enduring interest in treatment, and a lofty eloquence +of diction, is doubtless enough to insure it an accepted place among the +few greater poems in the language. Its profoundly thoughtful interpretation +of some of the greater social problems mankind has to deal with, will +necessarily give a permanent interest for the lovers of speculative poetry, +while its genuine poetic merits will largely add to that interest, and add +to it by its tragic power, its rich ethical wisdom, and its fine portrayal +of character. + +No other book of George Eliot's is so filled and inspired by the spirit of +her teachings as _The Spanish Gypsy_. Its inspiration and its interest lie +mainly in the direction of its moral and spiritual inculcations. Verse did +not stimulate her, but was a fetter; it clogged her highest powers. The +rich eloquence of her prose, with its pathos and sentiment, its broad +perspective and vigorous thought, was to her a continual stimulus and +incentive. Her poems are more labored than her novels, and for this very +reason they show the philosophy which gives them meaning more clearly. +Their greater concentration and less varied elements also largely help to +make apparent the teachings they contain. Her sympathy with the evolution +philosophy of the day is conspicuous in _The Spanish Gypsy_. It is simply a +dramatic interpretation of the higher phases of Darwinism. The doctrinal +element does not intrude itself, however; it is not on the surface, it is +well subordinated to the artistic elements of the poem. Even intelligent +readers may not detect it, and the majority of those who read the poem +without any preconceptions may not discover its philosophic bearings. Yet +to the studious reader the philosophy must be the most conspicuous element +which enters into the poem, and it gives character and meaning to the work +far more fully than in the case of any of her novels. + +The aim of the poem is to show how hereditary race influences act as a +tragic element in opposition to individual emotions and inclinations. The +teaching of _Romola_ is much of it reproduced, at least that portion of it +which inculcates renunciation and altruism. Its distinguishing features, +however, more nearly resemble those of _Daniel Deronda_. The race element +is introduced, and the effect of the past is shown as it forms character +and gives direction to duties. One phase of its meaning has been very +clearly described by Mr. R.H. Hutton, who says the poem teaches "how the +inheritance of the definite streams of impulse and tradition stored up in +what we call race, often puts a veto upon any attempt of spontaneous +individual emotion or volitions to ignore or defy their Control, and to +emancipate itself from the tyranny of their disputable and apparently cruel +rule." "How the threads," he says again, "of hereditary capacity and +hereditary sentiment control as with invisible chords the orbits of even +the most powerful characters,--how the fracture of those threads, so far as +can be accomplished by mere _will_, may have even a greater effect in +wrecking character than moral degeneracy would itself produce,--how the man +who trusts and uses the hereditary forces which natural descent has +bestowed upon him, becomes a might and a centre in the world, while the +man, intrinsically the nobler, who dissipates his strength by trying to +swim against the stream of his past, is neutralized and paralyzed by the +vain effort,--again, how a divided past, a past not really homogeneous, may +weaken this kind of power, instead of strengthening it by the command of a +larger experience--all this George Eliot's poem paints with tragical +force." + +The main thought of _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, that the moral and spiritual in +man is the result of social conditions which, if neglected, lead to the +destruction of all that is best in human nature. In the description of Mine +Host, in the opening pages of the poem, this evil result of a severing of +life from tradition is described. He was educated in the Jewish faith, but +was made a Christian at the age of ten. + + So he had to be converted with his sire, + To doff the awe he learned as Ephriam, + And suit his manners to a Christian name. + +The poet then delivers one of her doctrinal utterances, and one which is in +this case the keynote of the whole poem. + + But infant awe, that unborn moving thing, + Dies with what nourished it, can never rise + From the dead womb and walk and seek new pasture. + +That awe which grows up in childhood, if destroyed later, brings anarchy +into human life. All the characters of the poem exemplify this teaching, +and each is but a product of his past, individual or social. Don Silva, +Zarca, Fedalma, the Prior, Sephardo, illustrate this idea. The latter gives +utterance to the thought of the poem, when Don Silva says to him that he +has need of a friend who is not tied to sect or party, but who is capable +of following his "naked manhood" into what is just and right, without +regard to other considerations. + + My lord, I will be frank; there's no such thing + As naked manhood. If the stars look down + On any mortal of our shape, whose strength + Is to judge all things without preference, + He is a monster, not a faithful man. + While my heart beats, it shall wear livery-- + My people's livery, whose yellow badge + Marks them for Christian scorn. I will not say + Man is first man to me, then Jew or Gentile: + That suits the rich _marranos_; but to me + My father is first father and then man. + So much for frankness' sake. But let that pass. + 'Tis true at least, I am no Catholic + But Salomo Sephardo, a born Jew, + Willing to serve Don Silva. + +[Footnote: In a note George Eliot gives the following explanation of the +word _marranos_: "The name given by the Spanish Jews to the multitudes of +their race converted to Christianity at the end of the fourteenth century +and beginning of the fifteenth. The lofty derivation from _Maran-atha_, the +Lord cometh, seems hardly called for, seeing that _marrano_ is Spanish for +_pig_. The 'old Christians' learned to use the word as a term of contempt +for the 'new Christians,' or converted Jews and their descendants; but not +too monotonously, for they often interchanged it with the fine old crusted +opprobrium of the name _Jew_. Still, many Marranos held the highest +secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and were respected +accordingly."] + +In the conversation between Don Silva and this uncle, the Prior expresses +in the strongest language his conviction that Fedalma will in time reveal +her gypsy blood, and that any rejection on the part of Don Silva of the +life assigned him by his birth will end in sorrow and misery. When Don +Silva declares his intention of following his own inclinations the Prior +answers,-- + + Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength + Of fallen angels. Can you change your blood? + You are a Christian, with the Christian awe + In every vein. A Spanish noble, born + To serve your people and your people's faith. + Strong, are you? Turn your back upon the Cross-- + Its shadow is before you. Leave your place: + Quit the great ranks of knighthood: you will walk + Forever with a tortured double self, + A self that will be hungry while you feast, + Will blush with shame while you are glorified, + Will feel the ache and chill of desolation + Even in the very bosom of your love. + +This eloquent expostulation against rejection of any of those ties and +obligations imposed by birth and race is repeated again in the plea of +Zarca to his daughter, when he urges that there is no life and joy for +Fedalma apart from that race to which she belongs and those social +conditions which gave her mind its characteristics. + + Will you adopt a soul without its thoughts, + Or grasp a life apart from flesh and blood? + Till then you cannot wed a Spanish Duke + And not wed shame at mention of your race, + And not wed hardness to their miseries-- + Nay, wed not murder. + +Zarca and the Prior are each faithful to race, religion and social +tradition. Each knows his duty, is content with the opportunities given him +by social inheritance, is thoroughly in harmony with his own past. Both are +consequently strong, resolute, successful. Zarca is a grand character, and +though a hero in a nation of vagabonds, he wholly identifies himself with +his people and accepts their destiny as his own. The Prior is a haughty +Spanish Churchman, who has inherited all the traits of a noble family, and +is proud of his priestly functions. + +In the case of Don Silva and Fedalma there is a conflict between love and +race. The one is a Spanish nobleman, the other the daughter of a Zincala +chief. Yet they love, and feel that no outward circumstances are sufficient +to separate them. This verdict of their hearts is the verdict of mankind in +all ages; but it is not the one arrived at by George Eliot in obedience to +her philosophy. The reasons why these two should not wed grew entirely out +of the social circumstances of the time. An English nobleman of to-day +could marry such a woman as Fedalma without social or other loss. The +capacities of soul are superior to conditions of race. Virtue and genius do +not depend on social circumstances. Yet _The Spanish Gypsy_ has for its +motive the attempt to prove that the life of tradition and inheritance is +the one which provides all our moral and social and religious obligations. +In conformity with this theory the conflict of the poem arises, because Don +Silva is not in intellectual harmony with his own character. A thoughtful, +fastidious, sensitive soul was his, not resolute and concentrated in +purpose, He was no bigot, could not be content with any narrow aim, saw +good on many sides. + + A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious + In his acceptance, dreading all delight + That speedy dies and turns to carrion: + His senses much exacting, deep instilled + With keen imagination's airy needs;-- + Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes, + Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision, + Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream + Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed + With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart. + Silva was both the lion and the man; + First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang, + Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed + And loosed the prize, paying his blood for naught. + A nature half-transformed, with qualities + That oft betrayed each other, elements + Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, + Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. + Haughty and generous, grave and passionate; + With tidal moments of devoutest awe, + Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt; + Deliberating ever, till the sting + Of a recurrent ardor made him rush + Right against reasons that himself had drilled + And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed + Too proudly special for obedience, + Too subtly pondering for mastery: + Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, + Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity, + Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness + And perilous heightening of the sentient soul. + +Too noble and generous to accept the narrow views of his uncle, Don Silva +insisted on marrying Fedalma, because he loved her and because she was a +pure and true woman. He had a poet's nature, was sensitive to all beauty, +and his heart vibrated to all ideal excellence. His love became to him a +thing apart, a sacred shrine; and Fedalma was made one with all joy and +beauty. + + He thought all loveliness was lovelier, + She crowning it; all goodness credible, + Because of that great trust her goodness bred. + +His love gave a delicious content and melody to his day dreams. + + + O, all comforters, + All soothing things that bring mild ecstasy, + Came with her coming, in her presence lived. + Spring afternoons, when delicate shadows fall + Pencilled upon the grass; high summer morns + When white light rains upon the quiet sea + And cornfields flush with ripeness; odors soft-- + Dumb vagrant bliss that seems to seek a home + And find it deep within 'mid stirrings vague + Of far-off moments when our life was fresh; + All sweetly tempered music, gentle change + Of sound, form, color, as on wide lagoons + At sunset when from black far-floating prows + Comes a clear wafted song; all exquisite joy + Of a subdued desire, like some strong stream + Made placid in the fulness of a lake-- + All came with her sweet presence, for she brought + The love supreme which gathers to its realm + All powers of loving. Subtle nature's hand + Waked with a touch the far-linked harmonies + In her own manifold work. Fedalma there, + Fastidiousness became the prelude fine + For full contentment; and young melancholy, + Lost for its origin, seemed but the pain + Of waiting for that perfect happiness. + +So strong was Don Silva's love, so ardent his passion for Fedalma, that he +forsook all duties and social obligations and became a Zincala for her +sake. Yet once awakened to the real consequences of his act, he killed +Zarca and sought to regain by hard penances his lost knighthood. + +With Fedalma also love was an absorbing passion. The passionate devotion of +a woman is in her words. + + No ills on earth, though you should count them up + With grains to make a mountain, can outweigh + For me his ill who is my supreme love. + All sorrows else are but imagined flames, + Making me shudder at an unfelt smart; + But his imagined sorrow is a fire + That scorches me. + +With great earnestness she says she will-- + + Never forsake that chief half of her soul + Where lies her love. + +With what depth of love does she utter these words: + + I belong to him who loves me--whom I love-- + Who chose me--whom I chose--to whom I pledged + A woman's truth. And that is nature too, + Issuing a fresher law than laws of birth. + +Though her love is deep and passionate and full of a woman's devotedness, +the mark of race is set deep within her soul. The moment the claim of race +is brought clearly before her as the claim of duty, as the claim of father +and of kindred, she accepts it. Her love is not thrown hastily aside, for +she loves deeply and truly, and it tears her heart in sunder to renounce +it; but she is faithful to duty. Her love grows not less, loses none of its +hold upon her heart. + + No other crown + Is aught but thorns on my poor woman's brow. + +Hers is not a divided self, however; to see the way of duty with her, was +to follow in it. Her father's invincible will, courage and patient purpose +are her own by inheritance. Once realizing the claim of birth and race, she +does not falter, love is resolutely put aside, all delight in culture and +refinement becomes dross in her eyes. + + I will not count + On aught but being faithful. I will take + This yearning self of mine and strangle it. + I will not be half-hearted: never yet + Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul. + Die, my young joy--die, all my hungry hopes! + The milk you cry for from the breast of life + Is thick with curses. O, all fatness here + Snatches its meat from leanness--feeds on graves. + I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. + The saints were cowards who stood by to see + Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves + Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain-- + The grandest death, to die in vain--for love + Greater than sways the forces of the world! + That death shall be my bridegroom. I will wed + The curse that blights my people. Father, come! + +The poem distinctly teaches that Fedalma was strong, because the ties of +blood were strongly marked upon her mind and willingly accepted by her +intellect and conscience; while Don Silva was weak, because he did not +acknowledge those ties and accept their law. In the end, however, both +declare that the inherited life is the only one which gives joy or duty, +and that all individual aims and wishes are to be renounced. The closing +scene of this great poem is full of sadness, and yet is strong with moral +purpose. Don Silva and Fedalma meet for the last time, she on her way to +Africa with her tribe to find a home for it there, he on his way to Rome, +to seek the privilege of again using his knightly sword. Both are sad, both +feel that life has lost all its joy, both believe it is a bitter destiny +which divides them from the fulfilment of their love, and yet both are +convinced that love must be forsworn for a higher duty. Their last +conversation, opened by Don Silva, is full of power, and concentrates into +its last words the total meaning of the poem. + + I bring no puling prayer, Fedalma--ask + No balm of pardon that may soothe my soul + For others' bleeding wounds: I am not come + To say, "Forgive me:" you must not forgive, + For you must see me ever as I am-- + Your father's... + + FEDALMA. + + Speak it not! Calamity + Comes like a deluge and o'erfloods our crimes, + Till sin is hidden in woe. You--I--we two, + Grasping we knew not what, that seemed delight, + Opened the sluices of that deep. + + DON SILVA. + + We two?-- + Fedalma, you were blameless, helpless. + + FEDALMA. + + No! + It shall not be that you did aught alone. + For when we loved I willed to reign in you, + And I was jealous even of the day + If it could gladden you apart from me. + + And so, it must be that I shared each deed + Our love was root of. + + DON SILVA. + + Dear! you share the woe-- + Nay, the worst part of vengeance fell on you. + + FEDALMA. + + Vengeance! She does but sweep us with her skirts. + She takes large space, and lies a baleful light + Revolving with long years--sees children's children, + Blights them in their prime. Oh, if two lovers leane + To breathe one air and spread a pestilence, + They would but lie two livid victims dead + Amid the city of the dying. We + With our poor petty lives have strangled one + That ages watch for vainly. + + DON SILVA. + + Deep despair + Fills all your tones as with slow agony. + Speak words that narrow anguish to some shape: + Tell me what dread is close before you? + + FEDALMA. + + None. + No dread, but clear assurance of the end. + My father held within his mighty frame + A people's life: great futures died with him + Never to rise, until the time shall ripe + Some other hero with the will to save + The outcast Zincali. + + DON SILVA. + + And yet their shout-- + I heard it--sounded as the plenteous rush + Of full-fed sources, shaking their wild souls + With power that promised sway. + + FEDALMA. + + Ah yes, that shout + Came from full hearts: they meant obedience. + But they are orphaned: their poor childish feet + Are vagabond in spite of love, and stray + Forgetful after little lures. For me-- + I am but as the funeral urn that bears + The ashes of a leader. + + DON SILVA. + + O great God! + What am I but a miserable brand + Lit by mysterious wrath? I lie cast down + A blackened branch upon the desolate ground. + Where once I kindled ruin. I shall drink + No cup of purest water but will taste + Bitter with thy lone hopelessness, Fedalma. + + FEDALMA. + + Nay, Silva, think of me as one who sees + A light serene and strong on one sole path + Which she will tread till death... + He trusted me, and I will keep his trust: + My life shall be its temple. I will plant + His sacred hope within the sanctuary + And die its priestess--though I die alone, + A hoary woman on the altar-step, + Cold 'mid cold ashes. That is my chief good. + The deepest hunger of a faithful heart + Is faithfulness. Wish me naught else. And you-- + You too will live.... + + DON SILVA. + + I go to Rome, to seek + The right to use my knightly sword again; + The right to fill my place and live or die + So that all Spaniards shall not curse my name. + I sate one hour upon the barren rock + And longed to kill myself; but then I said, + I will not leave my name in infamy, + I will not be perpetual rottenness + Upon the Spaniard's air. If I must sink + At last to hell, I will not take my stand + Among the coward crew who could not bear + The harm themselves had done, which others bore. + My young life yet may fill some fatal breach, + And I will take no pardon, not my own, + Not God's--no pardon idly on my knees; + But it shall come to me upon my feet + And in the thick of action, and each deed + That carried shame and wrong shall be the sting + That drives me higher up the steep of honor + In deeds of duteous service to that Spain + Who nourished me on her expectant breast, + The heir of highest gifts. I will not fling + My earthly being down for carrion + To fill the air with loathing: I will be + The living prey of some fierce noble death + That leaps upon me while I move. Aloud + I said, "I will redeem my name," and then-- + I know not if aloud: I felt the words + Drinking up all my senses--"She still lives. + I would not quit the dear familiar earth + Where both of us behold the self-same sun, + Where there can be no strangeness 'twixt our thoughts + So deep as their communion." Resolute + I rose and walked.--Fedalma, think of me + As one who will regain the only life + Where he is other than apostate--one + Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows + Of Spanish knight and noble. But the breach-- + Outside those vows--the fatal second breach-- + Lies a dark gulf where I have naught to cast, + Not even expiation--poor pretence, + Which changes naught but what survives the past, + And raises not the dead. That deep dark gulf + Divide us. + + FEDALMA. + + Yes, forever. We must walk + Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite + Is our resolve that we will each be true + To high allegiance, higher than our love. + Our dear young love--its breath was happiness! + But it had grown upon a larger life + Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled-- + The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed; + For we shall carry each the pressure deep + Of the other's soul. I soon shall leave the shore. + The winds to-night will bear me far away. + My lord, farewell! + +What has been said of _The Spanish Gypsy_ applies very nearly as well to +all her other poems. They are thoughtful, philosophic, realistic; they are +sonorous in expression, stately in style, and of a diction eloquent and +beautiful. On the whole, the volume containing the shorter poems is a +poetical advance on _The Spanish Gypsy_, containing more genuine poetry, +more lyrical fire, and a greater proportion of humor, sympathy and passion. +They are carefully polished and refined; and yet that indefinable something +which marks the truest poetry is wanting. They are saturated with her +ideas, the flavor of her thought impregnates them all, with but two or +three exceptions. + +Her artistic conceptions are more fully developed in some of these poems +than in any of her novels, especially in "Armgart" and "The Legend of +Jubal." The special thought of "Armgart" is, that no artistic success is of +so much worth as a loving sympathy with others. The longing of Armgart was +to be-- + + a happy spiritual star + Such as old Dante saw, wrought in a rose + Of light in Paradise, whose only self + Was consciousness of glory wide-diffused, + Music, life, power--I moving in the midst + With a sublime necessity of good. + +Her ambition runs very high. + + May the day be near when men + Think much to let my horses draw me home, + And new lands welcome me upon their beach, + Loving me for my fame. That is the truth + Of what I wish, nay, yearn for. Shall I lie? + Pretend to seek obscurity--to sing + In hope of disregard? A vile pretence! + And blasphemy besides. For what is fame + But the benignant strength of One, transformed + To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come + As necessary breathing of such joy; + And may they come to me! + +Armgart is beloved of the Graf, and he tries to persuade her to abandon her +artistic career and become his wife. He says to her,-- + + A woman's rank + Lies in the fulness of her womanhood: + Therein alone she is loyal. + +Again he says to her,-- + + Pain had been saved, + Nay, purer glory reached, had you been throned + As woman only, holding all your art + As attribute to that dear sovereignty-- + Concentering your power in home delights + Which penetrate and purify the world. + +Armgart will not listen; her whole heart is enlisted in music. She says to +the Graf,-- + + I will live alone and pour my pain + With passion into music, where it turns + To what is best within my better self. + +A year later Armgart's throat has failed, and her career has ended in +nothing. Then her servant and friend, Walpurga, who has devoted her life to +Armgart, speaks that lesson George Eliot would convey in this little story, +that a true life is a life of service. Walpurga chides Armgart's false +ambition in these words: + + I but stand + As a small symbol for the mighty sum + Of claims unpaid to needy myriads; + I think you never set your loss beside + That mighty deficit. Is your work gone-- + The prouder queenly work that paid itself + And yet was overpaid with men's applause! + Are you no longer chartered, privileged, + But sunk to simple woman's penury, + To ruthless Nature's chary average-- + Where is the rebel's right for you alone? + Noble rebellion lifts a common load; + But what is he who flings his own load off + And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right? + Say, rather, the deserter's. + +Armgart learns from her master, the old and noble Leo, that he had also +been ambitious, that he had won only small success, and that he now lived +for the sake of the good he could do to those about him. He says to her,-- + + We must bury our dead joys, + And live above them with a living world. + +Then Armgart is brought to see that there is a noble privilege in living as +her friend has lived, in making music a joy to others, and in doing what +she can to make life better for humanity. + +There are two very distinct ideas running through the poem, that a life +guided by altruism is better than--a merely artistic life, and that woman +is to find in home and wedded joys that opportunity for the development of +her soul, without which no artistic career can be complete. The words of +the Graf speak George Eliot's own thought, that Armgart's life and her art +would have been both more perfect and more noble had she held all her art +as attribute to the dear sovereignty of affection. + +The same artistic conception pervades "The Legend of Jubal." That fame for +which Jubal also yearns comes to him, he is taught, in the good which he +leaves behind him for humanity to enjoy. He dies, and ceases to be as a +personal being. At least this may be inferred from the concluding lines. + + Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, + The All-creating Presence for his grave. + +A _sun-wave_ while living, his being is now _quenched_. But he lives on in +the life of the race, lives on in man's joy of music, in the deeper life +which music awakens in all bosoms through all ages. He is told that he has +no need of-- + + aught else for share + Of mortal good, than in his soul to bear + The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest + Of the world's springtide in his conscious breast. + +His own loved Past says to him,-- + + This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, + And that immeasurable life to know + From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead, + A seed primeval that has forests bred. + +This poem views death as positivism conceives it, and gives a poetic +interpretation of that subjective immortality, or that immortality in the +race, in which George Eliot so heartily believed. No other artistic +presentation of this theory has ever been made which equals that given in +this poem, and in the one beginning, "O may I join the choir invisible." +This latter poem is not only beautiful in itself, but it has made altruism +attractive and lovely. Its tone of thought is elevated, its spirit lofty +and noble, and its ideal pure and gracious. All that can be said to make +altruism lovely and winning, to inspire men with its spirit and motive, is +here said. The thought presented in these two poems is repeated in "The +Death of Moses." Here we have Moses living forever in the human influence +he created. + + He dwells not with you dead, but lives as Law. + +For her ideas about resignation we must turn to the pages of _The Mill on +the Floss and Romola_, for those about heredity and the past to _The +Spanish Gypsy_ and _Daniel Deronda_; but in these shorter poems she has +completely unfolded the positivist conception, as she accepted it, of death +and immortality. The degree to which she was moved and inspired by this +belief in an immortality in humanity is seen in the greater ardor and +poetic merit of these poems than any others she wrote. + +It is interesting to note that she introduces music into "The Legend of +Jubal" and "Armgart". It was the art she most loved. She even said that if +she could possess the power most satisfactory to her heart, it would be +that of making music the instrument of the homage which the great +performers secure. Yet she teaches in "Armgart" that there is a power +higher than this, the power of affectionate service. Her books are full of +the praise of music. She makes Maggie Tulliver express her own delight in +it. + + "I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have + plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas + into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled + with music." + +In _Adam Bede_ she becomes most poetic when extolling the power of +exquisite music to work on the soul. + + To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your + soul, the delicate fibres of life wherein memory can penetrate, and + binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable + vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the + love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating + in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt + lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with + past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy. + +In the "Minor Prophet" is to be found George Eliot's theory of progress. +That poem also repeats her faith in common humanity, and gives new emphasis +to her joy in the common toils and affections of men. In the "College +Breakfast Party" and "Self and Life," her thoughts take a more truly +philosophic form than in any of her other poems, but the first of these is +the poorest piece of poetic work she gave to the public. Nothing new in the +way of teaching appears in these or her other poems. + +George Eliot is the poet of positivism. What is beautiful, touching and +inspiring in that conception of the world she has sung, and in as poetic a +manner as that philosophy is ever likely to inspire. Her poetry is full of +the thoughts and sentiments of the time. It reflects the mood of her +generation. Prof. Sidney Colvin has truly said that "there is nothing in +the literature of the day so rousing--to the mind of the day there is +scarcely anything so rousing in all literature--as her writing is. What she +writes is full of her time. It is full of observation, imagination, pathos, +wit and humor, all of a high class in themselves; but what is more, all +saturated with modern ideas poured into a language of which every word +bites home with peculiar sharpness to the contemporary consciousness." This +is true even more of her poetry than of her prose. That poetry lacks where +the age lacks, in true poetic quality. The ideal, the breath of eternal +spring, is not in it. + + + + +XVIII. + + +LATER ESSAYS. + +The later essays of George Eliot have the same characteristics as the +earlier ones, and are mainly of interest because they furnish additional +evidences of her philosophical, ethical and political opinions. While they +indicate the profound thoughtfulness of her mind, her deep concern about +the largest problems of human existence, and her rare ethical tone and +purpose, they add little or nothing to her literary reputation. It is very +plain that while George Eliot was not a poet in the largest, truest sense, +she was still less an essayist in that genial, widely sympathetic sense +which has adorned English literature with so many noble books of comment on +the foibles and the virtues of man. Her manner is heavy, her thoughts +philosophical, her purpose doctrinal: and the result is far from +satisfactory to the lover of fine essay-writing. + +She needs the glow of her imagination, the depth of her emotions, to +relieve and lighten the burden of her thoughts. But in her essays she is +less wise, less racy and expressive, than in the didactic passages of her +novels. She could best make her comment on the ways of life while +describing a character or studying an action. These additions to her +narrative and conversation are, to the thoughtful reader, among the best +portions of her novels, for they give meaning to all the rest, and throw a +flood of light on the hidden facts of life. She is never so great, so wise, +so profoundly inspired by her theme, as in many of these passages. + +There is need, however, in her case, of the large surrounding life of her +novels in order to draw out this wisdom and inspiration. Her essays lack in +the fine sentiment and the fervid eloquence of the chorus-utterances in her +novels. They give little evidence that she would have attained to great +things had she followed the early purpose of her life. In view of what she +has written in the shape of essays, no one can regret that she confined her +chief efforts to her imaginative prose creations. Yet her essays have a +special value on account of their subjects, and they will be read by many +with a hearty appreciation, simply because they were George Eliot's. No one +thoroughly interested in the work done by the great realistic novelist can +afford to overlook her essays, even if they do not nearly touch the highest +mark in their kind. + +After she began her career as a novelist George Eliot wrote about twenty +essays, nearly all of which are included in her last book, _Impressions of +Theophrastus Such_. Previous to this, however, she had published in the +first number of the _Fortnightly Review_, issued May 15, 1865, and edited +by Lewes, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in review of Mr. +W.H. Lecky's book on that subject. A year after the appearance of _Felix +Holt_ she wrote out her views on the subject of political reform, in the +shape of an "Address to Workingmen by Felix Holt," which appeared in +_Blackwood's Magazine_ for January, 1868. These essays are significant, +because of the light they afford concerning the author's views on religious +and political subjects. The first is a piece of thorough reviewing, and +shows what George Eliot might have done in that direction. She is a +merciless critic, and yet one inclined to appreciate all that is best in an +author. Her sympathies with positivism and with the "scientific method" in +philosophy find expression in the pages of this essay. In it she gives a +most expressive utterance to her ideas about the universality of law and +the influence of tradition. Her point of view is so antagonistic to Mr, +Lecky's that she does not do full justice to his work. His idealism is +repugnant to her, and he does not give prominence enough to please her to +those positivist influences in which she so strongly believed. Her +dissatisfaction with his idealism appears in her very first words. + + There is a valuable class of books on great subjects which have + something of the character and functions of good popular lecturing. + They are not original, not subtle, not of close logical texture, not + exquisite either in thought or style; but by virtue of these negatives + they are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence. They have + enough of organizing purpose in them to make their facts illustrative, + and to leave a distinct result in the mind even when most of the facts + are forgotten; and they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in + their theory to win them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. The + vagueness and vacillation are not devices of timidity; they are the + honest result of the writer's own mental character, which adapts him to + be the instructor and the favorite of "the general reader." For the + most part, the general reader of the present day does not exactly know + what distance he goes; he only knows that he does not go "too far." Of + any remarkable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he + likes to have it said "that his errors are to be deplored." leaving it + not too certain what those errors are; he is fond of what may be called + disembodied opinions, that float in vapory phrases above all systems of + thought or action; he likes an undefined Christianity which opposes + itself to nothing in particular, an undefined education of the people, + an undefined amelioration of all things: in fact, he likes sound + views--nothing extreme, but something between the excesses of the past + and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader + may be known in conversation by the cordiality with which he assents to + indistinct, blurred statements. Say that black is black, he will shake + his head and hardly think it; say that black is not so very black, he + will reply, "Exactly." He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to + get up at a public meeting and express his conviction that at times, + and within certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be + equal; but, on the other hand, he would urge that the spirit of + geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry + against any clearly defined opinion; not in the least based on a + scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought--a + spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one + thing he is staunch for is the utmost liberty of private haziness. + + But precisely these characteristics of the general reader, rendering + him incapable of assimilating ideas unless they are administered in a + highly diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that there are + clever, fair-minded men who will write books for him--men very much + above him in knowledge and ability, but not too remote from him in + their habits of thinking, and who can thus prepare for him infusions + of history and science that will leave some solidifying deposit, and + save him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skeleton. Among + such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky's _History of the Rise and + Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_ entitles him to a + high place. He has prepared himself for its production by an unusual + amount of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and quotations + with much judgment; and he gives proof of those important moral + qualifications, impartiality, seriousness and modesty. This praise is + chiefly applicable to the long chapter on the history of Magic and + Witchcraft, and to the two chapters on the antecedents and history of + Persecution. + +A further evidence of her wide culture and reading, and of her large +critical ability, may also be found in the first number of the _Fortnightly +Review_, for which she wrote the first of the "notices of new books" which +it published. This was a review of Mr. Owen Jones's _Grammar of Ornament_. +The author was one of her friends, and the decorator of the rooms in which +her Sunday receptions were held. She praised the book very highly. The +first paragraph of this notice betrays her appreciation of the aesthetic +movement in England, and her sympathy with its objects and spirit. The +moral value of aesthetic influences is characteristically expressed. The +influence of the environment, as she understood it, is here seen. The +largeness of her faith in the moral efficiency of material causes is +nowhere so strongly expressed by her as in the words which follow. + + The inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufelsdroeckh, was + disbanding hired armies, cashiering most kings and senates, and + creating a whole new democratic world. Has any one yet said what great + things are being done by the men who are trying to banish ugliness + from our streets and our homes, and to make both the outside and the + inside of our dwellings worthy of a world where there are forests, and + flower-tressed meadows, and the plumage of birds; where the insects + carry lessons of color on their wings, and even the surface of a + stagnant pool will show us the wonders of iridescence and the most + delicate forms of leafage? They, too, are modifying opinions, for they + are modifying men's moods and habits, which are the mothers of + opinions, having quite as much to do with their formation as the + responsible father--Reason. Think of certain hideous manufacturing + towns where the piety is chiefly a belief in copious perdition, and + the pleasure is chiefly gin. The dingy surface of wall pierced by the + ugliest windows, the staring shop-fronts, paper-hangings, carpets, + brass and gilt mouldings, and advertising placards, have an effect + akin to that of malaria; it is easy to understand that with such + surroundings there is more belief in cruelty than in beneficence, and + that the best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external + senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is + taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle + relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids + that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our + intellectual discernment; and--more than that--as it is probable that + fine musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily + organization, it is also probable that just coloring and lovely + combinations of lines may be necessary to the complete well-being of + our systems, apart from any conscious delight in them. A savage may + indulge in discordant chuckles and shrieks and gutturals, and think + that they please the gods, but it does not follow that his frame would + not be favorably wrought upon by the vibrations of a grand church + organ. One sees a person capable of choosing the worst style of + wall-paper become suddenly afflicted by its ugliness under an attack of + illness. And if an evil state of blood and lymph usually goes along + with an evil state of mind, who shall say that the ugliness of our + streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the vulgarity of our + upholstery, have not something to do with those bad tempers which + breed false conclusions? + +The address to workingmen which George Eliot put into the mouth of Felix +Holt is a suggestive and valuable piece of political writing. Tradition is +therein presented as a moral and political influence. The spiritual +treasures mankind possesses she says are the products of tradition, and +these must be preserved. This can be done only by keeping the old +institutions and forms until they can be organically supplanted by others. +All the various portions of society are mutually dependent, and the +destruction of any one of them will be to the injury of all. This she says +to workingmen as a reason why they should not antagonize the social orders +above them, whose work is as important as their own. The organs of society +are the various social classes of which it is composed, and society is to +be improved by turning class interests into the functions by which Humanity +is to be developed. The spiritual treasures of the past are only to be +preserved by order and good government; hence all revolutionary methods are +suicidal. Life is to be advanced by giving social influence into the hands +of the wisest. True principles must regulate society, and these George +Eliot would have rest on science and altruism. + +Such are some of the ideas of this remarkable essay, one of the most +suggestive and instructive of all she wrote. The emphasis she laid on +retribution, tradition, heredity and duties appears here in all its force. +Perhaps nothing else she wrote so clearly brings out some of the +characteristics of her mind. Her intense distrust of individualism does not +permit her to say a single word of the _rights_ of the laboring classes. +The right of rebellion and revolution is totally disregarded, rather it is +not recognized that any rights whatever exist. The workingman is not to +think of himself or his class, but of society and humanity; he is to become +an altruistic worker for the common good. While this is fine in theory, yet +history indicates that the aristocratic classes have yielded to the broader +social spirit only when they have been compelled to do so. The concessions +must come from above, not from beneath. George Eliot's political +philosophy, if carried into actual life, would keep the proletariate where +they are, and strengthen the social power of the aristocratic classes. +These words may indicate the drift of the essay: + + But I come back to this: that, in our old society there are old + institutions, and among them the various distinctions and inherited + advantages of classes, which have shaped themselves along with all the + wonderful slow-growing system of things made up of our laws, our + commerce and our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, such + as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, such as scientific thought + and professional skill. Just as in that case I spoke of before, the + irrigation of a country, which must absolutely have its water + distributed or it will bear no crop; these are the old channels, the + old banks and the old pumps, which must be used as they are until new + and better have been prepared, or the structure of the old has been + gradually altered. But it would be fool's work to batter down a pump + only because a better might be made, when you have no machinery ready + for a new one: it would be wicked work, if villages lost their crops by + it. Now the only safe way by which society can be steadily improved and + our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt to do away directly with + the actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if + everybody could have the same sort of work or lead the same sort of + life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by + turning of Class Interests into Class Functions or duties. What I mean + is, that each class should be urged by the surrounding conditions to + perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility + to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a + state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless + conduct. In this way, the public judgment would sift out incapability + and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition + would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the + most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions of those + around them: and for one person to put on a cap and bells, or to go + about dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast + sum of money in having more finery than his neighbors, he must be + pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. Now changes can only be + good in proportion as they help to bring about this sort of result: + in proportion as they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and + fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course of + substitution class distinctions must inevitably change their character, + and represent the varying Duties of men, not their varying Interests. + But this end will not come by impatience. "Day will not break the + sooner because we get up before the twilight." Still less will it come + by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we + believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the + franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in + magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the + franchise will greatly hasten that good end in proportion only as every + one of us has the knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will + make him well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nature of + things in this world has been determined for us beforehand, and in such + a way that no ship can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage, + and reach the right port, unless it is well-manned: the nature of the + winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails and the cordage, will + not accommodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors. + + You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of + joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way and need not + be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, + the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so + that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may + be given to this society of ours, this living body in which our lives + are bound up. After the Reform Bill of 1832, I was in an election riot, + which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what public disorder must + always be; and I have never forgotten that the riot was brought about + chiefly by the agency of dishonest men who professed to be on the + people's side. Now the danger hanging over change is great, just in + proportion as it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large + number of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low and + brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their hands and + may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look round us and say + that he sees no signs of any such danger now, and that our national + condition is running along like a clear broadening stream, safe not to + get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful man; perhaps he does his own + gardening, and seldom takes exercise far away from home. To us who have + no gardens, and often walk abroad, it is plain that we can never get + into a bit of a crowd but we must rub clothes with a set of roughs, who + have the worst vices of the worst rich--who are gamblers, sots, + libertines, knaves, or else mere sensual simpletons and victims. They + are the ugly crop that has sprung up while the stewards have been + sleeping; they are the multiplying brood begotten by parents who have + been left without all teaching save that of a too-craving body, without + all well-being save the fading delusions of drugged beer and gin. They + are the hideous margin of society, at one edge drawing towards it the + undesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening imperceptibly into + the lowest criminal class. Here is one of the evils which cannot be got + rid of quickly, and against which any of us who have got sense, decency + and instruction have need to watch. That these degraded fellow-men + could really get the mastery in a persistent disobedience to the laws + and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not believe; but wretched + calamities would come from the very beginning of such a struggle, and + the continuance of it would be a civil war, in which the inspiration on + both sides might soon cease to be even a false notion of good, and + might become the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have all to see + to it that we do not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in + the breasts of our generation--that we do not help to poison the + nation's blood, and make richer provision for bestiality to come. We + know well enough that oppressors have sinned in this way--that + oppression has notoriously made men mad; and we are determined to + resist oppression. But let us, if possible, show that we can keep sane + in our resistance, and shape our means more and more reasonably towards + the least harmful, and therefore the speediest, attainment of our end. + Let us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to be driven mad, + but can keep that sober determination which alone gives mastery over + the adaptation of means. And a first guarantee of this sanity will be + to act as if we understood that the fundamental duty of a government is + to preserve order, to enforce obedience of the laws. It has been held + hitherto that a man can be depended on as a guardian of order only when + he has much money and comfort to lose. But a better state of things + would be, that men who had little money and not much comfort should + still be guardians of order, because they had sense to see that + disorder would do no good, and had a heart of justice, pity and + fortitude to keep them from making more misery only because they felt + some misery themselves. There are thousands of artisans who have + already shown this fine spirit, and have endured much with patient + heroism. If such a spirit spread and penetrated us all, we should soon + become the masters of the country in the best sense and to the best + ends. For, the public order being preserved, there can be no government + in future that will not be determined by our insistence on our fair and + practicable demands. It is only by disorder that our demands will be + choked, that we shall find ourselves lost amongst a brutal rabble, with + all the intelligence of the country opposed to us, and see government + in the shape of guns that will sweep us down in the ignoble martyrdom + of fools. + +The eighteen essays published as the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ +purport to have been the work of a bachelor of singular habits and tastes, +who had written a book which proved a failure, and who left this volume to +appear posthumously. He had been in the habit of giving an account to +himself of the characters he met with, and he begins his book by describing +his own weaknesses. He classes himself as one of the blunderers he would +portray, as having the faults and foibles he finds in others. Expressively +the author says, "If the human race has a bad reputation, I perceive that I +cannot escape being compromised." This may be taken as the sentiment of +George Eliot herself; and it is she who really speaks in these words +concerning the satirical criticisms of those she describes: + + If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your + labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous + adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavors in a rashly chosen + part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately + I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that + I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?--for even what + we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or + shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we can think of + exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. + +After the second essay Theophrastus disappears, and no further hint is +given that it is he who is the reputed author. This slight fictitious +machinery is too weak to carry the load put upon it. The reader soon feels +that it is George Eliot who is talking, and the opinions put forth, the +sentiments expressed, are recognized as her own. Indeed, it would have been +better, so the reader may probably come to say to himself, if this +attempted disguise had been entirely dispensed with. By the time he has +reached the sixth essay, "Only Temper," the discerning reader, familiar +with George Eliot's books, will be ready to affirm that this is no other +than the author herself speaking very frankly and finely her own +sentiments. In this essay the moral temper of her mind appears, and her +strong inclination to subordinate the individual to the social requirements +of life. + +These papers are modelled on those of the great essay-making period in +English literature. Old-fashioned names are adopted, which have a greater +or less significance in connection with the purpose of the essay. The man +with the excitable temper is called Touchwood, while the man who slides +into a deferential acceptance of opinions made for him is Mixtus. This +method of the old essayists seems antiquated, cumbersome and unsuitable to +the subjects discussed. The persons described lose their individuality by +its use, and the reader forgets that they were meant to be creatures of +flesh and blood. For the most part, they are mere abstractions, mere +figures of straw, to be knocked over by the ingenious pen of the author. +Some special fault or sin is given the name of a personality, but it is too +much isolated from actual existence to produce the impression of a living +thing. + +These essays much resemble occasional chapters in her novels, and might +have been studies for a new work. They are studies simply, done with a fine +skill and polish, but fragmentary. The large setting of her novels is +needed to give them relief and proportion. They disappoint as they are, for +the satire is too apparent, and we do not see these characters in action, +where their follies would obtain for them a more living interest. They are +studies of individual character, portraying types of social and literary +weakness, such as may have come under George Eliot's observation. They are +careful dissections of motives and conduct, and full of a minute analysis +of the moral and intellectual nature of her characters. There is abundance +of candid criticism, shrewd observation and compressed wisdom of statement. +Occasionally she is at her very best; but she uses many long, cumbersome +sentences, the satire is too harsh and the wisdom too unwieldy. Her +sympathy, love, pathos and pity are not so apparent as in her novels; she +takes less delight in these creations, and evidently created them for +purposes of dissection. She is never so weak in her other writings as in +these essays, so wanting in genius and large-heartedness. She scourges many +of the intellectual follies of the time, the conceit of culture, the pride +of literature, and the narrowness of politics; but in most of the essays +this is all. + +The artistic conception of the book is too slight and fragmentary, and it +gives the impression of being unfinished in execution and desultory in +purpose. Yet there is in it much of fine feeling, pure sentiment, lively +satire and apt wisdom. Sometimes the thought is labored; but there is a +wealth of clear-cut conviction, strong thoughts and rich experience. There +is force in the arguments, richness of ideas throughout, and a wonderful +aptness of allusion and illustration. Her culture and learning are +everywhere apparent in the fine perception of the most exact analogies and +in the ease with which she brings science to the support of morals. Those +of her admirers who come closest to her spirit, thoroughly appreciate her +ideas, and delight in them, will read this book with satisfaction, and feel +thankful that she wrote it. No one who would know the mind of George Eliot +can afford to overlook it. + +When George Eliot writes on subjects involving a moral purpose or ideal, +she is always wise and interesting. When, however, she attempts to satirize +some weakness or laugh at some folly, she is not always successful. Rich as +may be the satire and the wit of her novels, both are often heavy and dull +in her essays. + +The greater number of essays in this volume are devoted to the analysis of +special types of character, but a few are given to moral problems. These +latter are of the more interest and value, and they present some new +discussions of those problems with which George Eliot was so much +fascinated. Her earnest faith in altruism, realism, tradition, natural +retribution and the social value of morality, is as distinct here as in her +novels or poems. In the essay on "False Testimonials" she gives a good +realistic definition of imagination, which she says is "always based on a +keen vision, a keen consciousness of what is, and carries the store of +definite knowledge as material for the construction of its inward visions." +She is no realist, however, in the sense of confining poetry merely to a +photographic picture of outward nature. She accepts Dante as a genuine +realist, for "he is at once the most precise and homely in his reproduction +of actual objects, and the most soaringly at large in his imaginative +combinations." She would have faithfulness to facts, but no limitation of +vision; she would have the imagings exact and legitimate, but she would +give our moral and intellectual insights no narrow bounds. Her realism is +well defined when she criticises one of those persons who take mere fancy +for imagination, to whom all facts are unworthy of recognition. + +In at least two of these essays, those on "Debasing the Moral Currency" and +"The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" she has newly expressed herself concerning +tradition. In the first she protests against the too-common custom of +satirizing what is noble and venerable. Our need of faith in the higher +things of life is very great, and that faith is to be established only +through our regard for what has been given us by those who have gone before +us. Whatever lowers our trust in the results of human efforts is +corrupting, for it breaks down our faith in the true sources of human +authority. "This is what I call debasing the moral currency," she says; +"lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition so that it will +command less and less of the spiritual products, the generous motives which +sustain the charm and elevation of our social existence--the something +besides bread by which man saves his soul alive." With her conception of +tradition, as the legitimate source of the moral and spiritual life in man, +and as the influence which builds up all which is truest and purest in our +civilization, she can endure to see no contempt put upon its products. This +essay, more perhaps than anything else she wrote, gives an insight into her +conception of the higher life and her total lack of faith in any idealistic +sources of human motive or inspiration. Contempt for the traditional, with +her, implies contempt for the spiritual and moral. To destroy the +traditional is revolutionary, dangerous and immoral. She cannot reject +tradition in the name of higher wisdom, in the name of higher truth and +authority. It gone, and all is gone; hence her fear of all iconoclastic and +revolutionary methods. So she would keep whole and pure the national +memories of every people. In the last essay of the book she says, "The +preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national +greatness, and their revival a sign of reviving nationality." It is "the +divine gift of memory" as it expresses itself in the life and purposes of a +people, "which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, +and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the +brutes." All which lowers the influence or the sacredness of this memory is +debasing. The corrupting of this memory "is the impoverishment that +threatens our posterity;" and this "new famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd +grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our +human sentiments." That eager yearning of the nineteenth century for truth +and reality, for something more than traditions and national memories, +which displays itself in reforms and revolutions of every kind, had little +of George Eliot's sympathy. Yet this spirit is stronger even than +tradition, and creates for us a new world and a higher life. + +Throughout these essays it is the social side of morality which is praised +and commended. What will increase the altruistic spirit, what will widen +sympathy and helpfulness, is regarded as truly ethical in its import. Ideal +aims are brought to the level of present needs and the possibilities of +human nature as it now exists. + + Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the + highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that + touches the mixed life of the earth. They are archangels with awful + brow and flaming sword, summoning and encouraging us to do the right + and the divinely heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their + presence; but to learn what it is they summon us to do, we have to + consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and + our own appetites.... On the whole, and in the vast majority of + instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of + the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries. + A sour father may reform prisons, but considered in his sourness he + does harm. + +In another essay, that entitled "Only Temper," the social side of morality +is again presented. Especially does it appear in that on "Moral Swindlers." +"Let us refuse to accept as moral," says George Eliot, "any political +leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be +determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less +immoral even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert +Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme +in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous +impartiality." George Eliot is almost without exception sound and just in +her moral judgments, but here her theories have made her overlook the true +conditions of a moral life. + + Seeing that Morality and Morals under their _alias_ of Ethics are the + subject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis a pressing + matter of dispute--seeing that the most famous book ever written on + Ethics, and forming a chief study in our colleges, allies ethical with + political science, or that which treats of the constitution and + prosperity of States, one might expect that educated men would find + reason to avoid a perversion of language which lends itself' to no + wider view of life than that of village gossips. Yet I find even + respectable historians of our own and of foreign countries, after + showing that a king was treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction + gross breaches in the administration of justice, end by praising him + for his pure moral character, by which one must suppose them to mean + that he was not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin of the + typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in + chewing bang and fondling dancing-girls. And since we are sometimes + told of such maleficent kings that they were religious, we arrive at + the curious result that the most serious wide-reaching duties of man + lie quite outside both Morality and Religion--the one of these + consisting in not keeping mistresses (and perhaps not drinking too + much), and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with + God which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest + conduct toward men. With such a classification as this, it is no + wonder, considering the strong re-action of language on thought, that + many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, + are fain to seek for the grounds of social duty; and without + entertaining any private intention of committing a perjury which would + ruin an innocent man, or seeking gain by supplying bad preserved meats + to our navy, feel themselves speculatively obliged to inquire why they + should not do so, and are inclined to measure their intellectual + subtlety by their dissatisfaction with all answers to this "Why?" + +It would be quite impossible for George Eliot to write an essay without +some fresh thought or some new suggestion. To those who admire her genius +and are in sympathy with her teachings this volume will have a special +interest. Its few essays which touch upon moral or speculative subjects are +of the utmost value as interpretations of her life and thought. + +All her essays, the later as the earlier, are mainly of interest as aids to +an understanding of her philosophy. Nothing is worthless which helps us +clearly to comprehend an original mind. + + + + +XIX. + + +THE ANALYTIC METHOD. + +George Eliot's literary method was that of Fielding and Thackeray, both of +whom evidently influenced her manner. Their realism, and especially their +method of comment and moral observation, she made her own. She had little +sympathy with the romanticism of Scott or the idealism of Dickens. Her +moral aims, her intense faith in altruism, kept her from making her art a +mere process of photographing nature. Nature always had a moral meaning to +her, a meaning in reference to man's happiness and health of soul; and that +moral bearing of all human experiences gave dignity and purpose to her art. + +It was the method of Scott to present the romantic, picturesque and poetic +side of life. He was not untrue to nature, but he cared more for beauty and +sentiment than for fact. He sometimes perverted the historic incidents he +made use of, but he caught the spirit of the time with which he was dealing +with absolute fidelity. In this capacity for historic interpretation he +surpassed George Eliot, who had not his instinctive insight into the past. +Scott had no theory about the past, no philosophy of history was known to +him; but above all novelists he had the power to see by the light of other +days, and to make the dead times live again. Not George Eliot and not +Thackeray was his rival in this historic insight and poetic power of +interpretation; and his superior success was due not only to his peculiar +genius but also to his romanticism. Scott failed where George Eliot +succeeded, in giving an intellectual interpretation of life. With certain +social and moral tendencies he was clearly at home. On its side of +adventure and social impulse and craving for a wider life, as a single +instance of his power, he was a true interpreter of the age of Elizabeth. +Its deeper spirit, its intellectual movements, he did not, and could not, +bring within the range of his story. It was here George Eliot was superior, +as is abundantly shown in _Romola_. The thoughtful aspects of Florentine +life she truthfully presented; but its more romantic elements it needed a +Scott to make living and real. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ there is very little +of genuine interpretation. Certain local features may be accurate, but the +spirit of the time is not there; the characters are not such as that age +and country developed. Scott, with all his romanticism, would have +introduced _reality_ into such an historic picture. + +Within her own lines of power George Eliot is much greater than Scott, who +could not have written _Adam Bede_ or _Middlemarch_, or brought out what is +best in those works. Adventure was necessary to Scott; he could not have +transfigured the plain and homely with beauty as George Eliot has done. +Where she is at her best, as in the simple scenes of _Silas Marner_, there +is a charm, pathos and sympathy in her work which must endear it to all +hearts. That peculiar power Scott did not have; yet it would be most +difficult to decide which is the truer to nature. Genuine art, it is true, +has its foundation in the realities of human experience: but those +realities are not always best interpreted by the methods of realism. In his +own province Scott was truer to nature than George Eliot was in the same +field, as may be seen at once by comparing _The Spanish Gypsy_ with +_Ivanhoe_, or any of Scott's novels dealing with the mediaeval and feudal +ages, he took the past into himself, caught its spirit, reflected it in +its wholeness. In this he was a genuine realist, and all the more faithful +to reality because he did not accept realism as a theory. + +In comparing George Eliot with Dickens, it must first of all be noted that +each is the superior of the other in his own special province. Dickens has +more imagination; he appeals to more universal sentiments, touches a wider +circle of experiences, captivates his readers with a resistless interest +and tenderness of spirit. His characters are unreal, mere caricatures +often, mere puppets. Yet he had an imagination of marvellous power, so that +his characters appeared to his own mind as if real, and he describes them +as if they actually stood before him, making them intensely real to his +readers. Many of his persons never lived, never could have lived; yet they +are types or certain traits of character made living and brought out into a +distinctive existence. What those traits of character are he makes all the +more apparent by this method. + +Dickens had not a fine literary taste, he had no clear insight into some of +the purer human sentiments, he was grossly untrue and false in many of his +pictures. Yet all in all, with his many faults, it is to be said that his +idealism, which was not of a high type, made him a true interpreter of +life. If his characters are less faithfully drawn than George Eliot's, his +insight into some of the sentiments and emotions was truer. His pictures +may be false in some particulars, but he has given them the true spirit +with which they should be animated. + +In thoughtful fidelity to the facts of life, George Eliot surpasses Scott +or Dickens. Scott by his insight, Dickens by his imagination, were able to +do what she could not; but they put little thought into their work. They +did not think about what life meant; she did. They worked instinctively, +she thoughtfully. Her characters are more often to be met with than theirs; +and there is a freshness, a wholesomeness, about them theirs do not have. +She is more simple and refined than Fielding, more elevated in tone of +thought, there is a deeper and a richer purpose in her work. None of the +cynicism and hardness of Thackeray appear in her pages. She is fresher, +more genuine, more poetic than he, with more of humanity. + +In her essay on "The Natural History of German Life" she said of Dickens +that he was "gifted with the utmost power of rendering the external traits +of our town population." City life Dickens and Thackeray most truly +photographed in all its features of snobbishness and selfishness. Its +better side, its nobler sentiments, its humanity, they did not succeed +in so well; not so well as George Eliot did, and simply because they did +not so much sympathize with it. Country life they did not understand, and +could not have sketched. Where George Eliot best succeeded they would have +failed. Her real advance upon Dickens and Thackeray, however, lay in +another direction. She says in the essay just quoted, speaking of Diekens's +portraitures of town populations, that "if he could give us their +psychological character--their conception of life and their emotions--with +the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest +contribution art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies." +In the two directions here indicated lay her superiority over other +novelists,--her humanitarian sympathies and her psychologic insight. In +reality, she did not contribute anything new to the realism of literary +art. All which can be said for faithfulness to nature in art and poetry has +been said by Ruskin, and George Eliot was early a reader of his books. Her +predecessors, especially Thackeray, opened the way in the application of +the realistic principles in its newer spirit. The enlargement of realism, +however, was carried on to a much greater extent by the pre-Raphaelites in +painting and poetry, and George Eliot was influenced by them as well. Their +principle of loyal fidelity to the time and circumstances depicted was her +own, at least in theory. + +It was in another direction her chief characteristic lay, that of +describing "psychologic character." Here she was no imitator, but she made +a way of her own, and developed a new method. The method of science she +applied to literature. Science has adopted the method of analysis, of +inductive inquiry, of search in all the facts of nature for the laws which +underlie them. So magnificent have been the results obtained by this +process in the study of the material world, that it has been applied with +the hope of securing the same thorough investigation of the phenomena +presented by history, ethics and religion. Even here the method has +justified itself, and has in recent years opened up new and valuable +results, giving to the world an enriched conception of the life of man. +The speculative mind has been stimulated to fresh activity, and new +philosophies, of vast and imposing proportions, have been the result. The +studies of Charles Darwin, and the elaboration of the theory of evolution, +have given a marvellous incentive to the new method, resulting in its +wide-spread application to all the questions of nature and life. + +A method so productive in all directions must have its effect on +literature. What claims the attention of all thinking men cannot long +be kept out of poetry and art. In painting and in music it has been +largely developed in the direction of a more intimate and sympathetic +interpretation of nature and man. In literature the new method has been +mainly brought into application hitherto in the form of photographic +studies of human life. To describe what is, to make a true word-picture, +has been the chief aim. With George Eliot began a wider use of the new +method and its application in a more sympathetic spirit to the deeper +problems of the mind and heart. She was not content to paint the surface of +nature, to give photographic sketches of the outside of human life, but she +wished to realize every subtle fact and every most secret impulse. An +admirer of the Dutch school in painting, and of Jane Austen as a novelist, +she was not content with their results and methods, wishing to interpret +the spirit as well as the letter of nature and life. + +In literature, the new method as developed in recent years consists in an +application of psychology to all the problems of man's nature. George +Eliot's intimate association with the leaders of the scientific movement in +England, naturally turned her mind into sympathy with their work, and made +her desirous of doing in literature what they were doing in science. In the +special department of physiological psychology, no one did more than George +Henry Lewes, and her whole heart went out in genuine appreciation of his +work. He studied the mind as a function of the brain, as being developed +with the body, as the result of inherited conditions, as intimately +dependent on its environment. Here was a new conception of man, which +regarded him as the last product of nature, considered as an organic whole. +This conception George Eliot everywhere applied in her studies of life and +character. She studied man as the product of his environment, not as a +being who exists above circumstances and material conditions. "In the eyes +of the psychologist," says Mr. James Sully, "the works of George Eliot must +always possess a high value by reason of their large scientific insight +into character and life." This value consists, as he indicates, in the fact +that she interprets the inner personality as it is understood by the +scientific student of human nature. She describes those obscure moral +tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which +enter so much into life. She lays much stress on the subconscious mental +life, the domain of vague emotion and rapidly fugitive thought. + +The aim of the psychologic method is to interpret man from within, in his +motives and impulses. It endeavors to show why he acts, and it unfolds the +subtler elements of his character. This method George Eliot uses in +connection with her evolutionary philosophy, and uses it for the purpose of +showing that man is a product of hereditary conditions, that he has been +shaped into his life of the emotions and sentiments by the influence of +tradition. The psychologic method may be applied, however, without +connection with the positive or evolutionary philosophy. The mind may be +regarded as a distinct force and power, exercised within social and +material limits, and capable of being studied in all its inner motives and +impulses. Yet in her mental inquiries George Eliot did not regard man as an +eternal soul in the process of development by divine methods, but as the +inheritor of the past, moulded by every surrounding circumstance, and as +the creature of the present. Instead of regarding man as _sub specie +eternitatis_, she regarded him as an animal who has through feeling and +social development come to know that he cannot exist beyond the present. +This limitation of his nature affected her work throughout. + +The psychologic method in literature has also been that of Robert Browning, +and he has been as faithful to it as any other. He, too, analyzes his +characters, penetrates all the hidden causes of motive and deed, lays bare +the soul. No other poet has surpassed him in power to unveil the inner +workings of the mind, to discover all the influences affecting it or in +revealing how motives are created and how motives lead up to deeds. In two +important particulars Robert Browning differs from George Eliot. His +characters speak for themselves, reveal the secrets of their own minds. He +does not talk about them, does not criticise their words and conduct, does +not stand off from them as a spectator. He differs from her also in his +conception of man as a being who is here developing an eternal existence +under the laws of an Infinite Spirit. He, too, believes in the natural, and +believes that the highest law of the soul is, to be true to every pure +impulse arising within us. To calculate, to philosophize, he holds to be +always to man's injury, that nature when perfectly obeyed is the only +guide. He studies man as affected by all the circumstances of his +existence, and as wrought upon by the great social forces which have made +him what he is. His analysis is as keen as George Eliot's; he makes the +soul appear before us in all its reality. His is a more creative, a more +dramatic method than hers; yet he is fully as subjective, as much an +interpreter of the soul. Neither is content to record the deeds of men; +both wish to know why men act. + +Browning has fittingly been called the poet of psychology. He is a +dissecter, a prober, an analyzer in the full spirit of scientific research. +He spares no pains to get at and to completely unfold the truth about man's +nature, to show all the hidden causes of his action, all the secret motives +of his life, using this method as thoroughly as George Eliot. It is +interesting to note his attitude towards the great religious problems. His +faith in God is intensely passionate and sublime in its conception. In +words the most expressive in their meaning, and indicating a conviction the +deepest, he reveals his faith. + + "He glows above + With scarce an intervention, presses close + And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours." + +The lifting and inspiring power of faith in an Infinite Being he has sung +with a poet's purity of vision. Along with this faith goes his belief that +man is being glowly perfected for a higher and nobler existence. + + "To whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? + Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands! + What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever the same? + Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands? + There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; + The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; + What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; + On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round. + + "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; + Not its likeness, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power + Whose voice has gone forth, but, each survives for the melodist + When eternity confirms the conceptions of an hour. + The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, + The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, + Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; + Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." + +He teaches that progress is the true mark and aim of man's being, a +progress sure and glorious. + + "Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, + Not God's and not the beast's; God is, they are, + Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." + +Man yearns after more than he can gain here; that yearning is the mark of +his higher nature and the means of progress. If he follows the better +impulses of his nature, all experience will help to unfold his soul into +higher attainments, and impulse will at last become, in clearer moments, +revelation. + + "Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! + But not quite so much that moments, + Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, + When the spirit's true endowments + Stand out plainly from its false ones, + And appraise it if pursuing + Or the right way or the wrong way + To its triumph or undoing. + There are flashes struck from midnights, + There are fireflames noondays kindle, + Whereby piled-up honors perish. + Whereby swol'n ambitions dwindle, + While just this or that poor impulse + Which for once had play unstifled + Seems the sole work of a lifetime, + That away the rest have trifled." + +More impersonal and dramatic than George Eliot, Browning introduces his +doctrines less often. It is not easy to discover what are his theories as +distinguished from those of his characters, for he makes no comments, and +is faithful in developing the unity and integrity of his _dramatis +personae_, whether in his monologues or dramas. Great as his other faults +maybe, he surpasses George Eliot in his power to reveal character, but not +in his power to make his characters stand out distinctly and unprejudiced +from his own mind. His obscurity of expression and his involved style are +serious defects in much of his work; and to most readers his thoroughly +dramatic manner is puzzling. He gives but faint clue to the situation in +his monologues, little explanation of the person, time or place. All is to +be discovered from the obscurest allusions and hints. Defective as this +method is in Browning's treatment, it is the true psychologic method, +wherein motive and character are developed dramatically and without labored +discussion. It is a more vital and constructive process than that followed +by George Eliot, because nothing of the meaning and fulness of life is lost +in the process of analysis. That Browning can never be read by more than a +few, indicates how great are his faults; but in lyric passion, dramatic +power and psychologic analysis he is one of the greatest poets of the +century. The value and range of the new method are well illustrated in its +use by two such thinkers and poets. + +The analytic method as applied by George Eliot regards man as a social +being, studies him as a member of society. All that he is, and all +the influences working upon him, are understood only as affected by +his connection with the life of the race. This fact gives the most +distinguishing characteristic to her literary methods. Her imitators may +not, and nearly all of them do not, follow her into positivism; but they +all study man as a social being. They deal with him as affected by +heredity, education, and social characteristics. Even here it is not her +theories, but her artistic methods, which are imitated. The novel is no +longer regarded as a story to be told dramatically and with moving effect, +but as a study of character, as an analysis of situations and motives. The +advocates of the new method say that "in one manner or another the stories +were all told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist +thinks about persons and situations." [Footnote: W.D. Howells in the +Century for November, 1882.] This interpretation of the mission of the +novelist well describes George Eliot's work, for she never hesitated to +tell her reader what she thought about the situations and the persons of +whom she wrote. + +The new method, as developed in sympathy with agnosticism, fails in +literature just as science fails to be a complete interpretation of the +universe. The process which answers in the material world does not answer +in the spiritual. The instruments which tell the secrets of matter, close +the avenues to the revelations of mind. The methods of experiment and +demonstration which have brought the universe to man's knowledge, have not +been sufficient to make the soul known to itself. Any literary methods +imitating physical science must share in its limitations without its power +over the materials with which it has to deal. Literature has hitherto been +made helpful and delightful and acceptable because of its ideal elements. +Belief in a spiritual world, belief in the imperative law of righteousness +as a divine command, runs through all effective literature. However +realistic the poets have been when they have reached their highest and +best, they have believed that the soul, and what belongs to it, is the only +_reality_. Divorced of this Element, literature is at once lowered in tone, +a dry-rot seizes upon it and eats away its finest portions. If Goethe and +Shakspere are realists in literary method, as some of their interpreters +would claim, yet to them the spiritual is supreme, the soul is monarch. +So it is with Homer, with Dante, with Scott, with Cervantes, with Victor +Hugo, with every supremely artistic and creative mind. Great minds +instinctively believe in the creative power of the mind, in its capacity +for self-direction. An unbiassed mind gifted with genius sees over +and through all obstacles, leaps to magnificent results, will not be +restrained by the momentary conditions of the present. Education or social +environment, however adverse, will not long hinder the poet from his work. +He writes for the future, if the present will not accept him, confident +that what his soul has to utter can be truly uttered only as his own +individuality impels, and that if he is faithful to his genius the world +will listen in due time. This power of personality lies at the basis of all +genuine literature, teaching faith in the soul, faith in a providential +ordering of the world, and overturning all agnostic theories about realism +and environment. + +This instinctive faith in mind is the basis of all genuine idealism. The +idealist is not the creator of an imaginary world, peopling it with shapes +that never existed; but he is one who believes in ideas, and in mind as +their creator and the vehicle of their expression. Contemporary with George +Eliot was a group of men who believed in the mind as something other than +the temporary product of an evolutionary process. With them she may be +contrasted, her work may be measured by theirs. Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning +and Buskin shared with her the radical ideas of the time. Not one of them +has been fettered by narrow theories or cramped by old social doctrines. +The broad, inquiring, scientific spirit of the time has been shared by them +all. Buskin is a realist, Carlyle believed in the enduring realm of facts, +and they have all accepted the spirit of naturalism which has ruled the +century. The scientific, philosophic and social theories of the time have +been their inspiration. Certain ideas about law, progress and social +regeneration have affected them through and through. Yet as regards the one +great characteristic of idealism, all have widely departed from George +Eliot, for all regard mind as supreme, all believe in a spiritual realm +environing man. This fact appears throughout their work. To them the +spiritual is objective; they are the true realists. To George Eliot the +spiritual is subjective, the result of our own feelings, to which it is +limited. When the feelings are gone, all is gone. In the pages of these men +there is consequently to be found a power and an inspiration not to be +found in hers. Wonderful as is her skill as an artist, and in the analysis +of character, yet we feel that we are walking over mocking graves whenever +we reach her spiritual conception of the world. She deceives us with a +shadow, offers us a name in place of what we crave for with every nobler +instinct of the soul. Our own feelings are given us, mirrored in the +feelings of others, in place of the reality we desire to possess. + +These men have linked their work with those spiritual convictions which +have been the moral sustenance of the ages. They have gained in strength +and effectiveness thereby. Tennyson has his many doubts, his teachings have +been questioned; and yet he sings,-- + + "That each, who seems a separate whole, + Should move his rounds, and passing all + The skirts of self again, should fall, + Remerging in the general soul,-- + + "Is faith as vague as all unsweet: + Eternal form shall still divide + The eternal soul from all beside; + And I shall know him when we meet." + +His flight of song is more sustained for this faith. He is a truer poet, of +stronger wing and loftier flight, because life has for him an infinite +meaning, because he opens his mind to the impressions which come of man's +spiritual existence. In the same way, Carlyle has a grander meaning running +through his books, more of sublimity, a finer eloquence, because the +spiritual is to him real. Doubter and scorner as he was, he could not but +see that man's being reaches beyond the material world and interprets some +higher realm. Vague as that faith was with him, it was a source of the most +effective literary power and stimulus. He bursts forth, under its impulse, +into impassioned passages of the noblest poetic beauty. + +"Perhaps my father, all that essentially was my father, is even now near +me, with me. Both he and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God, we +shall in some higher state of being meet one another, recognize one +another. As it is written, we shall be forever with God. The possibility, +nay (in some way) the certainty, of perennial existence daily grows plainer +to me." + +Ruskin has made it plain how necessary is that tone of mind which is +religious to the best work in art. His own faith has been earnest and +strong in the reality of the spiritual. Realist as he is in art, he +believes in the original and creative power of the mind, and his work has +all taken on a higher spirit and a finer expression because of his +religious convictions. Writing in _Modern Painters_ of man as made in the +image of God, he answers the objection which is raised to the idea that all +the revelation man has is contained in a being so imperfect. + +"No other book, nor fragment of book, than that, will you ever +find,--nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. The +flesh-bound volume is the only revelation that is, that was, or that can +be. In that is the image of God painted; in that is the law of God written; +in that is the promise of God revealed. Know thyself; for through thyself +only thou canst know God. Through the glass, darkly; but except through the +glass, in no wise. A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the +ground;--you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure and at +your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you +shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for +those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be +bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love +your life. Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on +subjection to the human soul. Man is the Sun of the world; more than the +real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth +gauge or measure. Where he is, are the tropics; where he is not, the +ice-world." + +Such words may not be scientific, but they convey real meaning. Their +assertion that the world is to be tested and understood by man, not man by +the world, is one worthy of attention. The conviction of this truth has a +literary power and incentive not to be found in "the scientific method" or +any of its corollaries. + +To this group of writers may be added Mrs. Browning, who, as a poet, did +great and lasting work. Its value, in large measure, rests on its depth of +spiritual conviction, and on its idealism in purpose and spirit. Her +conception of love is finer and truer than George Eliot's, because she gave +it an ideal as well as an altruistic meaning; because she thought it has an +eternal as well as a social significance. As a poet she lost nothing of +charm or of power or of inspiration because she could herself believe, with +simple trust, what she has embodied in "A Child's Thought of God." + + "God is so good, He wears a fold + Of heaven and earth across his face-- + Like secrets kept, for love, untold. + But still I feel that his embrace + Slides down by thrills, through all things made, + Through sight and sound of every place." + +That art is to be nothing more than a copying and interpretation of nature +Mrs. Browning did not believe. In _Aurora Leigh_ she says,-- + + "Art's the witness of what is + Beyond this show. If this world's show were all, + Mere imitation would be all in art." + +The glow of genius burns up out of all her pages, and there is an aroma and +a subtle power in them which comes alone of this conception of art. She +could not rest content with the little round of man's experience, but found +that all the universe is bound together and all its parts filled with a +God-spirit. + + "No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee + But finds some coupling with, the spinning stars; + No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere; + No chaffinch but implies the cherubim: + ... Earth's crammed with heaven, + And every common bush afire with God." + +That is a larger faith and a truer faith than appears anywhere in the pages +of George Eliot, and it is one which impregnates most of the best +literature the world posseses with light and life. It is a faith which +gives hope and impulse where the other saddens and unnerves. + +There is wanting in George Eliot's books that freshness of spirit, that +faith in the future, and that peaceful poise of soul which is to be found +in the writings of Tennyson, Ruskin and Mrs. Browning. Even with all his +constitutional cynicism and despair, the teachings of Carlyle are much more +hopeful than hers. An air of fatigue and world-weariness is about all her +work, even when it is most stimulating with its altruism. Though in theory +not a pessimist, yet a sense of pain and sorrow grows out of the touch of +each of her books. In this she missed one of the highest uses of +literature, to quicken new hopes and to awaken nobler purposes. There is a +tone of joy and exultation in the power life confers, an instinctive sense +of might to conquer the world, in the best writing. To make men think, to +move men to action, to confer finer feelings and motives, is the power of +the true poet. When he does not accomplish this he has written to a lesser +purpose. Literature aims either to please or to quicken the mind. It cannot +please when it leaves the heart depressed and burdened with the failures +and sadness of the world. If it is to please, it must make use of that +goodness and joy which are in excess of evil and misery. It cannot quicken +when it unnerves the mind and brings despair of moral purpose. If it is to +inspire it must show that something great is to be done, and awaken the +courage to do it. + +That life has its sad and painful elements is a terrible fact, and the +novelist who would paint life as it is must recognize them. It is quite as +true that the good and the hopeful are more than the sad and painful, that +right is more powerful in human life than wrong. The novelist who would +paint life with an exact and even-handed justice, must not make all his +endings sorrowful, for very many in real life are not so. _The Mill on the +Floss_ would have been a more powerful and effective book could Maggie have +been made to conquer. It would have been quite as true to nature to have +represented her as overcoming her defects, and as being purified through +suffering. Is all suffering to conquer us, instead of our being able to +conquer it, and gaining a more peaceful and a purer life through its aid? +If Maggie is George Eliot in her youthful experiences, then the novel is +untrue to fact in that Marian Evans conquered and Maggie failed. The same +fault is to be found in _Middlemarch_, that Dorothea, great as she is, +deserved a much better fate than that accorded to her. The elements of +womanly greatness were in her character, and with all the barriers created +by society she would have done better things had her creator been true to +her capacities in unfolding her life-history. The effect of both these +great novels is one of depression and disappointment. The reader always +expects more as he goes on his way through these scenes, depicted with such +genius, than is realized at the end. Disappointment is almost inevitable, +for the promise is greater than the fulfilment. The like result is produced +by those books which have the brightest closing scenes, as in _Adam Bede_ +and _Daniel Deronda_, where the author's aim was evidently hopeful and +constructive. _Silas Marner_ and _Felix Holt_ are the only exceptions to +this pessimistic tone, and in which justice is done to the better side of +life. In all her later books the ending is painful. In _The Mill on the +Floss_, Maggie and Tom are drowned after Maggie had been led to a most +bitter end of her love-affairs. In _Romola_ the heroine is left a widow, +after her husband's treachery had brought him to a terrible death, and +after Savonarola had suffered martyrdom. Dorothea marries into a life of +ordinary drudgery, and Lydgate fails. Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen are +separated from each other, and Deronda goes to the east in furtherance of a +wild scheme of Jewish colonization. Fedalma loses her father by the +treachery of her lover, and without hope conducts her tribe to Africa. +Jubal dies dishonored, and Armgart loses her voice. Yet it is not merely +that the conclusion does not lead to the expected result, but throughout +there is a tone of doubt and failure. That George Eliot purposed to give +life this tinge of sadness is not to be accepted as the true explanation of +it. It is known that she did not have such a purpose, that she was +surprised and disappointed that her books should produce such a result on +her readers. The explanation is to be found in another direction. + +She was an agnostic; life had no wide horizon for her. The light of a +genuinely ideal and spiritual conception of life was not hers. The world +was bounded to her vision, rounded into the little capacity possessed by +man. Where others would have cast a glow of hope and sunset brilliance, +promise of a brighter day yet to dawn over the closing scenes of her +novels, she could see nothing beyond but the feeble effect of an earthly +transmitted good. In this regard her books afford a most interesting +contrast to those of the two other great women who have adorned English +literature with their genius. The lot of Mrs. Browning and Charlotte Bronte +was much sadder and more depressing than that of George Eliot; more of +darkness and pain affected their lives. A subtle tone of sadness runs +through their books, but it is not burdensome and depressing as is the case +of George Eliot. There is hope with it, and a buoyant faith in the good, +which lies above and beyond all pain and sorrow. With neither of them was +this faith conventional, a mere reflection of the religion taught them in +childhood. It was a thoughtful result of a large experience, and of hard +contact with many of the severest facts of human experience. That wide +horizon of spiritual reality which shone for them on every hand, lights all +their work with a brilliance which almost puts out of sight the pain and +sorrow of the world. The reader of their books is made to believe that life +is an endless good; he is cheered and made stronger for what life offers +him. + +Agnosticism may have its great and heroic incentives, it may impel men to a +nobler activity, but its literary effect, as a motive towards a more +inspiring life, has not been satisfactory in the hands of George Eliot. +Shakspere is not a teacher of philosophy or ethics, he has no doctrines to +preach, no theories to advocate. What he believed, it would be difficult to +ascertain from his writings; yet he is an effective teacher of morals, he +stimulates into activity all that is best in man, life widens and deepens +under the touch of his genius. So is it with Milton, Schiller, Moliere, +Calderon, Montaigne and Wordsworth. So is it with George Eliot in all that +concerns our duties, and even with our human sympathies. In the one +direction of trust she is wanting, and her books are devoid of it. +Shakspere makes us realize that God rules over the world; George Eliot +leaves us with the feeling that we know nothing, and can hope for but +little. That her theories really cast a shadow over the world, may be seen +in all her dealings with love. Love is with her a human passion, deep, +pure, blessed. It crowns some of her characters with joy and peace and +strength; it is never impure and base in her pages. Yet it is human, it is +a social force, it is to be made altruistic. It never gains that high +poetic influence and charm which glorifies it in the writings of Mrs. +Browning, Browning and Tennyson. Browning conceives of it as an eternal +passion, as one with all that is divinest in man, as a medium of his +spiritual development. In his pages it glows with moral promise, it +inspires and regenerates. The poet should deal with love, not as a thing +base and susceptible of abuse, but as an influence capable of the most +beneficent results in the uplifting of man's nature. If it degrades, it +also sweetens; and only that is love which makes life richer and more +worthy. The true artist can afford to deal with that which pleases, not +with that which saddens and disgusts. The real love is the pure love, not +the depraved. The natural is the noble, not the debased life. + +George Eliot's originality of method has given rise to a new school in +fiction. Her imitators, even when at their best, are not her equals, and +they have degraded her methods oftentimes to paltry uses. They have tried +to take photographs of life, supposing that art has for its aim to copy +nature. They have failed to see, what she did see, though not so clearly as +could have been desired, that art must do much more than imitate some scene +or fact out of nature. It must give beauty, meaning and expression to what +it copies. And it must do more than imitate: it must go beyond mere +description, and introduce unity, purpose and thought into its work. True +art has a soul as well as a body, says something to the mind as well as to +the eye, appeals to the soul as well as to sense. Had George Eliot done +nothing more than to describe common English life there would have been +small excuse for her work. She did more, touched that life with genius, +made it blossom into beauty, and gave to it deep moral meanings. The +defects of her method are to be seen in the fact that her imitators cannot +get above life's surface, and deal mainly with shallow or degraded natures. +Her methods do not inspire great work, while her own genius redeemed the +false ways into which she was led by her philosophic theories. + +Science can dissect the human body, but it can do little towards an +explanation of the subtler meanings of life and mind. Its methods are +analytical; it has reached no truly synthetic results in the regions where +knowledge is most to be desired. Its effects on literature are destructive. +Science destroys poetry, dries up the poetic sense, closes the doors of +imagination. The attempt to make science co-operate with poetry is in +itself the promise of failure. The limitations of George Eliot's work are +the limitations of poetry subdued by science. Could she have rid herself of +that burden, been impelled by a faith and an ideal purpose commensurate +with her genius, the result would have been much greater. This limitation +suggests the fact that literature is synthetic and constructive in its +purpose and spirit. It is this fact which has made the classic literatures +so powerful in their effect on modern Europe. They have given unity, +spiritual purpose and ideal aims to the whole modern world. The freshness +as of an eternal spring was in the literature of Greece, the naturalness of +a healthy manhood. That literature is organic, it is one with life, it is +refreshing as nature itself. That literature lives and flames with power +because it is synthetic, buoyant, touched with an eternal spiritual beauty, +great with promise of a growing earth. Its poets do not dissect, but build; +they do not analyze, but create. And this is the literary need of the +present time. There is need of more poetry, a more poetic interpretation of +life, a richer imagination and a finer sense of beauty. The common is +everywhere, but it is not necessarily great or beautiful or noble. It may +have its elements of pathos and tragedy, its touches of beauty and its +motives of heroism. It has in it also the promise of better things to be. +That is the true poetry, the true fiction, which brings out this promise so +that we know it, so that it moves us to better deeds and enchants us with +music of purer living. The world is bad enough without dragging to the +light all its evils and discords; let us rather know what promise it +contains of the better. In one word, the real oppresses and enthralls; the +ideal liberates, and brings us to ourselves. + +Genius redeems every fault. It must be taken for what it is, must not be +criticised, is to be used to the highest ends. Only when genius unites +itself to false methods and checks itself by false theories, has the critic +a right to complain. Genius, obedient to its own laws, accepts every fact +life presents, and lifts each one to be an instrument for the enlargement +of man's life. When it deliberately strikes out all that is not human, +however, from man's experience, denies the realty of that impression and +that conviction which comes from other than material sources, it cripples +and denies itself. + + + + +XX. + + +THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT. + +It must be remembered that George Eliot does not use the novel merely for +the purpose of inculcating certain doctrines, and that her genius for +artistic creation is of a very high order. In dealing with her as a thinker +and as a moral and religious teacher, she is to be regarded, first of all, +as a poet and an artist. Her ethics are subordinate to her art; her +religion is subsidiary to her genius. That she always deliberately set +about the task of introducing her positivism into the substance of her +novels is not to be supposed. This would be to imply a forgetfulness on her +part of her own methods, and a prostration of art to purposes she would +have scorned to adopt. This is evidently true, however, that certain +features of the positive and the evolution philosophy had so thoroughly +approved themselves to her mind as to cause them to be accepted as a +completely satisfactory explanation of the world, so far as any explanation +is possible. So heartily were they received, so fully did they become +incorporated with the substance of her thinking, that she viewed all human +experiences in their light. They had ceased to be theory and speculation +with her. When she thought about the world, when she observed the acts of +men, the positivist explanation was at once applied, and instinctively. + +That she did teach positivism is unfortunately true, so far as her literary +touch and expression is concerned. That philosophy affects all her books +with its subtly insinuating flavor, and it gives meaning and bias to most +of them. They thus gain in definiteness of purpose, in moral vigor, in +minutely faithful study of some phases of human experience, and in a +massive impression of thoughtfulness which her work creates. At the same +time, they undoubtedly lose in value as studies of life; in free range of +expression for her genius, her poetry and her art; and in that spiritual +vision which looks forward with keen gazing eyes of hope and confident +inquiry. + +Her teaching, like most teaching, is a mingled good and evil. In more than +one direction her ethical and religious influence was most wholesome and +effective. She brought into clear light a few great facts, and made them +the more conspicuous by the strong emphasis she gave them. This is, in the +main, the method of all teaching and of all progress. Development seldom +proceeds in a direct line, but rather, so far as man is concerned, by +forcible emphasis laid on some great fact which has been previously +neglected. The idealism of a previous age had shown the value of certain +facts and tendencies in human nature, but it had exaggerated some faculties +and capacities of man, as well as neglected others. In consequence, our own +time swings to the other extreme, and cannot have too much of evolution and +positivism. + +Idealism is in human nature, and will give itself expression. Positivism is +also a result of our experience and of our study of the universe, both +material and mental; it is a result of the desire for definite knowledge. +As a re-action against the excesses of idealism it is a powerful leaven, +and it brings into necessary prominence those facts which are neglected by +the opposite philosophy. It takes account of facts, and scorns mysticism; +and it thus appeals to a deep-seated bias of the time. + +George Eliot's books have an interest as an attempt at an interpretation +of life from its more practical and realistic side, and not less as a +re-action against the influences of very nearly all the great literary +minds of the earlier half of the century in England. Under the lead of +Coleridge and Wordsworth, and influenced by German thought and literature, +a remarkable movement was then developed in English literature. The outcome +of that movement has been surpassed only by that of the age of Shakspere. +Freshness of thought, love of nature, profound humanitarian convictions, +and spontaneity wedded to great largeness of ideas, characterize this +period and its noble work. Such an age is almost invariably followed by an +age of re-action, criticism, realism and analysis. An instinctive demand +for a portrayal of the more positive side of life, and the influence of +science, have developed a new literary school. For doctrine it teaches +agnosticism, and in method it cares mainly for art and beauty of form. +Towards the development of the new school George Eliot has been a leading +influence, though her sympathies have not gone with all its tendencies and +results. + +If Wordsworth exaggerated the importance of the intuitive and personal, +George Eliot equally exaggerated the value of the historic and hereditary. +It was desirable, however, that the relations of life to the past should be +brought out more distinctly by a literary development of their relations to +the present, and that the influence of social heredity should be seen as +affecting life on all sides. Tradition is a large and persistent element in +the better life of the race, while the past certainly has a powerful +influence over the present. This fact was neglected by Wordsworth, and +especially is it neglected by the intuitive philosophies. They ignore the +lessons of the past, and assume that a new and perfect world is to be +evolved from the depths of consciousness. That to think a better world is +to create a better world, they seem to take for granted, while the fact is +that the truer life is the result of a painful and long-continued struggle +against adverse conditions. What has been, persists in remaining, and the +past, with all its narrowness and prejudices, continues to influence men +more powerfully than does clear thought or regard for the truth. Emotion +and sentiment cling about what has become sacred with age. Channels for +thought and activity having once been made, it is very difficult to abandon +them for untried paths approved even by reason. + +The historic view is one of much importance, and is likely to be overlooked +by the poets and novelists. It is also ignored by the radicals in morals +and religion. Much which George Eliot says on this subject is of great +value, and may be heeded with the utmost profit. Her words of wisdom, +however, lose much of their value because they utterly ignore those +spontaneous and supernatural elements of man's higher life which lift it +quite out of the region of dependence on history. + +There is something to be said in behalf of George Eliot's attitude towards +religion, which caused her to hold it in reverence, even when rejecting the +objective validity of its dogmas. Yet much more is to be said for that +other attitude, which is faithful to the law of reason, and believes that +reason is competent to say some truer and larger word on a subject of such +vital importance and such constant interest to man. That both reason and +tradition are to be listened to reverently is true, but George Eliot so +zealously espoused the cause of tradition as to give it an undue +prominence. Her lesson was needed, however, and we may be all the better +able to profit by it because she was so much an enthusiast in proclaiming +its value. The even poise of perfect truth is no more to be had from her +pages than from those of others. + +The emphasis she laid on feeling and sentiment was a needed one, as a +counterpoise to the exaggerations of rationalism. Man does live in his +feelings more than in his reason. He is a being of sentiment, a creature of +impulse, his social life is one of the affections. In all the ranges of his +moral, religious and social life he is guided mainly by his emotions and +sentiments. It cannot be said, however, as George Eliot would have us say, +that these are human born and have no higher meaning. They are the +outgrowth of spiritual reality, as well as of human experience; they repeat +the foregleams and foresights of a + + "far-off divine event, + To which the whole creation moves." + +Life is enriched and flooded with light by the emotions, and feeling, true +and tender and pure, is as much the symbol of humanity as reason itself. It +was therefore well that some one should attempt to justify the emotional +life against the aspersions of those who have done it grave injustice. It +is true that man is not a being who wholly arrives at his method of life +through reason, but feeling lends quite as important aid. He does not only +think, but he has emotions as well; he not only weighs evidence, but he +acts by impulse. He is continually led by the emotions, sentiments and +impulses created for him by the life of ages past. Without emotion there +could be no art, no poetry and no music. Without emotion there would be no +religion and no spiritual life. Sentiment sweetens, beautifies and endears +all that is human and natural. + +Emotion and the affections, however, seem to be shorn of their highest +beauty and glory when they are restricted to a merely earthly origin and +compass of power. It is altogether impossible to believe that their own +impulse to look beyond the human is a delusion, and that they really have +nothing to report that is valid from beyond the little round which man +treads. To believe in the human beauty and glory of the feelings, and to +rejoice in their power to unite us to our kind, need imply no forgetfulness +of their demand for a wider expression and a higher communion. + +Her theory of the origin of feeling is not to be accepted. It means +something more than an inheritance of ancestral experience. It is the +result rather than the cause of reason, for reason has an influence she did +not acknowledge, and an original capacity which she never saw. Her view of +feeling was mainly theoretical, for she was led in her attitude towards the +facts of life, not by sentiment, but by reason. Hers was a thoughtful +rather than an impulsive mind, and given to logic more than to emotion. + +Her enthusiasm for altruism, her zeal for humanity, lends a delightful +feature to her books. It gives a glow and a consecration to her work, and +makes her as great a prophet as positivism is capable of creating. And it +is no idle power she awakens in her positivist faith in man. She shames +those who claim a broader and better faith. Zeal for man is no mean gospel, +as she gives life and meaning to it in her books. To live for others, too +many are not likely to do. She made altruism beautiful, she made it a +consecration and a religion. Those who cannot accept her agnosticism and +her positivism may learn much from her faith in man and from her enthusiasm +for humanity. No faith is worth much which does not lead to a truer and a +more helpful love of man. Any faith is good in so far as it makes us more +humane and sympathetic. In this regard, the radicalism of George Eliot was +a great advance on much of the free-thinking of our century. She desired to +build, not to destroy. She was no iconoclast, no hater of what other men +love and venerate. Her tendencies were all on the side of progress, good +order and social growth. + +Her conception of the organic social life of the race is one of great +value. It led her to believe in the possibility of a social organization in +the future based on science, and better capable of meeting all the wants of +mankind than the more personal and competitive methods have done. This +belief in the organic unity of the race is not necessarily positivist in +its character, for Hegel entertained it as fully as does Herbert Spencer. +The larger social life will come, however, as individuals are moved to lead +the way, and not alone as the result of a general evolutionary process. On +its mental side, her social theory is to be regarded with grave suspicions, +for it brings all minds to the same level. No mind of commanding influence +is to be found in her books. No powerful intellect gives greatness to any +of her plots. Her Felix Holt is not a man of original and positive thought. +We accept, but do not enthusiastically admire him. Deronda is a noble +character, but he in no sense represents the largest things of which a +social leader is capable. He disappoints and is weak, and he has no power +to create the highest kind of leadership. In other words, he is not a great +man. The world's reformers have been of another temper and mettle. He is no +Mazzini, no Luther. George Eliot's social theories loft no room for such +men. They were superfluous in her social system. The man not to be +explained by heredity and tradition had no place in her books; and no +genius, no great man, can ever be explained by heredity and tradition +alone. + +George Eliot evidently desired to destroy individualism as a social force. +The individual, according to her teaching, is to renounce himself for the +sake of the race. He is to live, not as a personal being, but as a member +of the social organization; to develop his altruistic nature, not to +perfect his personal character. The finer flavor of personality is brushed +mercilessly away by this method. + +Reason needs to be justified in opposition to her excessive praise of +feeling. Meanwhile, the capacity of man to live a life higher than that of +his social state is to be asserted. He is indeed a member of humanity, but +humanity does not absorb him to the cost of his personality. Life is strong +in those ages in which the individual is able to assert his own +personality, in opposition to what is imperfect and untrue in the life of +his time. This failure to recognize the worth and capacity of the +individual is a most serious defect in George Eliot's work, and mars it in +many directions. A very competent critic has shown how serious is the +limitation arising in this manner, and permeating her books with a false +conception of life. + +"So far as George Eliot's life is concerned," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, +"she was eager in her self-development, and as eager in her sympathies. +But it was a different matter in the main drift of her work. She lowered +the power of individualism. Nay, she did not believe in its having any +self-caused or God-caused existence. Few have individualized their +characters more than she did, and of these characters we have many distinct +types. But she individualized them with, I may say, almost the set purpose +of showing that their individualism was to be sacrificed to the general +welfare of the race. The more her characters cling to their individuality +the more they fail in reaching happiness or peace. If they are noble +characters, they are finally obliged, through their very nobility, to +surrender all their ideals, all their personal hopes, all the individual +ends they hoped to develop; and they reach peace finally only through utter +surrender of personality in humanity. The characters in her books who do +not do this, who cling to their individuality and maintain it, succeed in +life, for the most part, if they are strong; are broken to pieces if they +are weak; but in all cases, save one, are not the noble but the ignoble +characters. The whole of her books is a suppressed attack on individualism, +and an exaltation of self-renunciation as the only force of progress, as +the only ground of morality. I leave aside here, as apart from the moral +side of the subject, the view that individual power or weakness of any kind +is the consequence of the past, of race, of physical causes. What a man is +found to do is not affected by that, in her view.... No one can deny that +the morality is a lofty one, and, as far as it asserts self-renunciation, +entirely useful; we have with all our hearts to thank George Eliot for that +part of her work. But when sacrifice of self is made, in its last effort, +equivalent to the sacrifice of individuality, the doctrine of +self-renunciation is driven to a vicious extreme. It is not self-sacrifice +which is then demanded, it is suicide ... Fully accepted, it would reduce +the whole of the human race to hopelessness. That, indeed, is the last +result. A sad and fatal hopelessness of life broods over all the nobler +characters. All their early ideals are sacrificed, all their early joys +depart, all the pictures they formed are blotted out. They gain peace +through renunciation, after long failure; some happiness in yielding to the +inevitable, and harmonizing life with it; and some blessedness in doing all +they can for the progress of those who follow them, for the good of those +that are with them. Their self is conquered, not through ennoblement of +personality, but through annihilation of personality. And having +surrendered their separate personality, they then attain the fitting end, +silence forevermore. It is no wonder that no characters are so sad, that +none steep the reader in such hopelessness of joy, as the noble characters +of the later works of George Eliot. They want the mighty power, the +enkindling hopes, the resurrection of life, the joy and rapture which +deepens towards death and enables man to take up the ideals of youth +again." + +If too severe in some directions, this criticism is substantially sound. It +does not matter what theory of personality we adopt, in a philosophical +sense, if that theory upholds personal confidence and force of will. If it +does not do this, the whole result is evil. This lack of faith in +personality saddened all the work done by George Eliot. In theory a +believer in an ever-brightening future, and no pessimist, yet the outcome +of her work is dark with despondency and grief. + +Life is sad, hard and ascetic in her treatment of it. An ascetic tone runs +through all her work, the result of her theories of renunciation. The same +sternness and cheerlessness is to be seen in the poetry and painting of the +pre-Raphaelites. The joy, freshness and sunniness of Raphael is not to be +found in their work. Life is painful, puritanic and depressing to them. Old +age seems to be upon them, or the decadence of a people that has once been +great. Human nature does not need that this strain be put upon it. Life is +stronger when more assertive of itself. It has a right to assert itself in +defiance of mere rules, and only when it does so is it true and great. The +ascetic tone is one of the worst results of a scientific view of the world +as applied to literature; for it is thoroughly false both in fact and in +sentiment. The strong, hopeful, youthful look at life is the one which +literature demands, and because it is the nearest the heart and spirit of +life itself. The dead nation produces a dead literature. The age made +doubtful by an excess of science produces a literature burdened with +sadness and pain. Great and truthful as it may be, it lacks in power to +conquer the world. It shows, not the power of Homer, but the power of +Lucretius. + +Her altruism has its side of truth, but not all of the truth is in it. Any +system of thought which sees nothing beyond man is not likely to find that +which is most characteristic in man himself. He is to be fathomed, if +fathomed at all, by some other line than that of his own experience. If he +explains the universe, the universe is also necessary to explain him. Man +apart from the supersensuous is as little to be understood as man apart +from humanity. He belongs to a Universal Order quite as much as he belongs +to the human order. Man may be explained by evolution, but evolution is not +to be explained by anything in the nature of man. It requires some larger +field of vision to take note of that elemental law. Not less true is it +that mind does not come obediently under this method of explanation, that +it demands account of how matter is transformed into thought. The law of +thought needs to be solved after mind is evolved. + +There is occasion for surprise that a mind so acute and logical as George +Eliot's did not perceive that the evolution philosophy has failed to settle +any of the greater problems suggested by Kant. The studies of Darwin and +Spencer have certainly made it impossible longer to accept Locke's theory +of the origin of all knowledge in individual experience, but they have not +in any degree explained the process of thought or the origin of ideas. The +gulf between the physiological processes in the brain and thought has not +been bridged even by a rope walk. The total disparity of mind and matter +resists all efforts to reduce them to one. The utmost which the evolution +philosophy has so far done, is to attempt to prove that mind is a function +of matter or of the physiological process. This conclusion is as far as +possible from being that of the unity of mind and matter. + +That man is very ignorant, and that this world ought to demand the greater +share of his attention and energies, are propositions every reasonable +person is ready to accept. Granted their truth, all that is necessarily +true in agnosticism has been arrived at. It is a persistent refusal to see +what lies behind outward facts which gives agnosticism all its practical +justification. Art itself is a sufficient refutation of the assertion that +we know nothing of what lies behind the apparent. That we know something of +causes, every person who uses his own mind may be aware. At the same time, +the rejection of the doctrine of rights argues obedience to a theory, +rather than humble acceptance of the facts of history. That doctrine of +rights, so scorned by George Eliot, has wrought most of the great and +wholesome social changes of modern times. Her theory of duties can show no +historic results whatever. + +To separate George Eliot's theories from her genius it seems impossible +to do, but this it is necessary to do in order to give both their proper +place. All praise, her work demands on its side where genius is active. +It is as a thinker, as a theorizer, she is to be criticised and to be +declared wanting. Her work was crippled by her philosophy, or if not +crippled, then it was made less strong of limb and vigorous of body by that +same philosophy. It is true of her as of Wordsworth, that she grew prosy +because she tried to be philosophical. It is true of her as it is not true +of him, that her work lacks in the breadth which a large view of the world +gives. His was no provincial conception of nature or of man. Hers was so in +a most emphatic sense. The philosophy she adopted is not and cannot become +the philosophy of more than a small number of persons. In the nature of the +case it is doomed to be the faith of a few students and cultured people. +It can stir no common life, develop no historic movements, inaugurate no +reforms, nor give to life a diviner meaning. Whether it be true or +not,--and this need not here be asked,--this social and moral limitation of +its power is enough to condemn it for the purposes of literature. In so far +as George Eliot's work is artistic, poetic, moral and human, it is very +great, and no word too strong can be said in its praise. It is not too +excessive enthusiasm to call her, on the whole, the equal of any novelist. +Her genius is commanding and elemental. She has originality, strength of +purpose, and a profound insight into character. Yet her work is weakened by +its attachment to a narrow theory of life. Her philosophy is transitory in +its nature. It cannot hold its own, as developed by her, for any great +length of time. It has the elements of its own destruction in itself. The +curious may read her for her speculations; the many will read her for her +realism, her humanity and her genius. In truth, then, it would have been +better if her work had been inspired by great spiritual aims and +convictions. + + + + +XXI. + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY. + +As an aid to those who may wish to carry further the preceding study of +George Eliot, the following bibliography and lists of references have been +compiled. In their preparation constant use has been made of _Poole's Index +of Periodical Literature_, the bibliography contained in _The Manchester +Literary Club Papers_ for 1881, and a list of references published in +_The Literary World_ (Boston) for February 24, 1883. Numerous additions +have been made to these bibliographies, while the references have been +verified as far as possible. An occasional reference given in these lists +has not been discoverable, as that of the Manchester Club to the _London +Quarterly Review_ for January, 1874, for an article on "George Eliot and +Comtism," and Poole's reference to the same article in the _London +Quarterly_, 47:446. This will be found in the number for January 1877, +volume ninety-four. + + +1. WRITINGS. + +1846. _The Life of Jesus_, by Strauss. Translated from the fourth German + edition, 3 vols. Chapman Brothers, London. + +1852-3. Assistant editor of the Westminster Review. + +1852. The Westminster Review for January contained her notice of + Carlyle's Life of John Sterling. + + In the July number appeared her article on _The Lady Novelists_. + +1854. _The Essence of Christianity_, by Feuerbach. Translated from the + second German edition. John Chapman, London. + + The Westminster Review for October published her _Woman in France: + Madame de Sable_. + + She wrote, it is supposed, occasionally for The Leader newspaper, + of which journal Lewes was the literary editor. None of her + contributions have been identified. [Footnote: There is a nearly + complete set of The Leader in the Boston Athenaeum Library.] + +1855. Westminster Review, October, _Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming_. + +1856. Westminster Review, January, _German Wit: Heinrich Heine_. July, + _The Natural History of German Life_. October, _Silly Novels by + Lady Novelists_. + +1857. Westminster Review, January, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness: + the Poet Young_. + + In Blackwood's Magazine for January and February appeared _The Sad + Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton_; in March, April, May and + June, _Mr. Gilfil's Love Story_; from July to December, _Janet's + Repentance_. In December these stories were published in two + volumes under the title of _Scenes of Clerical Life_, by George + Eliot. Edinburgh, Blackwood & Sons. Reprinted in Living Age from + April to December, 1857. + +1859. In February, _Adam Bede_ appeared in three volumes, Blackwoods. + + Blackwood's Magazine for July contained _The Lifted Veil_. + +1860. In April, _The Mill on the Floss_ was published in three volumes, + Blackwoods. + +1861. _Silas Marner_ in March, one volume, Blackwoods. + +1863. _Romola_ appeared in the Cornhill Magazine from July, 1862, to + July, 1863, and was illustrated. It was published in three volumes + in July; Smith, Elder & Co., London. + +1864. The Cornhill Magazine for July contained _Brother Jacob_, with + illustrations. + +1865. The Fortnightly Review for May 15 contained _The Influence of + Rationalism_, and a review of Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament. + +1866. In June, _Felix Holt_ was issued in three volumes, Blackwoods. + +1868. Blackwood's Magazine, January, contained an _Address to Workingmen, + by Felix Holt_. + + In June, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was published by Blackwoods. + +1869. Blackwood's Magazine for May printed _How Lisa Loved the King_. + + The Atlantic Monthly for August contained _Agatha_. + +1870. In Macmillan's Magazine for May, _The Legend of Jubal_. + +1871. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _Armgart_. + + Middlemarch was issued in twelve monthly numbers, beginning with + December, by Blackwoods. + +1874. _The Legend of Jubal and other Poems_ was published by Blackwoods. + It contained: _The Legend of Jubal_, _Agatha_, _Armgart_, _How Lisa + Loved the King_, _A Minor Prophet_, _Brother and Sister_, + _Stradivarius_, _Two Lovers_, _Arion_, _O May I Join the Choir + Invisible_. + +1876. _Daniel Deronda_ was issued in eight monthly parts, beginning in + February, by Blackwoods. + +1878. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _A College Breakfast Party_. + +1879. _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ was published in June by + Blackwoods. + + _The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems, Old and New_, was issued by + Blackwoods, containing, in addition to those in the first edition, + _A College Breakfast Party_, _Self and Life_, _Sweet Evenings Come + and Go_, _Love_, _The Death of Moses_. + + In Blackwood's cabinet edition of George Eliot's complete works, + _The Lifted Veil_ and _Brother Jacob_ are reprinted with _Silas + Marner_. + + After the death of Lewes she edited his _Study of Psychology_ and + his _Mind as a Function of the Organism_. + +1881. The Pall Mall Gazette of January 6 contained her letter to Sara + Hennell concerning the origin of _Adam Bede_. + + Three letters to Professor David Kaufmann appeared in the Athenaeum + of November 26, 1881. + + The following articles also contain sayings of George Eliot's, or + extracts from her letters: In the Contemporary Review, by "One who + knew her," on the Moral Influence of George Eliot; C. Kegan Paul + in Harper's Magazine; F.W.H. Myers in The Century; W.M.W. Call in + the Westminster Review, and a nephew of William Blackwood in + Blackwood's Magazine. + +1882. In Harper's Magazine for March, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps published + numerous extracts from George Eliot's letters under the title of + _Last Words from George Eliot_. + +1883. George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind,--London, W.H. Allen, and Boston, + Roberts Brothers,--contains extracts from several letters. + + The Essays of George Eliot, collected by Nathan Sheppard,--New + York, Funk & Wagnalls,--contains _Carlyle's Life of Sterling_, + _Woman in France_, _Evangelical Teaching_, _German Wit_, + _Natural History of German Life_, _Silly Novels by Lady + Novelists_, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness_, _The Influence + of Rationalism_, _The Grammar of Ornament_, _Felix Holt's Address + to Workingmen_. + + The Complete Essays of George Eliot, Boston, Estes & Lauriat, 1883, + in addition to the above, contains _The Lady Novelists, George + Foster, the German Naturalist, Weimar and its Celebrities_. + + +2. SELECTIONS, TRANSLATIONS AND PORTRAITS. + +Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse, Selected by Alexander +Main. Blackwoods, 1872. + +Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1878; enlarged +and with a biographical memoir prefixed, 1881. + +George Eliot Birthday Book. Blackwoods, 1878. + +George Eliot: Fragments et Pensees, extraits et traduits des ses Oeuvres, +par Ch. Ritter. Geneve, Georges, 1879. + +Character Readings from George Eliot, selected and arranged by Nathan +Sheppard. New York, Harpers, 1882. + +The following translations have been published:-- + +_French_.--Adam Bede, by A. Durade; Mill on the Floss, by A. Durade; +Silas Marner, by Durade; Romola, by Durade; Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, +by E. Pasquet; Dorlcote Mill, by E.D. Forques in Revue des Deux Mondes, +June 15, 1860; The Lifted Veil, in Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1880. + +_Dutch_.--Felix Holt, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1867, and by P. Bruyn, +1873; Middlemarch, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1873; Adam Bede, by P. Bruyn, +1870; Mill on the Floss, by P. Bruyn, 1870; Romola, by P. Bruyn, 1870, +and by J.C. Van Deventer, 1864; Novelettes, by P. Bruyn, 1870. + +_German_.--Adam Bede, by J. Frese; Silas Marner, by J. Frese, 1861; +Mill on the Floss, by J. Frese, 1861; Romola, by A.V. Metzsch, 1864; +Middlemarch, by E. Lehmann, 1872-3; Daniel Deronda, by Strodtmann, 1876; +Felix Holt (no translator's name given), 1867. Der Gelueftche Schleier, +Bruder Jakob, by Lehmann. + +The portrait of George Eliot appearing as the frontispiece to this +volume is from that published in The Century for November, 1881. +Accompanying it was the following account of it and of other +portraits:-- + +"We have the pleasure of presenting to our readers an authentic portrait of +George Eliot, the only one by which it is likely that she will be known to +posterity. We are indebted for this privilege, as we shall presently +explain, to the kindness and courtesy of her husband, Mr. J.W. Cross, who +has allowed us to be the first to usher this beautiful work of art to the +world. In doing so, we believe it will interest readers of The Century +Magazine to learn, for the first time, the exact truth regarding the +portraits of George Eliot, and we have therefore obtained from the three +artists to whom, at different times in her life, she sat, some particulars +of those occasions. + +"Miss Evans passed the winter of 1849-50 at Geneva, in the house of M.F. +d'Albert Durade, the well-known Swiss water-color painter, who is also the +translator of the authorized French version of her works. At that time she +had, however, written nothing original, and had attracted no general +interest. While she stayed with M. Durade and his wife, the Swiss painter +amused himself by making a small portrait of her in oils--a head and +shoulders. This painting remains in the possession of M. Durade, who has +not merely refused to sell it, but will not allow it to be photographed or +reproduced in any form. He has, however, we understand, consented to make a +replica of it for Mr. Cross. We have not seen this interesting work, but we +hear that it is considered, by those who still remember the great writer as +she looked in her thirtieth year, to be remarkably faithful. M. Durade +recently exhibited this little picture for a few days at the Athenee in +Geneva, but has refused to allow it to be brought to London. + +"Ten years after this, in 1859, as the distinguished portrait-painter, Mr. +Samuel Laurence, was returning from America, he happened to meet with 'Adam +Bede,' then just published. He was so delighted with the book that he was +determined to know the author, and it was revealed to him that to do so he +had but to renew his old acquaintance with Mr. George Henry Lewes, whom he +had met years before at Leigh Hunt's. He made George Eliot's acquaintance, +and was charmed with her, and before long he asked leave to make a study of +her head. She assented without any affectation, and, in the early months of +1861, Mr. Lewes commissioned the painter to make a drawing of her. She gave +him repeated sittings in his studio at 6 Wells Street, London, and Mr. +Laurence looks back with great pleasure on the long conversations that +those occasions gave him with his vivacious sitter. The drawing was taken +front face, with the hair uncovered, worn in the fashion then prevalent, +and it was made in chalks. While it was proceeding, Mr. Laurence asked her +if he might exhibit it, when finished, at the Royal Academy, and she at +once consented. But when the time for sending in drew near, the artist +received a letter from Mr. Lewes absolutely withholding this consent, and a +certain strain, of which this was the first symptom, began to embarrass the +relations of the two gentlemen, until Mr. Lewes finally refused to take the +drawing at all. But before the summer was out, Mr. Langford, the reader of +Messrs. Blackwood of Edinburgh, who published George Eliot's works, called +on Mr. Laurence, and asked if he would consent to make a copy of the +drawing for the firm. The artist replied that he should be happy to sell +them the original, and accordingly it passed from his studio, in June, +1861, into the back parlor of Mr. Blackwood's shop, where it now hangs. +Like that of M. Durade, Mr. Laurence's portrait of George Eliot is not to +be in any way reproduced. + +"The remaining portrait is that which we reproduce with this number. It is +an elaborate chalk drawing, in black and white, with a slight touch of +color in the eyes, and was executed in the latter part of 1868 and the +early part of 1867, by Mr. Frederick W. Burton, at that time member of the +Society of Painters in Watercolors, and now director of the National +Gallery in London. George Eliot gave Mr. Burton many sittings in his studio +at Kensington, and the picture was eventually exhibited in the Royal +Academy, in 1867, as No. 735, 'The Author of "Adam Bede."' It passed into +Mr. Lewes's possession, was retained at his death by George Eliot, and is +now the property of Mr. J.W. Cross. In the spring of this year, Mr. Cross +came to the conclusion that--as the shop windows were likely to become +filled with spurious and hideous 'portraits' of George Eliot--it was +necessary to overcome the dislike felt by the family of the great novelist +to any publication of her features, to which in life she had been averse, +and he thereupon determined to record in a monumental way what he felt to +be the best existing likeness. Mr. Cross took the drawing over to M. Paul +Rajon, who is acknowledged to be the prince of modern etchers, and in +his retirement at Auvers-sur-Oise, the great French artist has produced +the beautiful etching which we have been permitted to reproduce in +engraving. For this permission, and for great courtesy and kindness under +circumstances the peculiar nature of which it is not necessary here to +specify, we have to tender our most sincere thanks to Mr. J.W. Cross and to +Mr. Burton. + +"These are regarded by her friends to be the only important portraits of +George Eliot which exist, but Mr. Cross possesses a very interesting black +silhouette, cut with scissors, when she was sixteen. In this profile, the +characteristics of the mature face are seen in the course of development. +There is also a photograph, the only one ever taken, dating from about +1850, the eyes of which are said to be exceedingly fine. As an impression +of later life, there should be mentioned a profile drawn in pencil by Mrs. +Alma Tadema, in March, 1877. Of all the portraits here alluded to, the one +we engrave is the only one at present destined for publication. It may be +added that there exist one or two other profile sketches, which, however, +are not approved by the friends of George Eliot." + + +3. BIOGRAPHICAL. + +Atlantic Monthly, 14:66, December, 1864, Kate Field on "English Authors in +Florence." Louise M. Alcott in the Independent for Nov. 1,1866. The Galaxy, +7:801, June, 1869, Justin McCarthy on "George Eliot and George Lewes;" +reprinted in "Modern Leaders," 1872 "Home Sketches in France and other +Papers," by the late Mrs. Henry M. Field, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1875, p. 208, +"The Author of Adam Bede in Her own Home." International Review, 10:447, +497, May and June, 1881, W. Fraser Rae. The Century. 23:55, with portrait, +F.W.H. Myers, reprinted in Essays: Modern, London, 1883; 23:47, "The +Portrait of George Eliot." The Nineteenth Century, 9:778, Edith Simcox. +Blackwood's Magazine February, 1881. Harper's Magazine, May, 1881, C. Kegan +Paul; reprinted in Biographical Sketches, London, 1883; March, 1882, +E.S. Phelps. Westminster Review, 116:154, July, 1881, W.M.W. Call, "George +Eliot: her Life and Writings." Le Livre, April 10, 1881, "Life in Geneva." +London Daily Graphic, 23:27, January 8, 1851, "Reminiscences of George +Eliot." Lippincott's Magazine, 31:510, May, 1883, J.A. Dickson, "An +Afternoon at Ashbourne." Inquirer, January, 1881, Dr. Sadler's address. +Pall Mall Gazette, December 30, 1880, "Early Life." London Daily News, +December, 30, 1880, account of her funeral. Eclectic Magazine, March, 1881, +account of her early life and of her funeral; April, A personal sketch. +"George Eliot," Mathilde Blind, 1883, W.H. Allen, London. "Pen pictures of +Modern Authors," Wm. Sheppard, 1882, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York. The +Congregationalist, May 28, 1879, Mrs. Annie Downs, "A Visit to George +Eliot." The Christian Leader, October 27,1881, Mrs. M.E. Bruce. + + +4. GENERAL CRITICISMS. + +Quarterly Review, 108:469. Macmillan's Magazine, 14:272, J. Morley; same, +Eclectic Magazine, 67:488; reprinted in "Critical Miscellanies," first +series. Atlantic Monthly, 18:479, H. James. Christian Examiner, 70:227, +I.M. Luyster. North British Review, 45:141, 197. H.H. Lancaster; reprinted +in "Essays and Reviews," Edinburgh, 1876. National Review, 11:191. Home and +Foreign Review, 3:522, Richard Simpson. Fraser's Magazine, 103:263, +February, 1881, T.E. Kebbel, "Village Life according to George Eliot;" +same, Living Age, 148:608. National Quarterly, 1:455, E.L. Wentworth. +Potter's American Monthly, 9:260, 334. British Quarterly Review, 45:141. +Catholic World, 17:775, J. McCarthy, "Comparison between George Eliot and +Fleurange." Canadian Monthly, 11:261, "Later Manner of George Eliot." +Dublin Review, 88:371. Southern Review (new style), 13:205, Mrs. S.B. +Herrick. R.H. Hutton, "Essays, Theological and Literary," 2d vol. 1871. +Contemporary Review, 20:403; same, Living Age, 115:109, Eclectic Magazine, +79:562, Professor E. Dowden; reprinted in "Studies of Literature." Atlantic +Monthly, 33:681, June, 1874, George P. Lathrop, "The Growth of the Novel." +A.C. Swinburne, "A Note on Charlotte Bronte," 1877. International Review, +7:17, July, 1879, Francis Maguire, Jr. Cornhill Magazine, 43:152, Leslie +Stephen, "Critical Study of George Eliot;" same, Living Age, 148:731, +Eclectic Magazine, 96:443. Month, 42:272. Every Saturday, 10:186. North +British Review, 33:165, "George Eliot and Hawthorne." Eclectic Magazine, +88:111, "George Eliot and George Sand." The Nation, 32:201, J. Bryce, +"George Eliot and Carlyle;" 31:456, W.C. Brownell. London Quarterly, +57:154. Blackwood's Magazine, 129:255; same, Living Age, 148:664; Eclectic +Magazine, 96:433. St. Paul's, 12:592, G.B. Smith. Living Age, 58:274; +148:318. Eclectic Magazine, 96:353. Southern Monthly, 14:65. Tinsley's +Monthly, 3:565. Victoria, 31:56. The Century, 23:619, February, 1882, +"George Eliot and Emerson." Library Magazine, 7:84, Nathan Sheppard, +"George Eliot's Analysis of Motives;" reprinted as an introduction to +George Eliot's Essays, Funk & Wagnalls, 1883. Macmillan's Magazine, 46:488, +October, 1882, Annie Matheson, "George Eliot's Children;" same, Living Age, +155:211. The Critic, January, 1881, Edward Eggleston; reprinted in Essays +from the Critic, 1881. Christian Union, February, 1881, Noah Porter. The +Independent, February 17, 1881, Mrs. Lippincott, "Three Great Women." A +History of English Prose Fiction from Sir Thomas Malory to George Eliot, +Bayard Tuckerman, New York, 1882. The English Novel and the Principle of +its Development, Sidney Lanier, New York, 1883. Modern Review, 2:399, +April, 1881, George Sarson, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." Literary +World (London), January, 1881, Peter Bayne Athenaeum, January 1, 1881:20. +The Academy, 19:27, January 8, 1881. Temps, December 26, 1880, Edmond +Scherer. Le Roman Naturaliste, Ferdinand Brunetere, 1883, has a chapter on +"English Naturalism: a Study of George Eliot." Etudes sur la Litterature +Contemporaine, E. Scherer, Paris, 1878. The Pen, 1880, Robert E. +Francillon. East and West: 1:203, June, 1881. Papers of the Manchester +Literary Club, 1881; Bibliography, Charles W. Sutton; "George Eliot as a +Poet," George Milner; "George Eliot as a Novelist," John Mortimer; "George +Eliot's Use of Dialect," William E.A. Axon. National Review, April, 1883, +"New School of Fiction." Merry England, May, 1883, C. Kegan Paul, "The +Rustic of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy." Blackwood's Magazine, April, +1883. Nineteenth Century, October, 1881, John Buskin on "Fiction: Fair and +Foul." + + +5. DISCUSSIONS OF HER TEACHINGS. + +Penn Monthly, 10:579, "The Art of George Eliot." Dublin Review, 89:433, +"Religion of George Eliot." Unitarian Review, 3:357, J.E. Carpenter, +"Religious Influence of George Eliot." "The Ethics of George Eliot's +Works," J.C. Brown, Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1879. Mind, 6:378, +July. 1881, "George Eliot's Art," James Sully. The Spectator, 52:751, +"George Eliot's Ideal Ethics;" same, Littell's Living Age, 142:123, July +12, 1879. Scribner's Magazine. 8:685, Wm. C. Wilkinson; reprinted in +"A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters," 1874. Westminster Review, +117:65, January, 1882, "George Eliot as a Moral Teacher." Contemporary +Review, 39:173, February, 1881, "Moral Influence of George Eliot;" same, +Living Age, 148:501. Unitarian Review, 16:125, 216, August and September, +1881, John A. Bellows, "Religious Tendency of George Eliot's Writings." +Atlantic Monthly, 51:243, February, 1883, M.L. Henry, "The Morality of +Thackeray and George Eliot." The Independent, March 24, 1883, Stopford A. +Brooke, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." "The Religion of Our +Literature," George MacCrie, London, 1875. "George Eliot and Judaism," +David Kaufmann, Blackwoods, 1878. + + +6. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. + +Atlantic Monthly, 1:890. + + +7. ADAM BEDE. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 85:490, April, 1859. Dublin Review, 47:33, November, +1859. Edinburgh Review, 110:223, July, 1859. Westminster Review, 71:486, +April, 1859. Athenaeum, February 26, 1859. Saturday Review, February 26, +1859:191 Atlantic Monthly, 4:521. Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. +"Seth Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors," chiefly by Himself. London: +Tallant & Co., 1859. "George Eliot in Derbyshire," London Society, 27:311, +439; 28:20, by Guy Roslyn (Joshua Hatton); reprinted in book form, London, +1876. + + +8. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 87:611, May, 1860. Dublin University Review, 57:192. +Macmillan's Magazine, 3:441. Westminster Review, 74:24, July, 1860. +Christian Examiner, 69:145, L.G. Ware. + + +9. SILAS MARNER. + +Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. Macmillan's Magazine, 4:305. +Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1861, C. Clarigny. + + +10. ROMOLA. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 116:72. Land We Love, 1:134. Westminster Review, +80:344, October, 1863. Christian Remembrancer, 52:445. Revue des Deux +Mondes, December, 1863, E.D. Forques. + + +11. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. + +Blackwood's Magazine, 100:94, July, 1866. Edinburgh Review, 124:435, +October, 1866; same, Living Age, 91:432. North American Review, 103:557, +July, 1866, A.G. Sedgwick. The Nation, 3:127, Henry James. Contemporary +Review, 3:51. Eclectic Review, 124:34. Chambers's Journal, 43:508. +Westminster Review, 86:200, July, 1866. + + +12. THE SPANISH GYPSY. + +Atlantic Monthly, 22:380, W.D. Howells. North American Review, 107:620, +October, 1868, Henry James. The Nation, 7:13, July 2, 1868, Henry James. +Edinburgh Review, 128:525. Westminster Review, 90:183, Macmillan's +Magazine, 18:281, J. Morley; same, Eclectic Magazine, 71:1276. Blackwood's +Magazine, 103:760. British Quarterly Review, 48:503, Fraser's Magazine, +78:468, J. Skelton. St. James's, 22:478. St. Paul's, 2:583. London +Quarterly, 31:160. Southern Review (new Style), 4:383, W.H. Browne. Every +Saturday, 6:1. + + +13. POEMS. + +Contemporary Review, 8:387, July 1868, Matthew Browne (W.B. Rands); same, +Every Saturday, 6:79. Every Saturday, 16:667, G.A. Simcox. The Argosy, +2:437, November, 1866, Matthew Browne. Saturday Review, 37:75. Macmillan's +Magazine, 22:1. North American Review, 119:484, Heary James. Atlantic +Monthly, 34:102, July, 1874, W.D. Howells. Harper's Magazine, 49:887. +Academy, 5:33, May 10, 1874, G.A. Simcox. Edinburgh Review, 128:523, +October, 1868. Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, 1881, p. 108, George +Milner. The Nation, 19:124. "Our Living Poets: an Essay in Criticism," +H. Buxton Forman, London, 1871. + + +14. MIDDLEMARCH. + +Quarterly Review, 134:336, April, 1873. Edinburgh Review, 137:246, January, +1873. Fortnightly Review, 19:142, Sidney Colvin. Blackwood's Magazine, +112:727; same, Living Age, 116:131; Eclectic Magazine, 80:215. The Nation, +16:60, 76, January, 1873, A.V. Dicey. North American Review, 116:432, +April, 1873, T.S. Perry. British Quarterly Review, 57:407, April, 1883. +London Quarterly Review, 40:99, April, 1873. Canadian Monthly, 3:549. Old +and New, 7:352, H.G. Spaulding. Southern Monthly, 12:373, W.H. Browne. +Atlantic Monthly, 31:490, A.G. Sedgwick. Catholic World, 17:775, September, +1873. Die Gegen-wart, 1874, Freidrich Speilhagen. + + +15. DANIEL DERONDA. + +Atlantic Monthly, 38:084, Henry James, December, 1876. North American +Review, 124:31, E.P. Whippie, January, 1877. Edinburgh Review, 144:442, +October, 1876. Fortnightly Review, 26:601, November, 1876, Sidney Colvin. +The Nation, 23:230, 245, October 12, 19, 1876, A.V. Dicey. British +Quarterly Review, 64:472. Eclectic Magazine, 87:657. International Review, +4:68, R.R. Bowker. The Western, 3:603, O.G. Garrison. Potter's American +Monthly, 8:75. Gentleman's Magazine (new style), 17:593, November, 1876, +J. Picciotto; 17:411, R.E. Francillon. Canadian Monthly, 9:250, 343; +10:362. Victoria, 28:227, A.S. Richardson. Temple Bar, 49:542, "Deronda's +Mother;" same, Living Age, 133:248; same, Eclectic Magazine, 88:751. +Macmillan's Magazine, 36:101, J. Jacobs, "Mordecai: a Protest against the +Critics, by a Jew;" same, Living Age, 134:112. Athenacum, 1876:160, 327, +461, 593, 762. Westminster Review, 106:280,574. Appleton's Journal (new +style), 3:274, September, 1877, Wirt Sikes. Deutsche Rundachau, February 7, +1877. Contemporary Review, 29:348, February, 1877, Edward Dowden, reprinted +in "Studies of Literature." + + +16. IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. + +Edinburgh Review, 150:557. Fortnightly Review, 32:144, G. Allen. +Westminster Review, 112:185, July, 1879. The Nation, 28:422, June 19, 1879, +G.E. Woodberry. Fraser's Magazine, 100:103. Canadian Monthly, 16.333. +Unitarian Review, 12:292, R.W. Boodle. + + + + +INDEX + + +A. + +Actions, +_Actors and Acting_ +_Adam Bede_ +_Adam Bede_, quoted +"Address to Workingmen," quoted +Agnosticism +Altruism +Analytic Method +_Animal Life, Studies in_ +"Amos Barton," quoted +_Aristotle_ +"Armgart," quoted +Art +Art, love of +Asceticism +Austen, Jane + +B. + +Blackwood, William +_Blackwood's Magazine_ +Blind, Mathilde quoted +Brabant Dr. +Bray Charles +Bronte Charlotte +Brookbank +"Brother and Sister" +"Brother Jacob" +Browning, Robert +Browning, Mrs. + +C. + +Call, W.M.W., quoted +Carlyle +Causes +"Choir Invisible" +Chapman, John +Characteristics, personal +Childhood, influences surrounding +Child Life +Christianity +"College Breakfast Party" +Colvin, Sidney +Combe, George +Comte +Conscience +Conversation +_Cornhill Magazine_ +Cosmopolitanism +Cowper +Criticism +Culture +Cumming, Dr. + +D. + +_Daniel Deronda_ +_Daniel Deronda_ quoted +Darwin +Death +Deeds +Dialect +Dickens, Charles +Dowden, Prof., quoted +Downs, Annie, quoted +Dramatic power +Duty + +E. + +Emerson +Environment +Essays +"Evangelical Teaching" +Evans, Christiana +Evans, Mrs. Elizabeth +Evans, Isaac +Evans, Robert +Evans, Mrs. Robert +Evil +Evolution Philosophy +Experience + +F. + +Familiar, influence of the +Feeling +Feeling for others +_Felix Holt_ +_Felix Holt_, quoted +Feuerbach +Fichte +Field, Kate, quoted +Fielding, Henry +Fields, Mrs., quoted +Foleshill +_Fortnightly Review_ + +G. + +Garth, Caleb +"German life, natural history of" +God +Goethe +_Goethe, Life of_ +Griff House + +H. + +Harrison, Frederic +Heine +Hennell, Charles +Hennell, Sara +Heredity +House +Howells, W.D. +Huge +Humor +Hutton, R.H., quoted + +I. + +Idealism +Imagination +Immortality +Immortality, subjective +Individuality +"Influence of Rationalism" +Inspiration +Intuition + +J. + +James, Henry +Jones, Owen +"Janet's Repentance," quoted + +K. + +Kant +Kaufmann, Prof. + +L. + +"Lady Novelists" +Law +_Leader_ newspaper +_Legend of Jubal_ +Letters, extracts from +Lewes, George Henry + born + school days + early studies + in Germany + _History of Philosophy_ + _Spanish Drama_ + _Ranthorpe_ + writes for Reviews + _Leader_ + _Philosophy of the Sciences_ + _Life of Goethe_, physiological studies + _Fortnightly Review_ + _Problems of Life and Mind_ + characteristics + death +Lewes, influence on George Eliot +Lewes, Marian Evans + born + parents + early reading + school in Nuneaton + school In Coventry + studying at home + moves to Foleshill + studies continued + early religious views + early scepticism + troubles with her family + finds friends + the Brays + the Hennells + drawn towards positivism + father dies + goes to continent + translates Strauss + Feuerbach + assistant editor of _Westminster Review_ + _Review_ contributor + marriage + studies in Germany + writes _Clerical Scenes_ + adopts name of "George Eliot" + again visits Germany + _Adam Bede_ + controversy about _Adam Bede_ + novel-writing + poems written + house + habits of study + description of person + receptions + summers in country + death of Lewes + marriage to John Walter Cross + death + literary traits +"Lifted Veil" +Liggins, Joseph +Lippincott, Mrs., quoted +Literary Methods +Literature defined +Locke +Love +Lucretius + +M. + +Marriage +Martineau, Harriet +Matter +Meliorism +_Middlemarch_ +_Middlemarch_, quoted +Midland England +Mill, J.S. +_Mill on the Floss_, +_Mill on the Floss_, quoted +"Minor Prophet" +Morality +Mordecai +Morley, John +"Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" +Music, Love of +Myers, F.W.H., quoted +Mysticism + +N. + +Nemesis, +Newdigate, Sir Roger +Novel-writing + +P. + +Past, the +Paul, Kegan, quoted +Pessimism +Philosophy, George Eliot's +Philosophy, Lewes's _History of_ +_Philosophy of the Sciences_ +_Physiology of Common Life_ +Plots +Poetry +Positivism +Prayer +Priory, The +_Problems of Life and Mind_ +Psychology + +R. + +_Ranthorpe_ +Realism +Reason +Receptions +Relativity, Moral +Religion +"Religion of Humanity" +Renaissance +Renunciation +Resignation +Retribution +Romanticism +_Romola_ +_Romola_, quoted +_Rose, Blanche and Violet_ +Ruskin + +S. + +Sadler, Dr., quoted +Sand, George +Satire +Savonarola +_Scenes of Clerical Life_ +Schelling +Scientific illustration +Scott +_Seaside Studies_ +"Self and Life" +Sex in literature +Shakspere +Shelley +_Silas Marner_ +"Silly Novels" +Simcox, Edith, quoted +Society +Social Organism +Sorrow +_Spanish Drama_ +_Spanish Gypsy_ +Speculation, Love of +_Spectator_ +Spencer, Herbert +Spinoza +Spiritual, the +"Stradivarius" +Strauss +Sterling, John +Sympathy +Sully, James, quoted +Supernatural +Swinburne, quoted + +T. + +Tennyson +Thackeray +_Theophrastus Such_ +_Theophrastus Such_, quoted +Times +Tradition + +W. + +_Waverley Novel_ +_Westminster Review_ +"Weimar and its Celebrities" +Whipple, E.P., quoted +Wieland +"Woman in France" +Woman, Literary +Wordsworth + +Y. + +Young, Edward + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE ELIOT; 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