George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy

d 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 fu

nd spiritual life of man. In reviewing Lecky's Rationalism in Europe, she used these suggestive

ngaged 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

s 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

nforms 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; harmo

t 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 o

ieved 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 influen

uly 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 M

ardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developin

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

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 s

o 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

inds 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 individu

says in the

lses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion. Our subtlest analogies of schools and sects must miss the essential

we have common emotions, common experiences, common aspirations, that we are really able to understand man; and not because of statistics, natural history, so

vities 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

f inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must

ise. In the same way, she would have us believe that feeling is safer than reason. Daniel Deronda questions Mordecai's visions, and d

ld 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 emot

imagination is regarded as a means of knowledge, beca

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 inf

linations. 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

he 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 a

to our wills. After Tito Melema had done his first act towards de

children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of o

an unexpected moment, we hear the ever-prese

hat we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated

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 f

ace; and to have once acted greatly, seems a reason why we should always be noble. But Tito was feeling the effect of an oppo

onda reiterates this

ulse of Time, h

or unrighteo

after-throbs t

tillness, an

eathe upon no

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

cuous 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. Here

ing a fresher law t

repl

elf, then, f

lf from being

r, cross your

d eyes to fooli

and smirk, and t

lf-doff all t

, chained to a

rd's thumb, a

prattle o'er h

aza, and she is soon convinced that she is a Zincala, that her

aiden'

istian as t

of reasons for this conviction e

trick of nostr

gh generation

in our frame li

rging, meltin

ecord, leave

history? Shal

their palates

shudder of r

tears of con

ful labor, and

atic-shall th

n the waters,

e curl of eye

ining symbols

mors r

ve 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 sha

ays, "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 a

ter is a Pas

dded Present, s

ecked by sha

's last

l expressed in the little poem on "Self and Life," one of the most fully

olemn, sp

early wid

eur, as on

ear take mi

feet were

w the histo

p breath in

e immorta

other ways, she affirms this faith in tradition. In one of the mottoes in F

hope is fin

o be found in forgetfulness of a noble past. In The Mill on the Floss, when describing St. Ogg's,

o 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 m

he Spanish Gypsy. It is distinctly taught by all the best characters in the words they speak, and it is emphatically taught in the whol

m no God took

ws, to fight fo

to make the

nce or whither

ure of glori

ommon breat

raditional life, he proposes by his deeds to

l

to disown th

ering herd that

r its guide, to

fed beeves that

ace has no gr

ve, it shall

such divine

, that teach,

. I have been sc

rew, deftness

heritage, th

athered by a

a question about the Gypsy's faith; it is made by a common life of fait

is a

est, but by thei

ch other: t

nderers in a

e dire thirst, an

water: th

ulses leap wit

h of eyes, the

even in lying

e inevitab

ilent bodily

tirring of a

the many o

nsecrating oath

infant breath w

rs of that sma

g and sow and re

oath, my daught

for the san

ightning that

jury wrought

rnered good o

orn-even with y

were p

r best life, and the moral purpose and law which is to guide it,

e can duty lie? We should have no l

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

ab

pirit of liste

e boldest doct

us, is like

arents: if th

the child, how

ther say: Two

an, both aged

ripening throug

ans: some ca

ition; and her

terious accor

holds down a l

and searching

and footsteps.

loving check,

the rays of t

son holds. We

dition; we

, by brightenin

e 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 un

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

ce, 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 corresp

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 hi

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,

ggles, 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 harmoniou

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 religio

on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in face of a law which is

nal 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 w

ove, but especially does she magnify the importance of the social environment, and the perpetual influence it has upon the whol

ecause 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 conven

ly 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 hav

d upon us by the environment of childhood. In The Mill on the Fl

d 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 cal

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

iliar associations is described as a source of our faith in the spiritual, ev

rn them to be illusions. They feed the ideal better, and in loving them still, we strengthen, the precious hab

he 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 L

orld 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. Environm