Chapter IX (7)

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:--