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.