beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse
struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on
her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch that
such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which she was
born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly man to a
girl less than half his own age--on modes of education which make a
woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance--on rules of
conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly asserted
beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to
breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life,
where great feelings take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so
strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new
Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual
life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in
daring all for the sake of a brother's burial; the medium in which
their ardent deeds took place is forever gone. But we insignificant
people with our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many
Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that
of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on
the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
The influence of social environment is also presented in _Felix Holt_ as a
chief determining agent in the lives of individuals. However high the aims
and noble the purposes of the individual, he must succumb to those social
influences which are more powerful than he. In the third chapter we are
told that--
This history is chiefly concerned with the private lot of a few men
and women; but there is no private life which has not been determined
by a wider public life, from the time when the primeval milkmaid had
to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the cow she
milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare. Even
in that conservatory existence where the fair Camelia is sighed
for by the noble young Pineapple, neither of them needing to care
about the frost or rain outside, there is a nether apparatus of
hot-water pipes liable to cool down on a strike of the gardeners or
a scarcity of coal. And the lives we are about to look back upon do
not belong to those conservatory species; they are rooted in the
common earth, having to endure all the ordinary chances of past and
present weather. As to the weather of 1832, the Zadkiel of that time
had predicted that the electrical condition of the clouds in the
political hemisphere would produce unusual perturbations in organic
existence, and he would perhaps have seen a fulfilment of his
remarkable prophecy in that mutual influence of dissimilar destinies
which we shall see gradually unfolding itself. For if the mixed
political conditions of Treby Magna had not been acted on by the
passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Harold Transome would not have
presented himself as a candidate for North Loamshire, Treby would
not have been a polling-place, Mr. Matthew Jermyn would not have
been on affable terms with a Dissenting preacher and his flock, and
the venerable town would not have been placarded with handbills,
more or less complimentary and retrospective--conditions in this
case essential to the "where" and the "what," without which, as the
learned know, there can be no event whatever.
In the case of Lydgate, if the ambition was less noble and pure, the fall
was greater, and the disaster sadder to contemplate. He, too, was hindered
by his "environment," but it was much more of his own creating, the result
of his own nature, than in the case of Dorothea. We are told that "he was
fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an
anatomical conception, and make a link in the chain of discovery." That he
was fully capable of achieving such a result is made to appear by the
author. The account given of the discovery he wished to make, abundantly
confirms this opinion of him; it also shows how large was George Eliot's
learning, and how well she could use it for the novelist's purposes.
To show how a person capable of such work could be entangled in the
ordinary affairs of life and lose sight of his youthful vision, or at least
the power of realizing it, is the purpose developed in the career of
Lydgate. There were "spots of commonness" in his nature. These--
lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in spite of noble
intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary
men of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his
intellectual ardor did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about
furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without
his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons.
The egotism of his nature, his incapacity for hard, severe economy and the
exclusion of luxury and refined pleasure, proved his destruction. Along
with this egotism went a too susceptible impressiveness in the presence of
beautiful women of soft, delicate ways. He meant to do great things in
science, but he could not endure the discipline, the sacrifice, the long
years of waiting, by which the great result was to be attained. Even if he
could have done this, he lost the power of doing it through the social
environment of marriage. How a man's love for a woman may corrupt the
heroic purposes of his life is hinted at in one of the paragraphs in which
George Eliot describes Lydgate, and the vision which enamoured his young
life until the woman turned all his gold into dross.
We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to
fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally
parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we
are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom
and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old
Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other
kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious
thought and renunciation of small desires? In the story of this
passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious
marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom
the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the
Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their
vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as
the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant
to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of
their coming to be shapen after the average, and fit to be packed by
the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness for perhaps
their ardor for generous, unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the
ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked
like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly.
Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual
change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may
have sent some of our breath toward infecting them when we uttered our
conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions; or perhaps it came
with the vibration from a woman's glance.
The pathetic and saddening tragedy of a man's failure to realize the
possibilities of his own nature was never more clearly and minutely told
than in the case of Lydgate. We see all the steps of his fall, we know all
the reasons why it came, we comprehend fully what he might have been and
done. The bitterness of his own failure made him call his wife a basil
plant--"a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's
brains." His hair never became white, but having won a large practice in
his profession, he had his life heavily insured, and died at the age of
fifty. He regarded his own life as a failure, though he was outwardly
successful and "his skill was relied on by many paying patients." Against
his will, by ways and causes he could not foresee, through the tenderness
and ease of his own nature, the vision of his youth did not come true.
Perhaps _Middlemarch_ is the most perfect example among George Eliot's
novels of her purpose to show how we are guided, controlled and modified in
our thought and action by the whole society of which the individual forms a
single atom. Many characters appear in _Middlemarch_, drawn with wonderful
skill and finish, each having some part to perform in the complicated, play
of life, and each some subtle, scarce-understood influence on all. Tragedy
and comedy, selfishness and renunciation, greed and charity, love and
jealousy, mingle here as in life. Many of these characters, such as Caleb
Garth, Farebrother, Mrs. Cadwallader and Mr. Brooke, are remarkable
portraitures, original and well conceived; but they all have their place in
the social structure, and serve a purpose in the moral issue to be worked
out.
It has been said of _Felix Holt_, and justly, that its characters are too
typical, too much representative of a class, and too little personal in
their natures and individual in their actions. Yet this method of treating
character is consistent with the purpose of the novel, which is quite as
much ethical as literary. Here we have imbruted and ignorant workingmen,
laborers who would elevate their class, pious Dissenters, typical clergymen
of the Church of England, old hereditary families with the smouldering
evils which accumulate about them, ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers,
and all the other phases of character likely to be found in such a town as
Treby Magna. Each person stands for a class; and the aim of the novel is to
indicate how the relative position of the classes represented may be
changed with as little as possible of disorder and disruption.
It should be borne in mind, however, that the aim of George Eliot is not
exclusively ethical. _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ are not ethical or
socialistic treatises, and the whole purpose does not run in these
directions. She ever keeps in mind, however, the great fact that on the
ethical basis of right and wrong rests all the tragedy and comedy of the
world. Her ideas are made alive with genius, and her ethical purposes take
color in the glow of a brilliant imagination. She never did violence to the
rule which she stated in her essay on the poet Young.
On its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches science; on its
emotional side, art. Now the products of art are great in proportion as
they result from that immediate prompting of innate power which we call
genius, and not from labored obedience to a theory or rule; and the
presence of genius, or innate prompting, is directly opposed to the
perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is imperious,
and excludes the reflection _why_ it should act. In the same way, in
proportion as morality is emotional, _i.e._, has affinity with art, it
will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling and action, and not
as the recognition of a rule. Love does not say, "I ought to love"--it
loves. Pity does not say, "It is right to be pitiful"--it pities.
Justice does not say, "I am bound to be just"--it feels justly. It is
only where moral emotion is comparatively weak that the contemplation
of a rule or theory habitually mingles with its action; and in
accordance with this; we think experience, both in literature and life,
has shown that the minds which are pre-eminently didactic--which insist
on a "lesson," and despise everything that will not convey a moral, are
deficient in sympathetic emotion.
The moral and social problems of life seem to fire her creative powers,
kindle her imagination, and give rein to her genius. While the thoughtful
reader may find in _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ more that interests his
speculative faculties than of what will satisfy his sentiments and
imagination, yet he must keep in mind the fact that these are works
depending largely for their effect on the mind to their poetic qualities.
There is in them both a large and thoughtful contemplation of life, but
with a constant reference to its passion, sentiment and ideal aims. If they
are realistic it is not to the exclusion of spiritual elements; and the
poetic, sentimental phases of human existence are never ignored.
XVI.
DANIEL DERONDA.
The purpose of George Eliot's last novel is distinctly constructive. While
there is much of criticism in its pages, and criticism of the severest
kind, its aim is that of spiritual renewal and upbuilding. It unfolds her
conception of social growth, and of the influence of tradition and the
national idea, much more completely than any other of her works. Moreover,
it is all aglow with moral enthusiasm and spiritual ardor. It indicates a
greater spontaneity than any of her books after _The Mill on the Floss_,
and gives ample evidence that it possessed and absorbed the author's mind
with its purpose and spirit. It is written from a great depth of conviction
and moral earnestness. That it is her greatest book, artistically
considered, there is no reason for believing; that it has its serious
limitations as a literary creation all the critics have said. Yet it
remains also to be said, that for largeness of aim, wealth of sentiment,
and purity of moral teaching, no other book of George Eliot's surpasses
_Daniel Deronda_. Indeed, in its realization of the spiritual basis of
life, and in its portrayal of the religious sentiment, as these are
understood by positivism, this book surpasses every other, by whomsoever
written.
_Daniel Deronda_ is a romance, and hence differs in kind, conception,
scope, circumstance and form from her other works. It is less a study of
character than most of her other works, has more of adventure and action;
and while it is no less realistic, yet it has higher ideal aims, and seeks
to interpret what ought to be.
At least three distinct purposes may be seen running through the book,
which blend into and confirm each other: to show the all-powerful influence
of heredity, that blood will assert itself as more effective than any
conditions of social environment or education; to indicate that ideals,
subjective feelings and sentiments form the reality and the substance of
religion, and that tradition affords the true medium of its expression; and
to contrast a form of social life based on individualism with one based on
tradition. The aim of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is many-sided, and cannot
be expressed in a few phrases. It is too vital with life, touches the
emotions and sentiments too often, has an ideal motive too large, to be
dismissed with a quickly spoken word of contempt. Professor Dowden, one of
her best and most sympathetic critics, has said that it is "an homage to
the emotions rather than to the intellect of man. Her feeling finds
expression not only in occasional gnomic utterances in which sentiments are
declared to be the best part of the world's wealth, and love is spoken of
as deeper than reason, and the intellect is pronounced incapable of
ascertaining the validity of claims which rest upon loving instincts of the
heart, or else are baseless. The entire work possesses an impassioned
aspect, an air of spiritual prescience, far more than the exactitude of
science. The main forces which operate in it are sympathies, aspirations,
ardors; and ideas chiefly as associated with these." The object aimed at is
ideal and religious, much more than intellectual and scientific, to show
how necessary is religion, how weak and imperfect is man when the ideal
side of his nature is undeveloped. It makes clear the author's conviction
concerning the importance of religion, that she prized its spiritual hopes,
found satisfaction in its enthusiasms and aspirations. When Gwendolen was
cast down in utter dejection, all of joy and delight the world had afforded
her gone, and she felt the greatest need of something to comfort and
sustain her in her distrust of self and the world, Deronda said to her,
"The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the higher, the
religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our own
appetites and vanities."
The religion inculcated, to be sure, is not that of faith in a personal God
and a personal immortality, but that which is based on the mystery of life
and nature, impressed on the sensitive soul of man in fears, sorrows,
hopes, aspirations, and built up into great ideals and institutions through
tradition. _Daniel Deronda_ gives us the gospel of altruism, a new
preaching of love to man. _Daniel Deronda_ proves as no other writing has
ever done, what is the charm and the power of these ideas when dissociated
from any spiritual hopes which extend beyond humanity.
In order to give the most adequate expression to her ideas, and to show
forth the power of the spiritual life as she conceived it, George Eliot
made use of that race and religion which presents so remarkable an
illustration of the influence of tradition and heredity. She saw in Judaism
a striking confirmation of her theories, and a proof of what ideal
interests can do to preserve a nation. To vindicate that race in the eyes
of the world, to show what capacity there is in its national traditions,
was also a part of her purpose. That this was her aim may be seen in what
she said to a young Jew in whom she was much interested.
I wrote about the Jews because I consider them a fine old race who have
done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as
I do for the Florentines.
The same idea is to be seen very clearly in the last essay in the
_Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. She regarded the great memories and
traditions of this people as a priceless legacy which may and ought to draw
all the scattered Israelites together and unite them again in a common
national life.
A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering
thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to
preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small
beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such
as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being
thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's
children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to
great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in
its institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which
makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest
with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their
blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all
calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and
thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual
man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order,
if not in actual existence, yet existing in the past, in memory, as a
departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be
restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of
various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for
cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to
suffice for social energy.
This was one of the favorite ideas of George Eliot, which she has again and
again expressed. She was impressed with the conviction that such a national
life is necessary to the world's growth and welfare, that the era of a
common brotherhood, dissociated from national traditions and hopes, has not
yet come. Hence her belief that Judaism ought to speak the voice of a
united race, occupying the old home of this people, and sending forth its
ideas as a national inheritance and inspiration. This belief inspires the
concluding words of her essay, as well as the last chapters of the novel.
There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew: not
that he should shut out the utmost illumination which knowledge can
throw on his national history, but that he should cherish the store of
inheritance which that history has left him. Every Jew should be
conscious that he is one of a multitude possessing common objects of
piety in the immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of ancestors
who have transmitted to them a physical and mental type strong enough,
eminent enough in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar promise, to
constitute a new beneficent individuality among the nations, and, by
confuting the traditions of scorn, nobly avenge the wrongs done to
their fathers.
There is a sense which the worthy child of a nation that has brought
forth industrious prophets, high and unique among the poets of the
world, is bound by their visions.
Is bound?
Yes; for the effective bond of human action is feeling, and the worthy
child of a people owning the triple name of Hebrew, Israelite and Jew,
feels his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and
the possible renovation of his national family.
Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling and call his
doctrine a philosophy? He will teach a blinding superstition--the
superstition that a theory of human well-being can be constructed in
disregard of the influences which have made us human.
The purpose of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is not merely to vindicate
Judaism. This race and its religion are used as the vehicles for larger
ideas, as an illustration of the supreme importance to mankind of spiritual
aims concentrated into the form of national traditions and aspirations. Her
own studies, and personal intercourse with the Jews, helped to attract her
to this race; but the main cause of her use of them in this novel is their
remarkable history. Their moral and spiritual persistence, their wonderful
devotedness to their own race and its aims, admirably adapted them to
develop for her the ideas she wished to express. What nation could she have
taken that would have so clearly illustrated her theory of national
memories and traditions? In the forty-second chapter of _Daniel Deronda_
she has put into the month of Mordecai her own theories on this subject. He
vindicates his right to call himself a _rational_ Jew, one who accepts what
is reasonable and true.
"It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that bind and
consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea, consecrate it with
kinship; the past becomes my parent, and the future stretches toward me
the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of
special kindred that makes the families of man rich in interchanged
wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the
cedar and the palm?"
He declares that each nation has its own work to do in the world, in the
uplifting and maintenance of some special idea which is necessary to the
welfare and development of humanity. The place he assigns to Judaism is
precisely that which made it dear to George Eliot, because it embodied her
conception of religion and its social functions.
"Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of
affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the
reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life
into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and
weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us."
Again, he utters words which are simply an expression of George Eliot's own
sentiments.