George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy Part 26

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 ma.s.sive 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 surpa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble work. Such an age is almost invariably followed by an age of re-action, criticism, realism and a.n.a.lysis. 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 a.s.sume 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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude, 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 compa.s.s 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 att.i.tude 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 compet.i.tive 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.serted. 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 a.s.sert 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 G.o.d-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 n.o.ble characters, they are finally obliged, through their very n.o.bility, 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 n.o.ble but the ign.o.ble 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 a.s.serts 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 n.o.bler 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 enn.o.blement 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sertive of itself. It has a right to a.s.sert 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 a.s.sertion 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. a.s.sistant editor of the Westminster Review.

1852. The Westminster Review for January contained her notice of Carlyle's Life of John Sterling.

In the July number appeared her article on _The Lady Novelists_.

1854. _The Essence of Christianity_, by Feuerbach. Translated from the second German edition. John Chapman, London.

The Westminster Review for October published her _Woman in France: Madame de Sable_.

She wrote, it is supposed, occasionally for The Leader newspaper, of which journal Lewes was the literary editor. None of her contributions have been identified. [Footnote: There is a nearly complete set of The Leader in the Boston Athenaeum Library.]

1855. Westminster Review, October, _Evangelical Teaching: Dr. c.u.mming_.

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 t.i.tle 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_.