After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling.  The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.

In Daniel Deronda, when considering the causes which prevent men from desecrating their fathers’ tombs for material gain, she says, “The only check to be alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold that sentiments are the better part of the world’s wealth.”  To the same effect is her saying in Theophrastus Such, that “our civilization, considered as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril without the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings.”  She expresses the conviction in Adam Bede, that “it is possible to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings;” and she does not hesitate through all her writings to convey the idea, that sublime feelings are much to be preferred to profound thoughts or the most perfect philosophy.  She makes Adam Bede say that “it isn’t notions sets people doing the right thing—­it’s feelings,” and that “feeling’s a sort o’ knowledge.”  Feeling gives us the only true knowledge we have of our fellow-men, a knowledge in every way more perfect than that which is to be derived from our intellectual inquiries into their natures and wants.  In Janet’s Repentance this power of feeling to give us true knowledge of others, to awaken us to the deeper needs of our own souls, when we come in contact with those who are able to move and inspire us, is eloquently presented.

Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another!  Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasselled flower.  Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot make themselves felt.  But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath; they touch us with soft responsive hands; they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith and its love.  Then their presence is a power; then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. [Footnote:  Chapter XIX.]

She returns to the same subject when considering the intellectual theories of happiness and the proportion of crime there is likely to occur in the world.  She shows her entire dissent from such a method of dealing with human woe, and she pleads for that sympathy and love which will enable us to feel the pain of others as our own.  This fellow-feeling gives us the most adequate knowledge we can have.