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.”