George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 576 pages of information about George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy.

George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 576 pages of information about George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy.

The higher social morality, that which inspires nations with great and heroic purposes, George Eliot believes is mainly due, as she says in the essay on “The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!” “to the divine gift of a memory which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute.”  The memories of the past lie mainly in the direction of national movements, and hence the higher moral life of the present must be associated with national memories.  The glorious commonplaces of historic teaching, as well as of moral inspiration, are to be found in the fact “that the preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national greatness, that their revival is a sign of reviving nationality, and that every heroic defender, every patriotic restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has made them his watchword.”  To reject such memories, such social influences, she regards as “a blinding superstition,” and says that the moral visions of a nation are an effective bond which must be accepted by all its members.  Two of her most characteristic books are written to inculcate this teaching.  In The Spanish Gypsy we learn that there is no moral strength and purpose for a man like Don Silva, who repudiates his country, its memories and its religion.  The main purpose of Daniel Deronda is to show how binding and inspiring is the vision of moral truth and life which comes from association even with the national memories of an outcast and alien people.

She wished to see individuals helped and good done in the present.  She makes Theophrastus Such, in the essay on “Looking Backward,” speak her own mind.

“All reverence and gratitude for the worthy dead on whose labors we have entered, all care for the future generations whose lot we are preparing; but some affection and fairness for those who are doing the actual work of the world, some attempt to regard them with the same freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient!  Otherwise, the looking before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the ascetic’s contemplation of heaven.”

Again, she says that “the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries.”  And this was not merely the teaching of her books, it was the practice of her life.  Miss Edith Simcox has made it clear that she was zealously anxious to help men and women by personal effort.  She tells us that “George Eliot’s sympathies went out more readily towards enthusiasm for the discharge of duties than for the assertion of rights.  It belonged to the positive basis of her character to

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George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.