George Eliot’s originality of method has given rise to a new school in fiction.  Her imitators, even when at their best, are not her equals, and they have degraded her methods oftentimes to paltry uses.  They have tried to take photographs of life, supposing that art has for its aim to copy nature.  They have failed to see, what she did see, though not so clearly as could have been desired, that art must do much more than imitate some scene or fact out of nature.  It must give beauty, meaning and expression to what it copies.  And it must do more than imitate:  it must go beyond mere description, and introduce unity, purpose and thought into its work.  True art has a soul as well as a body, says something to the mind as well as to the eye, appeals to the soul as well as to sense.  Had George Eliot done nothing more than to describe common English life there would have been small excuse for her work.  She did more, touched that life with genius, made it blossom into beauty, and gave to it deep moral meanings.  The defects of her method are to be seen in the fact that her imitators cannot get above life’s surface, and deal mainly with shallow or degraded natures.  Her methods do not inspire great work, while her own genius redeemed the false ways into which she was led by her philosophic theories.

Science can dissect the human body, but it can do little towards an explanation of the subtler meanings of life and mind.  Its methods are analytical; it has reached no truly synthetic results in the regions where knowledge is most to be desired.  Its effects on literature are destructive.  Science destroys poetry, dries up the poetic sense, closes the doors of imagination.  The attempt to make science co-operate with poetry is in itself the promise of failure.  The limitations of George Eliot’s work are the limitations of poetry subdued by science.  Could she have rid herself of that burden, been impelled by a faith and an ideal purpose commensurate with her genius, the result would have been much greater.  This limitation suggests the fact that literature is synthetic and constructive in its purpose and spirit.  It is this fact which has made the classic literatures so powerful in their effect on modern Europe.  They have given unity, spiritual purpose and ideal aims to the whole modern world.  The freshness as of an eternal spring was in the literature of Greece, the naturalness of a healthy manhood.  That literature is organic, it is one with life, it is refreshing as nature itself.  That literature lives and flames with power because it is synthetic, buoyant, touched with an eternal spiritual beauty, great with promise of a growing earth.  Its poets do not dissect, but build; they do not analyze, but create.  And this is the literary need of the present time.  There is need of more poetry, a more poetic interpretation of life, a richer imagination and a finer sense of beauty.  The common is everywhere, but it is not necessarily great or beautiful or noble.  It may