I have quoted George Eliot’s cheers already, as expressing what this enthusiasm is.  I will now quote her again, as showing how fully she recognises that its value depends upon its object, and that its only possible object must be of a definite, and in the first place, of a personal nature.  In her novel of Daniel Deronda, the large part of the interest hangs on which way the heroine’s character will develop itself; and this interest, in the opinion of the authoress, is of a very intense kind.  Why should it be? she asks explicitly.  And she gives her answer in the following very remarkable and very instructive passage: 

‘Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread,’ she says, ’in human history, than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant? in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely:  when women on the other side of the world would not mourn for the husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause; and men, stinted of bread, on one side of the world, heard of that willing loss and were patient; a time when the soul of man was waking the pulses which had for centuries been beating in him unheard, until their full sense made a new life of terror or of joy.

’What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions?  They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting.  In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections.’

Now here we come to solid ground at last.  Here is an emphatic and frank admission of all that I was urging in the last chapter; and the required end of action and test of conduct is brought to a focus and localized.  It is not described, it is true; but a narrow circle is drawn round it, and our future search for it becomes a matter of comparative ease.  We are in a position now to decide whether it exists, or does not exist.  It consists primarily and before all things in the choice by the individual of one out of many modes of happiness—­the election of a certain ‘way,’ in George Eliot’s words, ’in which he will make his life pleasant.’  There are many sets of pleasure open to him; but there is one set, it is said, more excellent, beyond comparison, than the others; and to choose these, and these alone, is what will give us part in the holy value of life.  The choice and the refusal of them is the Yea and the Nay of all that makes life worth living; and is the source, to the positivists, of the solemnity, the terrors, and sweetness of the whole ethical vocabulary. ’What then are the alternative pleasures that life offers me? In how many ways am I capable of feeling my existence a blessing? and in what way shall I feel the blessing of it most keenly?’ This is the great life-question; it may be asked indifferently by any individual; and in the positivist answer to it, which will be the same for all, and of universal application, must lie the foundation of the positive moral system.