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

by George Willis Cooke

On the other hand, Mr. Frederic Harrison has described the great success of the Biographical History of Philosophy, and made it apparent what are its chief merits. "This astonishing work was designed to be popular, to be readable, to be intelligible. It was all of these in a singular degree. It has proved to be the most popular account of philosophy of our time; it has been republished, enlarged, and almost re-written, and each re-issue has found new readers. It did what hardly any previous book on philosophy ever did—it made philosophy readable, reasonable, lively, almost as exciting as a good novel. Learners who had been tortured over dismal homilies on the pantheism of Spinoza, and yet more dismal expositions of the pan-nihilism of Hegel, seized with eagerness upon a little book which gave an intense reality to Spinoza and his thoughts, which threw Hegel's contradictories into epigrams, and made the course of philosophic thought unfold itself naturally with all the life and coherence of a well-considered plot…. There can be no possible doubt as to the success of this method. Men to whom philosophy has been a wearisome swaying backward and forward of meaningless phrases, found something which they could remember and understand…. For a generation this 'entirely popular' book saturated the minds of the younger readers. It has done as much as any book, perhaps-more than any, to give the key to the prevalent thought of our time about the metaphysical problems…. That such a book should have had such a triumph was a singular literary fact. The opinions frankly expressed as to theology, metaphysics, and many established orthodoxies; its conclusion, glowing in every page, that metaphysics, as Danton said of the Revolution, was devouring its own children, and led to self-annihilation; its proclamation of Comte as the legitimate issue of all previous philosophy and positive philosophy as its ultimate irenicon—all this, one might think, would have condemned such a book from its birth. The orthodoxies frowned; the professors sneered; the owls of metaphysic hooted from the gloom of their various jungles; but the public read, the younger students adopted it, the world learned from it the positive method; it held its ground because it made clear what no one else had made clear—what philosophy meant, and why philosophers differed so violently."

This extravagant praise becomes even absurd when the writer gravely says that this book "had simply killed metaphysic." A popular style and method gave the book success, along with the fact that the temper of the time made such a statement acceptable. It cleverly indicated the weak places in the metaphysical methods, and it presented the advantages of the inductive method with great eloquence and ingenuity. Its satire, and its contempt for the more spiritualistic systems, also helped to make it readable.

His later work, in which he develops his own positive conclusions, has the merit of being one of the best expositions yet made of the philosophy of evolution. In view, however, of his unqualified condemnation of the theories of metaphysicians, his system is one of singular audacity of speculation. Not even Schelling or Hegel has gone beyond him in theorizing, or exceeded him in the ground traversed beyond the limits of demonstration. He who had held up all speculative systems to scorn, distanced those he had condemned, and showed how easy it is to take theory for fact. Metaphysic has not had in its whole history a greater illustration of the daring of speculation than in the case of Lewes's theory of the relations of the subjective and objective. He interprets matter and mind, motion and feeling, objective and subjective, as simply the outer and inner, the concave and convex, sides of one and the same reality. Mind is the same as matter, except that it is viewed from a different aspect. In this opinion he resembles Schelling more than any other thinker, as he does in some other of his speculations. As a monist, his conclusions are similar to those of the leading German transcendentalists. Indeed, the evolution philosophy he expounds is, in some of its aspects, but a development of the identity philosophy of Schelling. In its monism, its theory of the development of mind out of matter, and its conception of law, they are one and the same. The evolution differs from the identity philosophy mainly in its more scientific interpretation of the influence of heredity and the social environment. The one is undoubtedly an outgrowth from the other, while the audacious nights of speculation indulged in by Lewes rival anything attempted even by Schelling.

Lewes was one of the earliest English disciples of Auguste Comte, and he probably did more than any other person to introduce the opinions of that thinker to English students. He was a zealous and yet not a blind disciple, rejecting for the most part the later speculations of Comte. Comte's theories of social and religious construction were repugnant to Lewes's mind, but his positive methods and his entire rejection of theology were acceptable. Comte's positivism was the foundation of his own philosophy, and he did little more than to expand and more carefully work out the system of his predecessor. In psychology he went beyond Comte, through his physiological studies, and by the adoption of the methods and results of evolution. His discovery of the sociological factors of mind was a real advance on his master.

George Eliot's connection with Lewes had much to do with the after-development of her mind. An affinity of intellectual purpose and conviction drew them together. She found her philosophical theories confirmed by his, and both together labored for the propagation of that positivism in which they so heartily believed. Their lives and influence are inseparably united. There was an almost entire unanimity of intellectual conviction between them, and his books are in many ways the best interpreters of the ethical and philosophical meanings of her novels. Her thorough interest in his studies, and her comprehension of them, is manifest on many of her pages. Her enthusiastic acceptance of positivism in that spirit in which it is presented by Lewes, is apparent throughout all her work. Their marriage was a companionship and a friendship. They lived in each other, were mutual helpers, and each depended much on—the advice and counsel of the other. Miss Mathilde Blind has pointed out how thoroughly identical are their views of realism in art, and on many other subjects they were as harmonious. They did not echo each other, but there was an intimate affinity of intellectual apprehension and purpose.

Immediately after their marriage, Lewes and his wife went to Germany, and they spent a quiet year of study in Berlin, Munich and Weimar. Here he re-wrote and completed his Life of Goethe. On their return to England they took a house in Blandford Square, and began then to make that home which was soon destined to have so much interest and attraction. A good part of the year 1858 was also spent on the continent in study and travel. Three months were passed in Munich, six weeks in Dresden, while Salzburg, Vienna and Prague were also visited. The continent was again visited in the summer of 1865, and a trip was taken through Normandy, Brittany and Touraine. Other visits preceded and followed, including a study of Florence in preparation for the writing of Romola, and a tour in Spain in 1867 to secure local coloring for The Spanish Gypsy. In 1865, the house in Blandford Square was abandoned for "The Priory," a commodious and pleasant house on the North Bank, St. John's Wood. It was here Mr. and Mrs. Lewes lived until his death.

IV.

CAREER AS AN AUTHOR.

Until she was thirty-six years old Mrs. Lewes had given no hint that she was likely to become a great novelist. She had shown evidence of large learning and critical ability, but not of decided capacity for imaginative or poetic creation. The critic and the creator are seldom combined in one person; and while she might have been expected to become a philosophical writer of large reputation, there was little promise that she would become a great novelist. Before she began the Scenes of Clerical Life, she had written but very little of an original character. She was not drawn irresistibly to the career for which she was best fitted, and others had to discover her gift and urge her to its use. Mr. Lewes saw that the person who could write so admirably of what a novel ought to be, and who could so skilfully point out the defects in the lady novelists of the day, was herself capable of writing much better ones than those she criticised. It was at his suggestion, and through his encouragement, she made her first attempt at novel-writing. Her love of learning, her relish for literary and philosophical studies, led her to believe that she could accomplish the largest results in the line of the work she had already begun. Yet Lewes had learned from her conversational powers, from her keen appreciation of the dramatic elements of daily life, and from her fine humor and sarcasm, that other work was within the range of her powers. Reluctantly she consented to turn aside from the results of scholarship she had hoped to accomplish, and with many doubts concerning her ability to become a writer of fiction. The history of the publication of her first work, Scenes of Clerical Life, has been fully told, and is helpful towards an understanding of her career as an author.

In the autumn of 1856, William Blackwood received from Lewes a short story bearing—the title of "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," which he sent as the work of an anonymous friend. His nephew has described the results that followed on the reception of this novel by Blackwood, and its publication in Blackwood's Magazine. "The story was offered as the first instalment of a series; and though the editor pronounced that 'Amos' would 'do,' he wished to satisfy himself that it was no chance hit, and requested a sight of the other tales before coming to a decision. Criticisms on the plot and studies of character in 'Amos Barton' were frankly put forward, and the editor wound up his letter by saying,' If the author is a new writer, I beg to congratulate him on being worthy of the honors of print and pay. I shall be very glad to hear from him or you soon.' At this time the remaining Scenes of Clerical Life were unwritten, and the criticisms upon 'Amos' had rather a disheartening effect upon the author, which the editor hastened to remove as soon as he became sensible of them, by offering to accept the tale. He wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'If you think it would stimulate the author to go on with the other tales, I shall publish 'Amos' at once;' expressing also his 'sanguineness' that he would be able to approve of the contributions to follow, as 'Amos' gave indications of great freshness of style. Some natural curiosity had been expressed as to the unknown writer, and a hint had been thrown out that he was 'a clergyman,'—a device which, since it has the great sanction of Sir Walter Scott, we must regard as perfectly consistent with the ethics of anonymous literature.