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

by George Willis Cooke

PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE.

George Eliot was pre-eminently a novelist and a poet; but she is also the truest literary representative the nineteenth century has yet afforded of its positivist and scientific tendencies. What Comte and Spencer have taught in the name of philosophy, Tyndall and Haeckel in the name of science, she has applied to life and its problems. Their aims, spirit and tendencies have found in her a living embodiment, and re-appear in her pages as forms of genius, as artistic creations. They have experimented, speculated, elaborated theories of the universe, drawn out systems of philosophy; but she has reconstructed the social life of man through her creative insight. What they mean, whither they lead, is not to be discovered nearly so plainly in their books as in hers. She is their interpreter through that wonderful insight, genius and creative power which enabled her to see what they could not themselves discover,—the effect of their teachings on man as an individual and as a social being.

Whoever would know what the agnostic and evolution philosophy of the time has to teach about man, his social life, his moral responsibilities, his religious aspirations, should go to the pages of George Eliot in preference to those of any other. The scientific spirit, the evolution philosophy, live in her pages, reveal themselves there in all their strength and in all their weakness. She was a thinker equal to any of those whose names stand forth as the representatives of the philosophy she accepted, she was as competent, as they to think out the problems of life and to interpret social existence in accordance with their theories of man and nature. Competent to grasp and to interpret the positive philosophy in all its details and in all its applications, she also had that artistic spirit of reconstruction which enabled her to apply to life what she held in theory. Along with the calm philosophic spirit which thinks out "the painful riddle of the earth," she had the creative spirit of the artist which delights in portraying life in all its endeavors, complexities and consequences. She not only accepted the theory of hereditary transmission as science has recently developed it, and as it has been enlarged by positivism into a shaping influence of the past upon the present, but she made this law vital with meaning as she developed its consequences in the lives of her characters. To her it was not merely a theory, but a principle so pregnant with meaning as to have its applications in every phase of human experience. Life could not be explained without it; the thoughts, deeds and aspirations of men could be understood only with reference to it; much that enters into human life of weal and woe is to be comprehended only with reference to this law. In regard to all the other evolution problems and principles her knowledge was as great, her insight as clear, and her constructive use of them as original.

A new theory of life and the universe may be intellectually accepted as soon as its teachings are comprehended; but the absorption of that theory into the moral tissues, so that it becomes an active and constant impulse and motive in feeling and conduct, is a long and difficult process. It takes generations before it can associate itself with the instinctive impulses of the mind. It is one thing to accept the theory of universal law as an intellectual explanation of the sequences of phenomena, but it is quite another to be guided by that theory in all the most spontaneous movements of feeling, conscience and thought. A few minds are able to make such a theory at once their own by virtue of genius of a very instinctive and subtle order; but for the great majority of mankind this result can only be reached after generations of instruction. The use made of such theories by the poets and novelists is a sure test of their popular acceptance. When the poets accept such a theory, and naturally express themselves in accordance with its spirit, the people may soon feel and think according to its meaning.

The theory of evolution will not easily adjust the human mind to its conclusions and methods. It is therefore very remarkable that George Eliot, the contemporary of Comte, Spencer, Darwin, Lewes and Tyndall, should be able to give a true literary expression to their speculations. She has not only been able to follow these men, to accept their theories and to understand them in all their implications and tendencies, but she has so absorbed these theories into her mind, and so made them a part of all its processes, that she has painted life thoroughly in accordance with their spirit. Should the teachings of the evolutionists of to-day be finally accepted, and after a few generations become the universally received explanations of life and the universe, it is not likely any poet or novelist will more genuinely and entirely express their spirit than George Eliot has done. The evolutionary spirit and ways of looking at life became instinctive to her; she saw life and read its deepest experiences wholly in the light shed by this philosophy. For this reason her writings are of great value to those who would understand the evolution philosophy in its higher phases.

George Eliot accepted the intellectual conclusions of evolution, and the outline thus afforded she filled in with feeling and poetry. She interpreted the pathos, the tragedy, the aspirations of life in the light of this philosophy. Accepting with a bold and undismayed intellect the implications and consequences of evolution, rejecting or abating no least portion of it, she found in it a place for art, poetry and religion; and she tried to show how it touches and moulds and uplifts man. She shrank from nothing which would enable her to reveal how man is to live in such a universe as she believed in; she saw all its hardness, cruelty, anguish and mystery, and resolutely endeavored to show how these enter into and help to form his destiny. In doing this she followed the lead of the positivists in the acceptance of feeling as the basis and the true expression of man's inner life. The emotional life is made the essential life; and all its phases of manifestation in art, poetry and religion are regarded as of great importance. George Eliot viewed the higher problems of life from this point of view, giving to the forms in which the emotional side of man's nature is expressed a supreme importance. Religion, as the response of feeling to the mystery of existence, occupied a most important place in her philosophy. That her interpretation of the emotional elements of life is the true one, that she has discovered their source or their real ideal significance, may well be doubted; but there is every reason for believing that she realized their great value, and she certainly tried in an earnest spirit to make them helpful in the life of ideal beauty and truthfulness.

All that agnostic science and the evolution philosophy had to teach, George Eliot accepted, its doctrine of descent, its new psychology, and its theories of society and human destiny. Its doctrine of experience, its ethical theories, were equally hers. Yet into her interpretation of existence went a woman's heart, the widest and tenderest sympathy, and a quick yearning purpose to do what good she could in the world. She saw with the lover's eyes, motherhood revealed itself in her soul, the child's trust was in her heart. The new philosophy she applied to life, revealed its relations to duty, love, sorrow, trial and death. To her it had a deep social meaning, a vital connection with the heart, its hopes and its burdens, and for her it touched the spiritual content of life with reality. It was in this way she became the truest interpreter of the evolution philosophy, the best apostle of the ethics taught by agnostic science. She not only speculated, she also felt and lived. Philosophy was to her more than an abstract theory of the universe; into it entered a tender sympathy for all human weakness, a profound sense of the mystery of existence, and a holy purpose to make life pure and true to all she could reach. This larger comprehension gives a new significance to her interpretation of evolution. It makes it impossible that this philosophy should be fully understood without a study of her books.

It is because George Eliot was not a mere speculative thinker that her teachings become so important. The true novelist, who is gifted with genius, who creates character and situation with a master's hand, must have some theory of life. He must have some notion of what life means, what the significance of the pathos and tragedy of human experience, and why it is that good and evil in conduct do not produce the same results. Such a theory of life, if firmly grasped and worked out strongly, becomes a philosophy. Much depends with the novelist on that philosophy, what it places foremost, what it sees destiny to mean. It will affect his insight, give shape to his plots, decide his characters, guide his ethical interpretations, fix his spiritual apprehension. It was because George Eliot adopted a new and remarkable philosophy, one that teaches much which the instincts of the race have rejected, and repudiates much which the race has accepted as necessary to its welfare, that her teachings become so noteworthy. Genius first of all she had, and the artist's creative power; but the way she used these, and the limitations she put upon them by her philosophy, give her books an interest which not even her wonderful genius could alone produce. That philosophy is in debate; and it is not yet decided whether it is mainly false because growing out of wrong methods, or if it be in reality a true explanation of existence. Its revolutionary character, its negative spirit, its relations to ethics and religion, make it remarkable, and even startling. Profound thinkers, men of commanding philosophic apprehension and power of generalization, have accepted it; physical science has largely lent its aid to the support of its conclusions. Yet on its side genius, imagination, creative instinct, artistic apprehension, have not given their aid. Without them it is defective, and cannot command the ideal sentiments and hopes of the race. First to fill this gap came George Eliot, and she yet remains its only great literary ally and coadjutor. Tyndall, Haeckel and DuBois Raymond can give us science; but this is not enough. Comte, Mill and Spencer can give us philosophy; but that is inadequate. They have also essayed, one and all, to say some true word about morals, religion and the social ideals; but they have one and all failed. They are too speculative, too far away from the vital movements of life, know too little of human experience as it throbs out of the heart and sentiments. They can explain their theories in terms of science, ethics and philosophy; but George Eliot explains them in terms of life. They have speculated, she has felt; they have made philosophies, she has created ideal characters and given us poetry; they have studied nature, she has studied experience and life; they have tried to resolve the mind into its constituent elements; she has entered into the heart and read its secrets; they have looked on to see what history meant, she has lived all heart tragedies and known all spiritual aspirations.

George Eliot was not a mere disciple of any of the great teachers of evolution. Though of their school, and largely in accord and sympathy with them, yet she often departed from the way they went, and took a position quite in opposition to theirs. Her standpoint in philosophy was arrived at quite independently of their influence, and in many of its main features her philosophy was developed before she had any acquaintance either with them or their books. She wrote concerning John Stuart Mill, [Footnote: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' "Last words from George Eliot," is Harper Magazine for March 1882. The names of Mill and Spencer are not given in this article, but the words from her letters so plainly refer to them that they have been quoted here as illustrating her relations to these men.]—

I never had any personal acquaintance with him, never saw him to my knowledge except in the House of Commons; and though I have studied his books, especially his Logic and Political Economy with much benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked epoch in my life.