To bear; I lay it not on him, or fate.
Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspect
A coward, who would burden the poor deuce
With what ensues from his own slipperiness."
The main issue between freedom and fatalism lies in just this question: Is a man's life determined by what he is or by what he does? Does his nature, received through inheritance, moulded by circumstance, determine his acts and so his life? Or does his moral choice determine these?
Extreme fatalists declare that the former is true. Moralists, idealists, believers in freedom, support the latter view.
Now Meredith leaves us no doubt as to his position on the point. Again and again we see his characters choosing their lives. And their choices rest on no inherited nature, but on character. Thus our author declares, by his plots, as in plain words, that "Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are."
As we have said, a writer's thought of life can be best understood from his plots. He builds life, consciously or unconsciously, as he believes that nature builds it. Does he let the righteous perish and the evil man prosper in the end? Then he either does not believe in this law of ours, or in its present successful working. Perhaps, like Victor Hugo, he teaches a higher law, that of self-sacrifice. Perhaps, like some little modern writers, he teaches a lower law of the temporary success, at times, of hypocrisy and deceit. Whatever he believes in and likes to think of, his structure will disclose.
Now one very marked thing about Meredith's structure is the agreement of the two crises, that of character and that of circumstances. When any one of his characters chooses for good or evil, for wisdom or folly, at that very time, and by that very choice, he decides his future happiness and success, or unhappiness and failure. Therein lies the decision of the question whether that particular novel shall be a tragedy or a comedy.
When Dahlia Fleming chooses evil, she chooses unhappiness. No kind Providence intervenes to save her from her harvest. How many of our little writers of to-day would have caused her marriage with Edward to take place in the end! Is not Meredith's conclusion far more true to life?