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قراءة كتاب The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

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The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

The Ethics of George Eliot's Works

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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in the elder and younger Debarry, as a reality and power in life.  To say nothing of the fact that this instinct

deals primarily with questions of feeling, and only indirectly and incidentally with questions of moral right, Harold Transome, alike congenitally and circumstantially, could scarcely by possibility have been animated by it even in slight degree, nor does it ever betray its presence in him through those slight but graceful courtesies of life which are pre-eminently the sphere of its manifestation.  Equally untenable is the hypothesis which ascribes these manifestations of character wholly to the influence of a nature higher than his own appealing to him—that of Felix Holt, the glorious old Dissenter, or Esther Lyon.  Such appeals can have any avail only when in the nature appealed to there remains the capability to recognise that right is greater than success or joy, and the moral power of will to act on that recognition.  In the fact that Harold’s nature does respond to these appeals we have the clue to the apparent anomaly his character presents.  We see that, howsoever overlaid by temperament and restrained by circumstance, the noblest capability in man still survives and is active in him.  He can choose the right which imperils his own interests, because it is the right; he can set his back on the wrong which would advantage himself, because it is the wrong.  That he does this coolly, temperately, without enthusiasm, with full, clear forecasting of all the consequences, is only saying that he is Harold Transome still.  That he does so choose when the forecast probabilities are

all against those objects which the mere man of the world most desires, proves that under that hard external crust dwells as essential a nobleness as any we recognise in Felix Holt.  There is an inherent strength and manliness in Harold Transome to which Arthur Donnithorne or Godfrey Cass can never attain.

Few things in the literary history of the age are more puzzling than the reception given to ‘Romola’ by a novel-devouring public.  That the lovers of mere sensationalism should not have appreciated it, was to be fully expected.  But to probably the majority of readers, even of average intelligence and capability, it was, and still is, nothing but a weariness.  With the more thoughtful, on the other hand, it took at once its rightful place, not merely as by far the finest and highest of all the author’s works, but as perhaps the greatest and most perfect work of fiction of its class ever till then produced.

Of its artistic merits we do not propose to speak in detail.  But as a historical reproduction of an epoch and a life peculiarly difficult of reproduction, we do not for a moment hesitate to say that it has no rival, except, perhaps,—and even that at a distance,—Victor Hugo’s incomparably greatest work, ‘Nôtre Dame de Paris.’  It is not that we see as in a panorama the Florence of the Medicis and Savonarola,—we live, we move, we feel as if actors in it.  Its turbulence, its struggles for freedom and independence, its factions with their complicated transitions and changes, its

conspiracies and treasons, its classical jealousies and triumphs,—we feel ourselves mixed up with them all.  Names historically immortal are made to us familiar presences and voices.  Its nobles and its craftsmen alike become to us as friends or foes.  Its very buildings—the Duomo and the Campanile, and many another—rise in their stateliness and their grace before those who have never been privileged to see them, clear and vivid as the rude northern houses that daily obtrude on our gaze.

So distinct and all-pervading, in this great work, is what we are maintaining to be the central moral purpose of all the author’s works, that it can scarcely escape the notice of the most superficial reader.  Affirmatively and negatively, in Romola and Tito—the two forms of illustration to some extent combined in Savonarola—the constant, persistent, unfaltering utterance of the book is, that the only true worth and greatness of humanity lies in its pursuit of the highest truth, purity, and right, irrespective of every issue, and in exclusion of every meaner aim; and that the true debasement and hopeless loss of humanity lies in the path of self-pleasing.  The form of this work, the time and country in which the scene is laid, and the selection of one of the three great actors in it, leads the author more definitely than in almost any of those which preceded it to connect her moral lesson, not merely with Christianity as a religious faith, but with that Church which, as called by the name of Christ,

howsoever fallen away from its “first love,” is still, in the very fact of its existence, a witness for Him.  While, on the other hand, through many of its subordinate characters, we have the broad catholic truth kept ever before us, that, irrespective of all formal profession or creed, voluntary acceptance of a higher life-law than the seeking our own interests, pleasure, or will, is, according to its degree, life’s best and highest fulfilment; and thus we trace Him who “pleased not Himself” as the life and the light of the world, even when that world may be least formally acknowledging Him.

The three in whom this great lesson is most prominently illustrated in the work before us are, of course, Romola herself, Tito Melema, and Savonarola.  And in each the illustration is so modified, and, through the three together, so almost exhaustively accomplished, that some examination of each seems necessary to our main object in this survey of George Eliot’s works.

Few, we think, can study the delineation of Romola without feeling that imagination has seldom placed before us a fairer, nobler, and completer female presence.  Perfectly human and natural; unexaggerated, we might almost say unidealised, alike in her weaknesses and her nobleness; combining such deep womanly tenderness with such spotless purity; so transparent in her truthfulness; so clear in her perceptions of the true and good, so firm in her aspirations

after these; so broad, gentle, and forbearing in her charity, yet so resolute against all that is mean and base;—everything fair, bright, and high in womanhood seems to combine in Romola.  So true, also, is the process of her development to what is called nature—to the laws and principles that regulate human action and life—that, as it proceeds before us, we almost lose note that there is development.  The fair young heathen first presented to us, linked on to classic times and moralities through all the surroundings of her life, passes on so imperceptibly into the “visible Madonna” of the after-time, that we scarcely observe the change till it is accomplished.  From the first, we know that the mature is involved in the young Romola.  The reason of this is, that from first to last the essential principle of life is in her the same.  Equally, when she first comes before us, and in all the after-glory of her serene unconscious self-devotedness, she is living to others, not to herself.

Her first devotion is to her father.  Her one passion of life is to compensate to him all he has lost: the eyes, once so full of fire, now sightless; the son and brother, who, at the call of an enthusiasm with which their nobler natures refuse to sympathise—for it was, in the first instance, but the supposed need to save his own soul—has fled from his nearest duty of life.  To this devotion she consecrates her fair young existence.  For this she dismisses from it all thought of ease or

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