SCIENCE AND CONSCIENCE. 17 



Squire Western became as strange a type as Achilles ; the discovery 

 was made that family life, which had promised perfect peace, had yet 

 its own trials, and that a very admirable person who always told the 

 truth and shut the door after him, who was deaf to flattery and to 

 gross temptation, might yet be an extremely disagreeable companion. 

 We demand something more of those with whom we live than the cer- 

 tainty that they will not stab us or burn the roof over our heads, and 

 it is not enough that they abstain from breaking the commandments. 

 We require profound respect for one another's rights, and we perceive 

 in selfishness, in all its intricate shapes, an evil that was overlooked, 

 except in its more violent forms, by those who were eager in the con- 

 test against more heinous offenses. Society now busies itself with 

 what we may call the statute law of ethics, the greater principles be- 

 ing generally observed by common agreement. Vice, to be sure, is 

 not extinct, but intemperance, for example, is frowned upon by society 

 rather than tolerated and sanctioned, as has been the case in the past. 

 In the novels of the day, which are the most faithful records of con- 

 temporary life, the problems that are discussed are those that directly 

 concern the individual conscience. George Eliot's work is full of such 

 questions, and, like many great writers, she has set the standard before 

 the reader ahead of what it is in fact, so that it is, as it were, a goal 

 toward which we are striving with what strength we may have. In 

 this respect she resembles Goethe, who pushed forward the outer lines 

 of criticism to a point which the main body of his successors is only 

 gradually reaching. 



Compare, for example, Miss Edgeworth's chilly prudence with 

 George Eliot's tender sympathy with suffering, and the advance that 

 has been made becomes clear. What would Miss Edgeworth have 

 thought of such a statement as this " That element of tragedy, 

 which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself 

 into the coarse emotion of mankind. ... If we had a keener vision 

 and feeling of all ordiuary human life it would be hearing the grass 

 grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar 

 which lies on the other side of silence " ? Yet, of course, George 

 Eliot is far from despising the minutiae of domestic life ; she makes it 

 the setting of the most delicate ethical problems. It is character and 

 not incidents that she studies ; not the glowing crimes that make the 

 fascination of the melodrama, but rather the corruption or weakness 

 that gives them birth. She traces the growth of sin in the human 

 heart with a vividness that is really appalling. Who has ever read 

 " Romola " without feeling that his own vanity, boasting, and shuffling 

 nerformances are branded in the chronicle of Tito's slow moral decay? 

 In " The Mill on the Floss," again, we have a typical representation of 

 a form of domestic tyranny that can be matched in every household 

 that we know. In " Middlemarch " we follow the struggle of gener- 

 osity and a high ideal against incompetence and corroding selfish- 



VOL. XXIII. 2 



