e in the matter, as the solemn folly of taking himself too
seriously?--that bugbear of circles in which the lack of grave emotion
passes for wit. From such cowardice before modish ignorance and
obtuseness, Deronda shrank. But he also shrank from having his course
determined by mere contagion, without consent of reason; or from
allowing a reverential pity for spiritual struggle to hurry him along a
dimly-seen path.

What, after all, had really happened? He knew quite accurately the
answer Sir Hugo would have given: "A consumptive Jew, possessed by a
fanaticism which obstacles and hastening death intensified, had fixed
on Deronda as the antitype of some visionary image, the offspring of
wedded hope and despair: despair of his own life, irrepressible hope in
the propagation of his fanatical beliefs. The instance was perhaps odd,
exceptional in its form, but substantially it was not rare. Fanaticism
was not so common as bankruptcy, but taken in all its aspects it was
abundant enough. While Mordecai was waiting on the bridge for the
fulfillment of his visions, another man was convinced that he had the
mathematical key of the universe which would supersede Newton, and
regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his discovery and
keep the universe locked; another, that he had the metaphysical key,
with just that hair's-breadth of difference from the old wards which
would make it fit exactly. Scattered here and there in every direction
you might find a terrible person, with more or less power of speech,
and with an eye either glittering or preternaturally dull, on the
look-out for the man who must hear him; and in most cases he had
volumes which it was difficult to get printed, or if printed to get
read. This Mordecai happened to have a more pathetic aspect, a more
passionate, penetrative speech than was usual with such monomaniacs; he
was more poetical than a social reformer with colored views of the new
moral world in parallelograms, or than an enthusiast in sewage; still
he came under the same class. It would be only right and kind to
indulge him a little, to comfort him with such help as was practicable;
but what likelihood was there that his notions had the sort of value he
ascribed to them? In such cases a man of the world knows what to think
beforehand. And as to Mordecai's conviction that he had found a new
executive self, it might be preparing for him the worst of
disappointments--that which presents itself a