avenges them,
But in the injury wrought by broken bonds
And in the garnered good of human trust.
And you have sworn--even with your infant breath
You too were pledged.

George Eliot's faith in tradition, as furnishing the basis of our best
life, and the moral purpose and law which is to guide it, she has
concentrated into one question asked by Maggie Tulliver.

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should
have no law but the inclination of the moment.

Although this question is asked in regard to an individual's past, the
answer to it holds quite as good for the race as for the individual. She
repudiates all theories which give the individual authority to follow
inclination, or even to follow some inner or personal guide. The true
wisdom is always social, always grows out of the experiences of the race,
and not out of any personal inspiration or enlightenment. Tradition
furnishes the materials for reason to use, but reason does not penetrate
into new regions, or bring to us wisdom apart from that we obtain through
inherited experiences. George Eliot compares these two with each other in
_The Spanish Gypsy_ in the words of Sephardo.

I abide
By that wise spirit of listening reverence
Which marks the boldest doctors of our race.
For Truth, to us, is like a living child
Born of two parents: if the parents part
And will divide the child, how shall it live?
Or, I will rather say: Two angels guide
The path of man, both aged and yet young,
As angels are, ripening through endless years.
On one he leans: some call her Memory,
And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet,
With deep mysterious accords: the other,
Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams
A light divine and searching on the earth,
Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields,
Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew
Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp
Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked
But for Tradition; we walk evermore
To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp.

Man leans on tradition, it is the support of his life, by its strength he
is able to move forward. Reason is a lamp which lights the way, gives
direction to tradition; it is a beacon and not a support. Tradition not
only brings us the wisdom of all past experience, but it develops into a
spiritual atmosphere in which we live, move and have our being. This was
Comte