es
in the perfection of the race, and in conformity to the eternal law of
righteousness, is far nobler and truer than that which George Eliot
accepted.

She was not a mere unbeliever, however, for she did not thrust aside the
hope of immortality with a contemptuous hand. This problem she left where
she left that concerning God, in the background of thought, among the
questions which cannot be solved. She believed that the power to contribute
to the future good of the race is hope and promise enough. At the same
time, she was very tender of the positive beliefs of others, and especially
of that yearning so many feel after personal recognition and development.
Writing to one who passionately clung to such a hope, she said,--

I have no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the
depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help
in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the
absence of what has been called consolatory belief. But all the while I
gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits
or negations in my own moral powers and life experience which may
screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering
human nature. The most melancholy thought surely would be that we in
our own persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual
good. But we know the poor help the poor.

These words seem to be uttered in quite another tone than that in which she
asserted the unbelievableness of immortality, though they do not indicate
anything more than a tender yearning for human good and a belief that she
could not herself measure all the possibilities of such good. The
consolation of which she writes, comes only of human sympathy and
helpfulness. In writing to a friend suffering under the anguish of a recent
bereavement, she said,--

For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort;--whatever goodness may
surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly
the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living
affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn
initiation preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship
with the fullest human lot which, I must think, no one who has tasted
it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to
know what the last parting is, seems needfu