so strongly present with me--I should have felt them pressing on
my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my
conscience is awake, that the opposite feeling would never have grown
in me as it has done: it would have been quenched at once. I should
have prayed for help so earnestly--I should have rushed away as we rush
from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself--none. I should never
have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been
weak, selfish and hard--able to think of their pain without a pain to
myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh. what is Lucy
feeling now? She believed in me--she loved me--she was so good to me!
Think of her!"

She can see no good for herself which is apart from the good of others, no
joy which is the means of pain to those she holds dear. The past has made
ties and; memories which no present love or future joy can take away; she
must be true to past obligations as well as present inclinations.

"There are memories and affections, and longing after perfect goodness,
that have such a strong hold on me, they would never quit me for long;
they would come back and be pain to me--repentance. I couldn't live in
peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I
have caused sorrow already--I know--I feel it; but I have never
deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They shall suffer
that I may have joy.'"

And again, she says,--

"We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we
can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will
indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce
that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us--for the sake
of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this
belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have
felt that if I let it go forever I should have no light through the
darkness of this life."

In these remarkable passages from _Romola_ and _The Mill on the Floss_,
George Eliot presented her own theory of life. One of her friends, in
giving an account of her moral influence, speaks of "the impression she
produced, that one of the greatest duties of life was that of resignation.
Nothing was more impressive as exhibiting the power of feelings to survive
the convictions which gave t