and brings in the most
people as sharers in it."

Of the same character is the belief which comforts Dorothea, and takes the
place to her of prayer.

"That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know
what it is and cannot do what we would, we are a part of the divine
power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the
struggle with darkness narrower."

Mr. Tryan, in _Janet's Repentance_, is a most ardent disciple of
Evangelicalism, and accepts all its doctrines; but George Eliot contrives
to show throughout the book, that all the value of his work and religion
consisted in the humanitarian spirit of renunciation he awakened.

George Eliot does not entirely avoid the supernatural, but she treats it as
unexplainable. Instances of her use of it are to be found in Adam Bede's
experience while at work on his father's coffin, in the visions of
Savonarola, and in Mordecai's strange faith in a coming successor to his
own faith and work. For Adam Bede's experience there is no explanation
given, nor for that curious power manifest in the "Lifted Veil." On the
other hand, the spiritual power of Savonarola and Mordecai have their
explanation, in George Eliot's philosophy, in that intuition which is
inherited insight. In her treatment of such themes she manifests her
appreciation of the great mystery which surrounds man's existence, but she
shows no faith in a spiritual world which impinges on the material, and
ever manifests itself in gleams and fore-tokenings.

It is to be noted, however, that many traces of mysticism appear in her
works. This might have been expected from her early love of the
transcendentalists, as well as from her frequent perusal of Thomas a
Kempis. More especially was this to be expected from her conception of
feeling as the source of all that is best in man's life. The mystics always
make feeling the source of truth, prefer emotion to reason. All thinkers
who lay stress on the value of feeling are liable to become mystics, even
if materialists in their philosophy. Here and there in her pages this
tendency towards mysticism, which manifests itself in some of the more
poetic of the scientists of the present time, is to be seen in George
Eliot. Some of her words about love, music and nature partake of this
character. Her sayings about altruism and renunciation touch the border of
the mystical occasionally. Had she been less thoroughly a rationalist she