be accepted and realized by those who can find no sympathy for her
intellectual speculations. Love of man, self-sacrifice for human good,
cannot be urged by too many teachers. The greater the number of motives
leading to that result, the better for man.

XII.

ETHICAL SPIRIT.

Whatever may be said of George Eliot's philosophy and theology, her moral
purpose was sound and her ethical intent noble. She had a strong passion
for the ethical life, her convictions regarding it were very deep and
earnest, and she dwelt lovingly on all its higher accomplishments. Her
books are saturated with moral teaching, and her own life was ordered after
a lofty ethical standard. She seems to have yearned most eagerly after a
life of moral helpfulness and goodness, and she has made her novels the
teachers of a vigorous morality.

Her friends bear enthusiastic testimony to the nobleness of her moral life
and to her zeal for ethical culture. We are told by one of them that "she
had upbuilt with strenuous pains a resolute virtue," conquering many
faults, and gaining a lofty nobleness of spirit. Another has said, that
"precious as the writings of George Eliot are and must always be, her life
and character were yet more beautiful than they." Her zeal for morality was
very great; she was an ethical prophet; the moral order of life roused her
mind to a lofty inspiration. If she could not conceive of God, if she could
not believe in immortality, yet she accepted duty as peremptory and
absolute. Her faith in duty and charity seemed all the more vigorous and
confident because her religion was so attenuated and imperfect. Love of man
with her grew into something like that mighty and absorbing love of God
which is to be seen in some of the greatest souls. Morality became to her a
religion, not so intense as with saints and prophets, but more sympathetic
and ardent than with most ethical teachers. She was no stoic, no teacher
of moral precepts, no didactic debater about moral duties, no mere
_dilettante_ advocate of human rights. She was a warm, tender, yearning,
sympathetic, womanly friend of individuals, who hoped great things for
humanity, and who believed that man can find happiness and true culture
only in a moral life.

She was distinctively a moral teacher in her books. The novel was never to
her a work of art alone. The moral purpose was always present, always
apparent, always clear and emphatic. There was something to teach for her