d social environment which largely
helped to shape her career and to leave her bereaved of the largest
possibilities of which her life was capable. Gwendolen's life was largely
determined by her early training and by her social surroundings. Yet with
all these, life has its necessary issues, and Nemesis plays its part.
Retribution is for all; it is ever stern, just and inevitable. Just,
however, only in the sense that wrong-doing cannot escape its own effects,
but not just in the sense that the guiltless must often share the fate
of the guilty. Wrong-doing drags down to destruction many an innocent
person. It is to be said of George Eliot, however, that she never presents
any of her characters as doomed utterly by the past. However strong the
memories of the ages lay upon them, they are capable of self-direction.
Not one of her characters is wholly the victim of his environment. There
is no hint in _Middlemarch_ that Dorothea was not capable of heroism and
self-consecration. Her environment gave a wrong direction to her moral
purpose; but that purpose remained, and the moral nobleness of her mind was
not destroyed. Still, it is largely true, that in her books the individual
is sacrificed to his social environment. He is to renounce his own
personality for the sake of the race. Consequently his fate is linked with
that of others, and he must suffer from other men's deeds.

With all its limitations and defects, George Eliot's teaching concerning
the moral effects of conduct is wholesome and healthy. It rests on a solid
foundation of experience and scientific evidence. Her books are full of
moral stimulus and strengthening, because of the profound conviction with
which she has presented her conception of moral cause and effect. With her,
we must believe that moral sequences are as inevitable as the physical.

It would be very unjust to George Eliot to suppose that she left man in the
hands of a relentless moral order which manifests no tenderness and which
is incapable of pity and mercy. She did not believe in an Infinite Father,
full of love and forgiveness; that faith was not for her. Yet she did
believe in a providence which can assuage man's sorrows and deal tenderly
with his wrong-doing. While nature is stern and the moral sequences of life
unbending, man may be sympathetic and helpful. Man is to be the providence
of man; humanity is to be his tender forgiving Friend. A substitute so
poor for the old faith would seem t