subdued,--where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender
mercies of his fellow,--the moral relation of man to man is reduced to
its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory
cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute
nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed all the forces of our
nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience and of love, and
sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates,
our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires. This blessing
of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple,
direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is
often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there
are of a hard and terrible kind. [Footnote: Chapter XXIV.]

The basis of such sympathetic helpfulness she finds in the common sorrows
and trials of the world. All find life hard, pain comes to all, none are to
be found unacquainted with sorrow. These common experiences draw men
together in sympathy, unite them in a common purpose of assuagement and
help. The sorrow of Adam Bede made him more gentle and patient with his
brother.

It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at
work within him. For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself,
working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable
nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a
temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God
forbid! It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling
if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could
return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same
light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over
blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown toward
which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us
rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible
force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into
sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our
best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had
completely taken place in Adam yet; there was still a great remnant of
pain, which he felt would subsist