to animal life. No man can begin to
mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order
of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has
been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of
impressions, desires and impulses.

To live for self, George Eliot seems to regard as immoral; self is to be
ignored except in so far as it can be made to serve humanity. As rights are
individual they are repudiated, and the demand for them is regarded as
revolutionary and destructive.

That man is a moral being because he is a social being she carries to its
farthest extreme in some of her teachings, as when she makes public opinion
the great motive power to social improvement. Felix Holt pronounces public
opinion--the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is
wrong, what is honorable and what is shameful--to be the greatest power
under heaven. In the "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt," published in
_Blackwood's Magazine_, Felix is made to say to his fellows,--

Any nation that had within it a majority of men--and we are the
majority--possessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the
bad practices, the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous
adulteration of goods, the retail cheating and the political bribery
which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A majority has the
power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and his-s before we
had the franchise: if we had groaned and hissed in the right place, if
we had discerned better between good and evil, if the multitude of us
artisans and factory hands and miners and laborers of all sorts had
been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober--and I don't
see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere without these
qualities--we should have made an audience that would have shamed the
other classes out of their share in the national vices. We should have
had better members of Parliament, better religious teachers, honester
tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence in infamous and
brutal men; and we should not have had among us the abomination of men
calling themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-gotten
gains. I say it is not possible for any society in which there is a
very large body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our
society is--to have as low a standar