ically
considered, there is no reason for believing; that it has its serious
limitations as a literary creation all the critics have said. Yet it
remains also to be said, that for largeness of aim, wealth of sentiment,
and purity of moral teaching, no other book of George Eliot's surpasses
_Daniel Deronda_. Indeed, in its realization of the spiritual basis of
life, and in its portrayal of the religious sentiment, as these are
understood by positivism, this book surpasses every other, by whomsoever
written.

_Daniel Deronda_ is a romance, and hence differs in kind, conception,
scope, circumstance and form from her other works. It is less a study of
character than most of her other works, has more of adventure and action;
and while it is no less realistic, yet it has higher ideal aims, and seeks
to interpret what ought to be.

At least three distinct purposes may be seen running through the book,
which blend into and confirm each other: to show the all-powerful influence
of heredity, that blood will assert itself as more effective than any
conditions of social environment or education; to indicate that ideals,
subjective feelings and sentiments form the reality and the substance of
religion, and that tradition affords the true medium of its expression; and
to contrast a form of social life based on individualism with one based on
tradition. The aim of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is many-sided, and cannot
be expressed in a few phrases. It is too vital with life, touches the
emotions and sentiments too often, has an ideal motive too large, to be
dismissed with a quickly spoken word of contempt. Professor Dowden, one of
her best and most sympathetic critics, has said that it is "an homage to
the emotions rather than to the intellect of man. Her feeling finds
expression not only in occasional gnomic utterances in which sentiments are
declared to be the best part of the world's wealth, and love is spoken of
as deeper than reason, and the intellect is pronounced incapable of
ascertaining the validity of claims which rest upon loving instincts of the
heart, or else are baseless. The entire work possesses an impassioned
aspect, an air of spiritual prescience, far more than the exactitude of
science. The main forces which operate in it are sympathies, aspirations,
ardors; and ideas chiefly as associated with these." The object aimed at is
ideal and religious, much more than intellectual and scientific, to show
how necessary is rel