sire for a purer life, and the influence of Deronda
worked powerfully in the same direction. She is to be regarded, however, as
simply a representative of that social, moral and spiritual life bred in
our century by the disintegrating forces everywhere at work. No moral
ideal, no awe of the divine Nemesis, no spiritual sympathy with the larger
life of the race, is to be found in her thought. The radicalism of the
time, which neglects religious training, which scorns the life of the past,
which lives for self and culture, is destroying all that is best in modern
society. Gwendolen is one of the results of these processes, an example of
that impoverished life which is so common, arising from religious rebellion
and egotism.

Another motive and spirit is represented in the character of Deronda. As a
boy, his mind was full of ideal aspirations, he was chivalrous and eager to
help and comfort others. He would take no mean advantages in his own
behalf, he loved the comradeship of those whom he could help, he was always
ready with his sympathy.

He was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those
heights.

He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means
whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for
comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge
that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving
after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness.
Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those
which helped to form Gwendolen's character, yet a very different result was
produced in him because of his _inherited_ tendencies of mind. After he had
seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai,--

"It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited
yearning--the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in my ancestors--
thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather.
Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a
city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and
born blind--the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing
for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their
inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument
never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious
moanings of it