of human motive or inspiration. Contempt for the traditional, with
her, implies contempt for the spiritual and moral. To destroy the
traditional is revolutionary, dangerous and immoral. She cannot reject
tradition in the name of higher wisdom, in the name of higher truth and
authority. It gone, and all is gone; hence her fear of all iconoclastic and
revolutionary methods. So she would keep whole and pure the national
memories of every people. In the last essay of the book she says, "The
preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national
greatness, and their revival a sign of reviving nationality." It is "the
divine gift of memory" as it expresses itself in the life and purposes of a
people, "which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future,
and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the
brutes." All which lowers the influence or the sacredness of this memory is
debasing. The corrupting of this memory "is the impoverishment that
threatens our posterity;" and this "new famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd
grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our
human sentiments." That eager yearning of the nineteenth century for truth
and reality, for something more than traditions and national memories,
which displays itself in reforms and revolutions of every kind, had little
of George Eliot's sympathy. Yet this spirit is stronger even than
tradition, and creates for us a new world and a higher life.

Throughout these essays it is the social side of morality which is praised
and commended. What will increase the altruistic spirit, what will widen
sympathy and helpfulness, is regarded as truly ethical in its import. Ideal
aims are brought to the level of present needs and the possibilities of
human nature as it now exists.

Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the
highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that
touches the mixed life of the earth. They are archangels with awful
brow and flaming sword, summoning and encouraging us to do the right
and the divinely heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their
presence; but to learn what it is they summon us to do, we have to
consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and
our own appetites.... On the whole, and in the vast majority of
instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages