lso ignored by the radicals in morals
and religion. Much which George Eliot says on this subject is of great
value, and may be heeded with the utmost profit. Her words of wisdom,
however, lose much of their value because they utterly ignore those
spontaneous and supernatural elements of man's higher life which lift it
quite out of the region of dependence on history.

There is something to be said in behalf of George Eliot's attitude towards
religion, which caused her to hold it in reverence, even when rejecting the
objective validity of its dogmas. Yet much more is to be said for that
other attitude, which is faithful to the law of reason, and believes that
reason is competent to say some truer and larger word on a subject of such
vital importance and such constant interest to man. That both reason and
tradition are to be listened to reverently is true, but George Eliot so
zealously espoused the cause of tradition as to give it an undue
prominence. Her lesson was needed, however, and we may be all the better
able to profit by it because she was so much an enthusiast in proclaiming
its value. The even poise of perfect truth is no more to be had from her
pages than from those of others.

The emphasis she laid on feeling and sentiment was a needed one, as a
counterpoise to the exaggerations of rationalism. Man does live in his
feelings more than in his reason. He is a being of sentiment, a creature of
impulse, his social life is one of the affections. In all the ranges of his
moral, religious and social life he is guided mainly by his emotions and
sentiments. It cannot be said, however, as George Eliot would have us say,
that these are human born and have no higher meaning. They are the
outgrowth of spiritual reality, as well as of human experience; they repeat
the foregleams and foresights of a

"far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves."

Life is enriched and flooded with light by the emotions, and feeling, true
and tender and pure, is as much the symbol of humanity as reason itself. It
was therefore well that some one should attempt to justify the emotional
life against the aspersions of those who have done it grave injustice. It
is true that man is not a being who wholly arrives at his method of life
through reason, but feeling lends quite as important aid. He does not only
think, but he has emotions as well; he not only weighs evidence, but he
acts by impulse. He is continually led by