t, is ignored. Sentiment is supreme. Duty,
as a motive power, is set aside.

George Sand, who as a writer from first to last appeared as a crusader
against the evil, injustice and vice that darken the world, did
undoubtedly choose rather to speak out of her heart to our hearts, than
out of her head to our heads, and considered moreover that such was the
more effectual way. Her idea of virtue lay not in the curbing of evil
instincts, but in their conversion or modification by the evoking of
good impulses, that "guiding and intensifying of our emotions by a new
ideal" which has been called the great work of Christianity.

It is not--or not in the first place--that people should do as they
like, but that they should like to do right; and further, that human
nature in that ideal life the sentiment of which pervades her works, and
in which she saw "no other than the normal life as we are called to know
it," does not desire what is hurtful to it.

The goodness that consists in doing right or refraining from doing wrong
reluctantly, or in obedience to prescribed rules, or from mechanical
habit, had for her no life or charm. The object to be striven for should
be nothing less than the "perfect harmony of inward desire and outward
obligation."

Virtue should be chosen, though we seem to sacrifice happiness; but that
the two are in the beginning identical, that, as expressed by Mr.
Herbert Spencer, "whether perfection of nature, virtuousness of action,
or rectitude of motive, be assigned as the proper aim, the definition of
perfection, virtue, rectitude, brings us down to happiness experienced
in some form, at some time, by some person as the fundamental idea," is
a philosophic truth of which a large _apercu_ is observable in the works
of George Sand. Self-sacrifice should spring from direct desire,
altruism be spontaneous--a need--becoming a second and better nature;
not won by painful effort, but through the larger development of the
principle of sympathy. Strong in her own immense power of sympathy, she
applied herself to the task of awakening and extending such sympathies
in others. This she does by the creation of agreeable, interesting and
noble types, such as may put us out of conceit with what is mean and
base. Goodness, as understood and portrayed by her, must recommend
itself not only to the judgment but to the heart. She worked to
popularize high sentiments, and to give shape and reality to vague ideas
of human exc