A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

95.
~dth the theory' of transmutation by adaptation ann, hence with
DRrwinism. Spencer's philosophy seems to have been olo~ely connected
with the introduction of the the title "theory of evolution,"
and although the modern theoI"'J is restrioted to the study of
'ttransmutation, it was only vdth some diff'iculty that its practitioners
freed themselves f'rom the progressionist implications
of' the Synthetic Philosophy. 18
Believing that progress was "a beneficent neoessity,"
19
f,Spencer
found a oomforting teleology in theQries of evolution and is therefore
aocused by Morse Peokham of holding a "metaphysical" 20 view of evolution.
Peokham claims that the majority of those nineteenth oentury
thinkers (George Eliot included) who Vlere able to receive ~ Origin
2£ Speoies with a tolerable degree of equanimity, did so beoause they
were able to subtract from it a "metaphysic of goal-directed organic
growth." 21 He deolares that "it is impossible to find in the Origin
a basis in the biological world f'or any kind of orthogenesis or goal-
directed process."
22
Nor; Spencer believed that lithe conduct to 'which we
apply the name good is the relatively more evolved." He effectively ignored
the possibility that more evolved need not mean '!'better;" it
could just as well mean "later in time" or more t1complex" or a combination
of both. 23 George Eliot's remark that "natural seleotion is
not alvlays good and depends (see Darwin) on many caprices of' very f'oolish
animals," 24 reveals a tougher mind than Spencer's at work in her
approach to an evolutionary ethic; however, her belief in the geometrical
progression of Development shows us that she was not totally tL'1deserving
of Peckham's criticism. It was not until later in the century that T. H.
Huxley, self-styled "Dar'win' s bulldog" 25 for his uncompromising support
of Darwin's theories, was able to express his rejection of this common
identif'ication of' fact and value. He dissociated the biological facts of
evolution f'rom any moral criteria. In the Romanes Lecture he gave at
Oxford in 1893, he commented that "cosmic evolution may teach us how
the good and evil tendencies of man have come about; but," as he