A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

99.
writes that "there is in some minds, more than in others, a susceptibility
to .thedisplay of other men's feelings, as opposed to the self-engrossed
and egoistic promptings •••• The climax or completion of Sympathy is the
6
determination to act for another person exactly as for self. tl
This same recognition that "egoism and altruism are ••• co-essential t '
7
forms a major part of the thesis presented by Herbert Spencer in~
Principles of Ethics (18791~
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evidence that she read and appreciated his work. 8
A letter George Eliot wrote to Spencer offers
Sl)enCer holds that
"regard for the well-being of others is increasing pari passu with the
taking of means to secure personal well-being. II 9 For all his utilitar~
ian bias, however, Spencer is not trying to suggest that vie should be
i"J
encouraged to feel symp~thy
for others as the most certain way of ensuring
our personal happiness. He states explicitly that "in the truly
sympathetic, attention is so absorbed with the proximate end, others'
happiness, that there is none given to the prospective self-happiness
which may ultimately result." 10 He was as concerned as other thinkers
to determine the state of society most suited to the development of a
sympathetic bond among its inhabitants, and discusses various manifestations
of sympathy. Like George Eliot and Bain, he compares an earlier
stage, which he calls "egoistic competition" with a stage of llhighest
altruisml/ 11 which indicates that he, also, conceived of a hierarchical
scale of moral development.
'Herbert Spencer, as was shovm in an earlier chapter, was one of the
main proponents of evolutionary psychology. The following extract from
a letter he v~ote
to J. S. Mill provides a conclusive s~~ary of his
position. He has been explaining that we have an "intuition of space" as
a result of the "organised and consolidated experiences of all antecedent
individuals." Using this an an analogy to explain our possession
of a moral faculty, he states his belief that "the experiences of
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