A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

150.
original sin and the need for man to be stringently guarded and protocted
from himself. J..n optimistic determinist like Herbert Spencer
could happily believe that there was taking place a steady attrition of
the self-maintenance instincts and an equivalent development of the
race-maintenance instincts, as our civilisation moved out of the military
phase and entrenched itself more firmly in the industrial phase
where co-operation and fellowship become the order of the day. But
George Eliot Vlas a less thorough-going determinist with a melancholy
turn of mind, believing indeed in progress, but a slow foot-slogging
progress and she would have heartily agreed vlith this stntement of
Auguste Comte that Itself-love in the Positive system is regarded as the
great infirmity of our nature~
an infirmity 7ihich unremitting discipline
on the part of each individual and of society may m[lterially palliate,
but 'i,lill never radically cure." 78 The only safeguard is tho c1o:volopment
of altruism to counteraot the negative effects of an egoistic and
self-regarding vievl of other people. In The Study; S!£ Psy;chology (1878),
Lewes maintains that "the law of animal action is Individualism: its
motto is 'Each for himself against all.' The ideal of human action is
Altruism: its motto is 'Each ~ others, all far each. f II 79 Leaving
aside the ,validity of this description of animal action which twentieth
century ethological studies have seriously dispu~ed,
there is still
contained in this statement a complete identification of individualism
and egoism • .An early nineteenth century~sage of individualism, (1835),
is given as " self-centred feeling or conduct as a principle; a mode of
life in which the individual pursues his o'.::rn ends or follows out his
own ideas; free or independent individual action or thought; egoism;
,
Kingsley 5 tautological utterance, "selfish individualism" comes under
this usage. (OED, "Indi vidualism", 1) Later in the century, 1884, the
word individualism h&s been politicised and it is now seen as the anto-