A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

160.
In 1854, George Eliot translated Feuerbach's ~ Essence of Christianity
and allowedHit to be published under her own name, Marian Evana.
Ludvdg Feuerbach Vias one of those ethical humanists who are especially
concerned with "relationship. II In common with the more recent existentialist,
Marcel, and the two visionaries, one Christian and one Jevdsh,
Kierkegaard and ~mrcel Bubel', Feuerbach insisted on a personal response
to other people. He abhorred exploiting other people or abusing them
by reification. Commitment to other people 'an.Q.. to the natural world
was seen by such thinkers as a safeguard against alienation, separation,
and distortion.
Feuerbach is especially interesting in that he follows the other
T~bingen philosophers, Strauss for example, in demythologising the Bible
and the Christian message. The question which preoccupies him about
Christianity is not, tlIs it true?" but, ''':.'hat fUl'lction has it served in
mankind's history l' and "Vlhat can be learnt from it about men t s needs and
how they satisfy them?" 11 This is a l:!:ne of questio!]ing v[hich can be
traced foriv.ard to Freudian and. other psychologies. George Eliot expresses a
similar view in a letter of 1859.
I havo no longer any antagonism towards any faith in which human
sorrow and human longing for purity have expressed themselves ••••
I have not returned to dogmatic Christianity--to the acceptance
of any set of doctrine as a creed, and a superhuman revelation
of the Unseen--but I see in it the highest expression of the religious
sentiment that has yet found its place in the hist~ of
mankind, and I have the profoundest interest in the inward life of
sincere Christians in all ages. 12
The philosophic relativism of his approach to religion does not extend
to every other area of human thought. Feuerbach/ (and here we can recog-
.f
nise a great similarity to George Eliot), may have dethroned the absolutes
of religion but he has retainecl another absolute in his virtual
deification of mankind and in his stressing the importance fif the inclividual
in the development of mornli ty. The stress on the inm vidual is
somephat ambiguous. The inmvidual who is so important is not the in-