A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

13.
review of the IIlr~jor work of the French scientist, Francis Gall, ~ ~
fonctions ~ cerveau, ~ ~ ~~ de chacune ~.~ I'arties (1822-25),
Lewes acclaims Gall's "vision of Psychology as a branch of Biology" 12 and
credits Gall with rescuing lithe problem of mental funotions from
Metaphysics. II 13 However the battle was not to be won so easily. In 1878
in ~ Study of Psycholo&.¥, Lewes is still having to refute the enduring
notion of the Will as an entity separate from the ordinary functioning
of the body and is criticising what he calls the ftspeculative mistake lt
of personifying the lIabstraction Will as something apart from the total
of volitional impulses, and, therefore, removed from their conditions."
14
lIA metaphysical abstraction," as he points out, "has no physical deter-
minates II and is not "admitted vdthin the rigorous limits of determinism. II
15
It is of course the phrase "rigorous limits of determinism" that is
the stumbling block, because it was believed that to give up the notion
of the Hind (or Will) as a separate entity and subsume its functions
under the general laws for the functions of the body, VlaS to question the
whole basis of morality and the freedom of the will. Vie have seen that
George Eliot, far from denying the implications of such a deterministic
account of the mind, welcomec. it, seeing in the "invariability of
sequence tl that "which can alone give value to experience and render
education in the true sense possible." 16 Implicit in these statements
about the functiOning of the mind are not only assumptions about the
body/mind problem but also assumptions about causality. In ~ Stu