A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

16.
is coni'used with the conception that the events must arrive whether the
conditions be present or not, being fatally predetermined. II He distinguishes
between necessity and fatalism in these terms. tlNecessity
simply says that whatever is is, and will vary with varying conditions.
Fatalism says that something must ~; and this something cannot be modified
by any modification of the conditions. II 31 In !. System ...:?! Logic,
J •. S. Mill writes in similar terms that what "revolts our feelings" is
"humiliating to our pride" and "paralysing to our desire of excellence"
is lithe feeling of some intimate connexion, of some peculiar tie, or
mysterious constraint exercised by the antecedent over the consequent. 1I 32
He provides an answer to the problem of necessitarianism in terms very
similar to George Eliott s instruction to "will to will strongly" ~;::-:_,
.- ,,/ ~
when he maintains that "we are exactly as capable of' making our own
character, if !2. will, as others are of making it for us." 34 This is the
compr~ by which both thinkers escape from the closed system of "hard
~
determinism;' which is how William James defines such "harsh words" as
"fatality, necessity, and even predetermination; and embrace "sof't determinism"
of which the "real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity
understood." 35 Far from dismissing this solution as a "quagmire of
evasion, " 36 as James does, George Eliot maintains that our freedom, our
power of making desired moral improvement rests ~n just this necessar,y
understanding. Freedom is an adjustment to lawf'ulness, not a state of'
anarchy. The "immodifiable" laws concern the "hard non-moral outward
conditions"; 37 the laws which can be modified, however slowly, concern
moral issues and are man-made. Many of these are indeed inadequate and
in need of adjustment but the process of change must be gradual. Almost
at the end of her life George Eliot wrote to Elma stuart that "the reason
why societies change slowly is, because individual men and women cannot
have their natures changed by doctrine and can only be wrought on by
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