A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

17.
little and little." 38 Any suggestion that freedom means an overthrovdng
of existing laws and an entry into a state of unregulated impulse is
soundly scotched, for example, in the following rebuke offered to the
youthful enthusiasm of Felix Holt by the Dissenting minister, Mr Lyon.
He provides a musical analogy which refers indirectly to the harmony of
the spheres and suggests that conflict and discord are inevitable while
mankind is in its present state of imperfection. His reference to a
"higher rule" is especially pertinent to my later discussion of George
Eliot's moral thought.
wrou yourself are a lover of freedom, and a bold rebel against
usurping authority. But the right to rebellion is the right to
seek a higher rule. and !!ot to wander in mere lawlessness. Wherefore,
I beseech you, seem not to sa:,' that liberty is licence. And
I apprehend .lfthat there is a law in music, disobedience whereunto
would bring us in our singing to the level of shrieking
maniacs or howling beasts: so that herein we are well instructed
how true liberty can be naught but the transfer of obedience from
the will of one or of a few men to that will which is the norm
or rule for all men. And though the transfer may sometimes be but
an erroneous direction of search, yet is the search good and necessary
to the ultimate finding. And even as in music, where all
obey and concur to one end ••• so will it be in that cro.ming time
of the milennial reign, when our daily prayer 'will be fulfilled,
and one law shall be 'written on all hearts, and be the ve~ structure
of all thought, and be the principle of all action. 1I
Mr Lyon shies away from the notion of unfettered liberty, which he
sees as anarchy. The musical analogy of the "singingll of "shrieking maniacs"
or "howling beasts" reveals his anxiety. Obedience to the laws thus constitutes
freedom; it does not impose a sense of restraint. Lewes expresses
a similar sentiment when he claims that "in organic, as in social life,
the indispensable condition of perfect action is the co-operation of in-
Qependent e.gents--the Freedom which is subordinated to Law, and the Lavi
which secures Freedom." 40 In this vray the rules of antecedent and consequent
by v:hich a character t s future actions ore determined by his past
actions are seen to constitute a kind of logical entailment and the very
existence of a socia.l setting which modifies and is modified by each indi
vidual becomes
the all-embracing structure, the "form" within which