A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

229.
Evolutionary psyohologists of the mid-nineteenth oentur,y reinstated
the "something biologioally given" .53 that the Frenoh scientist, Gall)
had recognised some fifty years earlier. Acoording to this theory, ancestral
experiences extending right baok to the beginnings of mankind
have left in the neurological cirouits oertain modified traoes which
determine our response to particular sitiations. Herbert Spenoer has
desoribed how we have "intuitions of spaoe," .54- and he, Darwin and
Lewes all state explicitly that feelings are developed in the same way
(and it must not be forgotten that nineteenth oentur,y exponents of the
moral sense regarded morality as primarily based on a feeling, namely
sympathy.) Here they parted oompany with suoh earlier empirioists as
Bain and Mill who still attributed individual differences to individual
experienoes within the one lifetime. In The Study 2!.. Psyoholos.y:, Lewes
neatly summarises this theory of anoestral inheritanoe with the dogmatio
statement that IIi t is indisputable that every partioular man oomes
into the world with a heritage of organised forms and definit$ tendencies,
whioh will determine his feeling and thinking in oertain definite
ways, whenever the suitable oonditions are present. II 5.5 Spenoer
refers to "universal anoestral experiences" 56 but I have already indioated
that George Eliot has broken away from this "universality. It
She provides her oentral Jewish oharacters in Daniel Deronda with speoifioally
Jewish anoestral experienoes whioh have a determining and
thereby a limiting effeot on their personalities and lives. Anoestry
is another hereditary condition like sex, or time of birth, or eye
oolour, against which it is impossible to' rebel. It is no ooinoidenoe
that the two George Eliot oharaoters, Deronda and Fedalma, who are the -
most stringently bound by their anoestry are kept in ignoranoe of this
anoestry until they reaoh maturity. If they knew all along there would
be no dramatio ohange of direction. Fedalma renounoes her marriage to