A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

48.
seeing, or that he is looking in the world for confirITk"ttion of what he
already believes to be there. Accordingly, in his reactions to Maggie, he
"judged by what he had been able to see; and the judgement VIas painful
enouf',h to himself. He thought he had the demonstration of facts observed
through years by his own eyes whioh gave no warning of their imperfections."
3 0 This is the mature Tom, but· we could say of him what George
Eliot says of Harold Transome that "the man ,vas no more than the boy
writ large, with an extensive commentary. tl 31 The younger Tom had been
described as a "boy who adhered tenaciously to impressions once received:
as with all minds in which mere perception predOminates over thought and
emotion, the external remained to him rigidly what it was in the first
instance, II 32 a boy, we are told, "born with a deficient power of
hending ~igns
and abstractions ••• a congenital deficiency." 33 He
appreis
one
of those few characters whom George Eliot describes as "inexorable, unbending,
unmodifiable." 34
This brief account of Tom Tulliver indicates two aspects of George
Eliot's belief in the potency of habit formation: the fact that it produces
rigid, non-adaptive behaviour and that it applies to the realm of
ideas as well as to the world of action. A passage in Lewes' ~ PhJsio­
~ of Common ~ (1859-60) draws all these strands together. In it he
equates habit, fixed ideas and automatic actions,' offers the fact of
repetition as an explanation for their potency, and uses the word
"channel" to describe how they come to be established in the neurological
circuit. Lewes maintains that
Habits, FiXed Ideas, and what are called Automatic Actions, all
depend on the tendency which a sensation has to discharge itself
through the readiest channel. In learning to speak a new
language, to play on a musical instrument, or to perform any
unaccustomed movements, great difficulty is felt, because the
channels through which each sensation has to pass have not
become established; but no sooner has frequent repetition cut
a pathway, than this difficulty vnnishes. YJ