A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

77.
rest with the urqualified assertion that, antecedent to experience,
the mind is a blank, is' to ignore tIle all-essential
questions--whence comes the power of organising experiences?
whence arise the different degrees of that power possessed by
different races of organisms, and different individuals of the
same race? •• Understood in its current form, the experiencehypothesis
implies that the presence of a definitely organised
nervous system is a circumstance of no moment--a fact not needing
to be taken into account! Yet it is the all-important fact-­
the fact ••• without which an assimilation of experiences is
utterly inexplicable. 14
Spencer explains the Itdefinitely organised nervous system" in Lamarckian
terms, as transmittable from one generation to another; we have seen
Lewes do the same. This goes far to account for our intellectual qualities,
and Spencer explains our emotional qualities as originating in
the same way, laid dovm and stabilised by vividness and frequency of
occurrence, not only in our own, but in our ancestors' lifetimes. In the
next chapter when I look at George Eliot's notion of moral development,
I will show the importance of this evolutionary psychology as the provider
of' a basis for and an explanation of the moral sense. This with
its affective component, sympathy, was helo. to have been established
in the same way as other emotional qualities of the individual.
Spencer's !!:!!. Principles .2f. Psycholo~ appeared in its first form
in 1855, four years before The Origin .2f. Species which, as I have in­
~?ated,
gave an additional and more scientifically and experimentally
based impetus to this emergent evolutionary psychology. Previous epistemological
debates between tlnativists" and empiricists had been underpinned
by a belief in the fixity of species, which inevitably implied the
view that if the actual physical species were fued, then mental constltutions
were likewise fixed and immutable. The relinquisbi.l}g of the
belief and the acceptance of a greatly extended time-scale were two
essential factors in Darwin's formulation of his "Development Hypothesis."
Evolution, therefore, introduced a new factor in the debate I have just
referred to, and, as well, the empirical position was greatly strengthened