A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

80.
out the novels this emphasis on the necessary experience is a recurring
motif. Felix Holt, for example, tells Esther that nit all depends on
what a man gets into his consciousness--what life thrusts into his mind,
SO that it becomes present to him as remorse is present to the guilty,
t
. . 'I 28
or a mechanical problem to an inven ~ve ge~us.
This emphasis on experience brings us back to Lewes' oontribution
to evolutionary psychology. He took the concept of biological evolution
from Spencer and Darwin and extended and developed it. H. C. Warren writes
of him that he was "unique among associationists in emphasising the
social data of psychology, which he believe[d] to be chiefly responsible
for the tremendous growth of mind in man beyond other species. 1t 29
Lewes' work as an experimental biologist, his fluency in European lang­
...
uages which enabled him to keep abreast of the new developments in
neurophysiolo{"Y in both :brance and Germuny--he would have scorned the
notion of "cerebral hyglime" 30 practised assiduously by Comte and to
a lesser extent by Spencer--and his early enthusiasm for the 1de.as of
comte, all contributed to his importance in this field. ~ StuW ~
Psychology offers his major formulation of evolutionary psychology. In
it, we read that "it is inc..isputable that every particular man comes
into the world with a heritage of organised forms and def'inite tendencies,
which will determine his feeling and thinking in certain def­
inite ways, whenever the suitable conditions are present.... '/ 31 a The
only question, therefore, is "#hat are the conditions?' It is the
task of the psychologist to specify them. II 32
The study of the conditions necessary for an organism to function
with the maximum efficiency and creativity is made possible by the
underlying belief in the "invariability of sequence" 33 that I have
already discussed. Identical conditions will produce L:l.entical results;
a change in the conditions will necessitate a change in the