A study of characterisation in the novels of George Eliot

91.
Evolution~ Ethics.
"Is it not cheering, II writes George Eliot, "to think of the youthfulness
of this little planet, and the immensely greater youthfulness of
our race upon it?--to think that the higher moral tendencies of human
nature are yet only in their germ?1I 1 This rhetorical question expressed
in a letter to Mrs Peter Taylor in 1853 indicates George Eliot's firm
belief in the possibility of moral development. The very word "germ"
implies grovrth and directs our attention to the original use of the
word "evolution" as an embryological unfolding. For, like many of her
contemporaries, George Eliot sought a basis for ethics in the emergent
evolutionary theories of the mid-nineteenth century. 'l'he belief' that,
morally speaking, the world was in its infancy imposed, also, a grave
sense of responsibility. Lewes' remark that-"culture transforms ••• the
selfish savage into the sympathetic citizen, II 2 has the underlying proviso
that each one of us must keep careful watch over our contribution to
that "culture. 11
We can better understand the moral earnestness and responsibility
to her readers expressed so often in the light of this
f'ramework of a belief' in moral development,
The major text for evolutionary theories, whether biological or
ethical, was obviously Darvdn's ~ Origin £t Species (1859) \mich,
while it gave enormous support to a belief in moral development, was
itself equivocal. This can be seen in the variety of different interpretations
it has given rise to. One young man wrote in a letter immediately
after his reading of' the f'irst edition of ~ 2F~gin
of' SpeCies
of' lithe rigorous logic that wrecked the universe for me an:l for millions
of others, l?iving I a feeling of utter insignificance in the face of
unapprehended processes of nature ••• a sense of being aimlessly adrift