Even on the
surface this is shown; for Eppie, unowned and neglected, can never become
his daughter. But--far beyond and beneath this--we have here, and
elsewhere throughout the author's works, indicated to us one of the most
solemn, and, at the same time, most certain truths of our existence: that
there are forms of accepted and fostered evil so vital that no repentance
can fully blot them out from the present or the future of life. No
turning away from the accursed thing, no discipline, no futurity near or
far, can ever place Arthur Donnithorne or Godfrey Cass alongside Dinah
Morris or Adam Bede. Their irreversible part of self-worship precludes
them, by the very laws of our being, from the highest and broadest
achievement of life and destiny.
Leaving for the present 'Romola,' as in many respects more directly
linking itself with George Eliot's great poetic effort, 'The Spanish
Gypsy,' we turn for a little to 'Felix Holt,' the next of her English
tales. It would be perhaps natural to select, from among the characters
here presented to us, in illustration of life consciously attuning itself
to the highest aim irrespective of any end save that aim itself, one or
other of the two in whom this is most palpably presented to us--Felix
himself or Esther Lyon.
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