To say
nothing of the fact that this instinct deals primarily with questions of
feeling, and only indirectly and incidentally with questions of moral
right, Harold Transome, alike congenitally and circumstantially, could
scarcely by possibility have been animated by it even in slight degree,
nor does it ever betray its presence in him through those slight but
graceful courtesies of life which are pre-eminently the sphere of its
manifestation. Equally untenable is the hypothesis which ascribes these
manifestations of character wholly to the influence of a nature higher
than his own appealing to him--that of Felix Holt, the glorious old
Dissenter, or Esther Lyon. Such appeals can have any avail only when in
the nature appealed to there remains the capability to recognise that
right is greater than success or joy, and the moral power of will to act
on that recognition. In the fact that Harold's nature does respond to
these appeals we have the clue to the apparent anomaly his character
presents. We see that, howsoever overlaid by temperament and restrained
by circumstance, the noblest capability in man still survives and is
active in him.
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