And even more careful examination leaves in his character and life
anomalies so extraordinary, contradictions so inextricable, that most
historians have fallen back on the hypothesis of partial insanity--the
insanity born of an honest and upright but extravagant fanaticism--as the
only one adequate to explain the mystery. Whether George Eliot has in
this work produced a more satisfactory solution, we do not attempt
formally to determine. We are sure, however, that every thoughtful
reader will recognise that the solution she offers is one in strict and
deep consistency with all the laws of human action, and all the
tendencies of human imperfection; and that the Savonarola she places
before us is a being we can understand _by sympathy_--sympathy at once
with the greatness of his aims, and still more fully with the weaknesses
that lead him astray.
The picture is a very impressive one, alike in its grandeur and in its
sadness, speaking its true, deep, universal lesson home to us and to our
life: alike when it shows us the strength and nobleness of life attuning
itself to the highest good, and battling on toward the highest right; and
when it shows us how self, under a form which does not seem self, may
steal in to sap its strength and to abase its nobleness.
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