The Ethics of George Eliot's Works by John Crombie Brown
page 38 of 92 (41%)
page 38 of 92 (41%)
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in the death-clutch of the human avenger--"justice is like the kingdom of
God: it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great yearning." In these solemn truthful words we have suggested to us how feebly mere physical death can shadow forth that spiritual corruption, that "second death," which we have seen hour by hour consummating in him who has lived for self alone. Few of the great figures which stand up amid the dimness of medieval history are more perplexing to historian and biographer than Savonarola. On a first glance we seem shut up to one or other of two alternatives--regarding him as an apostle and martyr, or as a charlatan. 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 |
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