Page:Early Essays by George Eliot (1919).djvu/39

 expediency, but from the indications of man's highest destiny, to be found in those faculties of his nature which may be justly said to be more than human, since they might belong to conditions of being far less limited than those of man. Self-renunciation, submission to law, trust, benignity, ingenuousness, rectitude—these are the qualities we delight most to witness in the child, and these are the qualities which most dignify the man.

The true philosopher, then, constructs his moral code with a view to preserve these sentiments in that state of unsullied purity and freedom of exercise which he loves to see in a child. If he were to admit that all things were lawful to him, he would add, "I will not be thought under the power of any; I will not circumscribe or bring into bondage the action of any one of my highest endowments." He feels that in submitting to the restraint of a self-imposed law, he would be presenting humanity in its grandest aspect. But it is only the highest human state at which he aims—not anything superhuman. He seeks exercise for all the minor feelings—nay, he holds that these are the only nest in which the everaspiring eagle, Nature, can be properly fledged and winged; but he baptizes and hallows them all with the chrism of the diviner soul within him, and regulates their indulgence by his consciousness of the 33