Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/56

 vilifying caricature, it is equally useless and objectionable to exalt and glorify Jewish characters without making evident what is essentially Jewish in them, and I without showing the fundamental dependence of their pre-eminent qualities on the historical conditions of their race. It is the duty of an author to introduce his readers into the workshop where his characters are formed, and to allow them to penetrate to the fountain-head of passion and action; the mere epithet "Jewish" tells us nothing, and furnishes no key either to vice or to virtue. How different George Eliot! Led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish Characters, and to recognise and give presentment to the influences which Jewish education is wont to exercise—to prove by that Judaism is an in-