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286 which ought to be submission to just punishment, proved by the test of confession, means more commonly the endeavour to elude it. She thought that the world would be indefinitely better and happier if men could be made to feel that there is no escape from the inexorable law that we reap what we have sown. When she began to write, this doctrine was of importance as a neutral space, as an altar of the Unknown God, from which she was able to preach her own beliefs without controversy or exposure. For whilst it is the basis of morals under the scientific reign, it is a stimulant and a consolation to many Christians, for whom the line, "The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small," expresses an ancient observation sanctioned by religion, whereas the words once spoken at Salerno, "Dilexi justitiam et odi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio," are the last cry of a baffled and despairing fanatic.

This fundamental principle, that the wages of sin are paid in ready money, was borne in upon her by all her early environment. Bray had written a book in its defence, and the strength of Dawson's moral teaching was largely ascribed to the firmness with which he held it. Comte had said that obedience to each natural law has its peculiar reward, and disobedience its appropriate punishment ; and Emerson stated his theory of compensation in these terms : "The specific stripes may follow late upon the offence, but they follow, because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. We cannot do wrong without suffering wrong." The same law, that evil ensues of necessity from evil deeds, is the pivot of Spinoza's ethics, and it was the belief of Strauss. George Eliot accepted it, and made it bright with the splendour of genius. Other portions of her system, such as altruism and the reign of the dead, exhibit her power of anticipating and of keeping abreast with the quicker movements of the age. In this she plainly followed, and she followed the lead of those who happened to be near.

She belongs to that family of illustrious thinkers whose progress has been made by the ingenious use of existing