Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/74

 from a Note-Book that might very well have been omitted. They are of the period and the type of Theophrastus Such, and their style is of the same harsh character, as may be judged by the opening sentence:—

'To lay down in the shape of practical moral rules courses of conduct only to be made real by the rarest states of motive and disposition, tends not to elevate but to degrade the general standard, by turning that rare attainment from an object of admiration into an impossible prescription, against which the average nature first rebels and then flings out ridicule,'

Of course a mind of the power of George Eliot's could not have been occupied with such varied subjects without hitting upon some novel points of view or felicitous phrases. Of the latter we may pick out the reference of Young's faults to a 'pedagogic fallacy,' akin to Mr. Ruskin's 'pathetic fallacy.' Again, the following points are well put:—

'Virtue, with Young, must always squint—must never look straight towards the immediate object of its emotion and effort. Thus, if a man risks perishing in the snow himself rather than forsake a weaker comrade, he must either do this because his hopes and fears are directed to another world, or because he desires to applaud