Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/97

 before us will show the sacredness which attached to George Eliot's calling as she viewed its functions:—

'My function is that of the æsthetic, not the doctrinal teacher—the rousing of the nobler emotions, which make mankind desire the social right, not the prescribing of special measures, concerning which the artistic mind, however strongly moved by social sympathy, is often not the best judge. It is one thing to feel keenly for one's fellow-being; another to say, "This step, and this alone, will be the best to take for the removal of particular calamities."'

'The things you tell me are just such as I need to know—I mean about the help my book is to the people who read it. The weight of my future life,—the self-questioning whether my nature will be able to meet the heavy demands upon it, both of personal duty and intellectual production,—presses upon me almost continually in a way that prevents me even from tasting the quiet joy I might have in the work done.'

'I think æsthetic teaching is the highest of all teaching, because it deals with life in its highest complexity. But if it ceases to be purely æsthetic—if it lapses anywhere from the picture to the diagram—it becomes the most offensive of all teaching.'

This lofty sense of the sacredness of her