Page:The Essays of George Eliot, ed. Sheppard, 1883.djvu/254



The odiously bad taste of this last clause makes us hope that it is simply a platitude, and not intended as witticism, until he removes the possibility of this favorable doubt by immediately asking, "Flows my resentment into guilt?"

When, by an afterthought, he attempts something like sympathy, he only betrays more clearly his want of it. Thus, in the first Night, when he turns from his private griefs to depict earth as a hideous abode of misery for all mankind, and asks,

he falls at once into calculating the benefit of sorrowing for others:

This remarkable negation of sympathy is in perfect consistency with Young's theory of ethics:

If there is no immortality for man —

"Sense! take the rein; blind Passion, drive us on;

And Ignorance! befriend us on our way…

Yes; give the pulse full empire; live the Brute,

Since as the brute we die. The sum of man,

Of godlike man, to revel and to rot."

"If this life's gain invites him to the deed,

Why not his country sold, his father slain?"

"Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdain'd,

Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools,

And think a turf or tombstone covers all."