Style and Ethics in George Eliot
The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it: the question, whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway of a passion ag...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Raritan Quarterly
2017
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112651 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8220-4108 |
| Summary: | The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it: the question, whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway of a passion against which he had struggled as a trespass, is one for which we have no master key that will fit all cases. The casuists have become a by-word of reproach; but their perverted spirit of discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed: the truth, that moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they
are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special
circumstances that mark the individual lot. |
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