George Eliot's reluctance to write a positivist novel was clearly documented in his letters. His responses to Frederic Harrison's suggestion that "the great features of Comte's world might be sketched in fiction in their normal relations...in the forms of our familiar life" (Letters, IV, 287), are particularly unremarkable. ambiguity: "[if fiction] passes from the image to the diagram, it becomes the most offensive of all teachings". (Letters, IV, 300-301). Art, for Eliot, must strive to " to make individual forms breathe and to group them in the necessary relationships, so that the presentation captures the emotions as human experience” (Letters, IV, 300-301). would have condemned Eliot to a schematic structure, forcing her to neglect the multiple elements and infinite nuances that she recognized as constitutive of the human personality Eliot is aware, in a less obvious way in Auguste Comte for example, of the subtleties and. unlimited gradations of human character: “Our vanities differ like our noses: all vanity is not the same vanity, but varies in correspondence with the minutia of the mental form by which one of us differs from the other. (Middlemarch, 148). On the other hand, Comte believed that “a new doctrine” was capable of “embracing the whole of human relations in the spirit of reality”. (General view, 5).Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Implicit in Comte's remark is one of the fundamental conclusions of his positive philosophy: that human nature and, beyond that, interactions between individuals can be reduced to what is scientifically determinable and definable. Much of Middlemarch seems wary of this view. Would it have been possible, if one imagined fiction as reality for a moment, to predict that a young doctor whose intention was "to do good little work for Middlemarch and great work for the world" (147) would die prematurely, his crowning achievement “a treatise on gout”? (818). Likewise, would the application of universal laws have made it possible to determine that Fred Vincy would become a “theoretical and practical farmer”? (816). Presumably, Comte would argue that with enough information, and with that information incorporated into laws, he would do so. Much thinking in 19th-century philosophy of science would agree with Comte, particularly if one believes Mill's deterministic notion that "human wills and actions [are] necessary and inevitable" (System of Logic, 547) is axiomatic for those active in the field. Mill goes on to assert that: “If we knew the person perfectly, and knew all the incentives which act on him, we could predict his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any physical event. (System of Logic, 547).1 Mill's argument is undeniably powerful, and Eliot may be philosophically convinced of it, or even "inwardly convinced," but Middlemarch seems to deny its practical application (although I admit that Eliot's reluctance to give his characters much freedom of action in any grand scheme might suggest otherwise). Eliot's emphasis on the major consequences of small events, chance encounters, and subtle but revealing details of personality argues against the possibility, on the basis of complexity alone, of foresight and an accurate prediction: “If we had a vivid view and feeling of all ordinary humans thelife would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we would die from that roar that is on the other side of the silence. 2 (Middlemarch, 192). There are just too many details. Does this then make the whole positivist project untenable? Is this fatal to him? Or will the project "lead us to a social condition most conformable to human nature, in which our characteristic qualities will find their most perfect expression"? respective confirmation, their most complete mutual harmony and the most expansion free for each and all”? (Essential Writings, 306). Comte believes that, over time, the outcome of the positivist project is inevitable; Eliot In Middlemarch, I would like to suggest, believes differently. If we accept that George Eliot could never write a positivist novel and, furthermore, that she remained suspicious of positivism's certainty of an available scientific approach to human nature, the question becomes: to what extent is Middlemarch influenced by Positivism? As I have explained, I have the impression that there is strong resistance to the project in all its range in Middlemarch. There are, however, powerful positivist themes in the novel and these are perhaps most easily addressed by considering the characters who manifest themselves within them. something of the positivist spirit. There is obviously Lydgate but there is also Casaubon. There is a Comtien air in Casaubon's project: it is carried out on quasi-scientific bases (Casaubon is interested in Dorothea for its "elements that are both solid and attractive". [General view, 42] (an expression which could easily have could emerge from the pages of a chemistry textbook), it is rooted in the search for universal laws (the "Key to all mythologies" [Middlemarch, 486]), its precepts imply the It is necessary to "systematize" and "generalize" (General View, 3), and Casaubon is fully consistent in applying his established principles to his studies. But Eliot quickly reveals that Casaubon "floats" among "flexible conjectures" (472). most vital of the good positivist: “Unity in our moral nature is therefore impossible, except to the extent that affection predominates over intellect and activity” (General View, 16). is all activity and intellect, there is no unity, it is one-dimensional: If we were in the habit of deploring the spectacle, among the artisan class, of a worker busy all his life doing nothing 'other than making knife handles or pinheads, we can find something equally lamentable in the intellectual class, in the exclusive use of a human brain to solve certain equations or to classify insects. The moral effect is unfortunately similar in both cases. It gives rise to a miserable indifference towards the general course of human affairs, as long as there are equations to solve and pins to make. (Essential Writings, 274). Casaubon cannot, or does not want to, go beyond purely theological speculations, through the scientific sphere, to enter the domain of the social in which the unity demanded by the Comtian version of positivism reaches its apotheosis. Casaubon's vain metaphysical conjectures recall Comte's condemnation of those who seek knowledge without considering its potential benefit for humanity as it is constituted in "society": "However, in this case, as in all others , there is an intense egoism in the exercise of mental powers independently of all social objects. » (General view, 18). Casaubon is a "mind... very capable in some respects and monstrously incapable in all others" (Essential Writings, 274), and Eliot ensures that Casaubon does not recognize that "the only position for whichthe intellect is constantly adapted to be the servant of social sympathies. (General view, 15). For Comte, if this position is abandoned, we are inevitably drawn toward the “deplorable disorder” (General View, 15) of something like the French Revolution. This, on a smaller scale, is what goes beyond Casaubon. Despite his overwhelming desire to classify and order, Casaubon's life descends into a kind of "deplorable disorder" as the ability to control his wife and her affections slips away from him, and his life's work for which he had “risked his whole life” escapes him. selfishness” (Middlemarch, 471) first begins to atrophy, then disintegrate under the weight of his own futility and the critical scrutiny of his peers. Like James.F. Scott suggests that, rather than the positivist he might at first glance appear, Casaubon can be seen as a metaphysician of the kind most thoroughly vilified by Comte: "Like all metaphysicians, as Comte saw them, Casaubon is a lacking scientist , a thinker whose rational abilities were stifled by meaningless abstractions and discredited religious assumptions. Without the skill or honesty to subject his premises to scientific testing, he can do little more than assemble large bundles of worthless notes. (Scott, 69). Casaubon, while he seems at first to embody certain elements of positivism, quickly reveals himself to be trapped in an obsolete metaphysics. Lydgate, however, begins as the perfect positivist.4 He possesses: The imagination which reveals subtle actions inaccessible through any kind of lens, but followed in this outer darkness through long paths of necessary sequence by the inner light which is the final refinement of energy. , capable of bathing even ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space. He, for his part, had rejected all the cheap inventions where ignorance finds itself capable and at ease: he was enamored of this arduous invention which is the very eye of research, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more accuracy of reporting; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of those minute processes which prepare for human misery and joy, those invisible passages which are the first hidden places of anxiety, mania and crime, that delicate balance and transition which determine growth of happy or unhappy consciousness. (Middlemarch, 163). In his early appearances in Middlemarch, Lydgate is largely Harrison's prototype of the ideal fictional positivist: "a local doctor...a New World man with complete scientific and entirely moral ascendancy over capitalists and workers". . (Letters, IV, 287). As the above passage from Middlemarch shows, Lydgate has the potential to become one of the main hierophants of Comte's “new priesthood” (General View, 384): his epistemology is essentially empirical5, he is committed to absolute relativity of knowledge, is dependent for scientific on the "invariable relations of succession and resemblance" (Essential Writings, 72), and assumes that a sufficiently detailed scientific analysis of human behavior can lead to the resolution of social problems. Lydgate, in this incarnation, fits precisely Mill's description of the positivist: "He who regards all events as parts of a constant order, each being the invariable consequence of some antecedent condition, or combination of conditions, fully accepts the positive way of thinking. " (Comte, 15). Lydgate, both in his approach to medicine and in his history, is at the forefront of contemporary positivist epistemology: "But [Lydgate] was not simply aiming for a type ofmore authentic practice than what was common. of a broader effect: he was animated by the possibility that he could develop proof of an anatomical design and constitute a link in the chain of discovery. (Middlemarch, 144). Lydgate's "chain of discoveries" is exactly that sequence of invariable "relations of succession and resemblance" (General View, 75) traced by Comte in his description of the history and development of science. Lydgate's approach recalls the positivist practice described by Mill: from this time on, any political thinker who imagines himself capable of doing without a connected vision of the great facts of history, as a chain of causes and consequences 'effects, should be considered below the age level; while the vulgar way of using history, by looking for parallel cases, or as if a single case, or even several cases not compared and analyzed, could reveal a law, will be more than ever and irrevocably discredited. (Count, 86). Eliot describes Lydgate's attitude within a similar framework of historical interconnection and interdependence: "The more [Lydgate] was interested in particular questions of disease, such as the nature of the fever(s), the more acutely he felt the need for this fundamental knowledge of the structure which, at the beginning of the century, had been illuminated by the brief and glorious career of Bichat, who died when he was still an adult. thirty-one years, but, like another Alexander, he left a kingdom large enough for many heirs." (146). Not only is Lydgate devoted to a positive scientific method, but he is filled with "affection" and is fully aware of the We must follow a path “offering the most direct alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good” (143). As Eliot puts it very clearly, Lydgate corresponds to Comte's criteria in this area: “c). He was an emotional creature, with a flesh and a body, a sense of blood camaraderie which resisted all the abstractions of special studies. He cared not only for the 'cases', but also for John and Elizabeth. , especially of Elizabeth" (143) Lydgate's downfall, however, is the result of his inability to apply his positivism to his life beyond his work: "He returned home and read up to the less hour, bringing to this pathological study a much more trying vision of details and relationships than he had ever considered necessary to apply to the complexities of love and marriage, subjects on which he felt amply informed by the literature. , and that traditional wisdom which is transmitted in the genial conversation of men." (162). Lydgate's relationship with Rosamond is conducted with a superficiality and a recourse to vague suppositions which would have been unthinkable to him in his work, and recapitulates that of which he was guilty in the past: “As for women, he had already been carried away headlong by impetuous madness” (149) His disastrous marriage could have been avoided thanks to the application of positivist principles, let alone. hear the novel Likewise, Lydgate's financial difficulties and his fateful relationships with Bulstrode and Raffles could have been avoided if the "commonalities" (148), 6 which disfigure his attitude towards money and commerce. , had been eliminated by a consistent and confused application of the positivist spirit. Nowhere is this clearer than in the scenes in which Lydgate attends to Raffles' medical needs in complete accordance with positivist methods, but completely neglects to do so. applying the same principles to his interaction with Bulstrode, thereby precipitating the calamitous chain of events with which the novel reaches its crescendo. Lydgate's downfall is, in some ways, linked to his bourgeois origins. As observedJames Scott, Lydgate spends carelessly in a predictable aristocratic manner, he marries a "status-conscious woman and reacts to the lower orders of Middlemarch society with aloof baronial haughtiness." Significantly, these are the personality traits that lead to its demise. His authoritarian attitude curtails his medical practice, his genteel wife encourages him to live beyond his means, and his mounting debts drive him into a fatal dependence on Bulstrode. (Scott, 71-2). A thorough reading of positivism might have been enough to convince Lydgate of the need to renounce his aristocratic origins, but "in warming up to French social theories he left no smell of burning." (344). Disbelief in the ability, or willingness, of the aristocracy to effect social change is a strong theme in Comte and it is a notion with which Eliot seems to subscribe. As Comte observed: “[The upper classes] are all more or less under the influence of baseless metaphysical theories and aristocratic egoisms. and the military system. Their action only prolongs the revolutionary state indefinitely and can never lead to true social renovation. » (General view, 318). The majority of the upper classes and nobility of Middlemarch are involved, to one degree or another, in the type of activity described by Comte: conflicts over succession to the "means of subsistence" of the clergy, the selfish interference of Mr. Brooke in the politics of the Reform Bill of 1832, Mrs. Cadwallader's inability to allow herself to be "consciously affected by the great affairs of the world" (58), the indifference of Sir James Chettam. to the living conditions of his tenants until his interest is piqued by the possibility of impressing Dorothea (20-21); I have already mentioned Casaubon's cobweb metaphysics and Lydgate's "commonalities." The aristocracy of Middlemarch incites little to no social change. As Eliot informs the reader: “The rural nobility of old lived in a rarefied social air: distributed over their mountain-top stations, they looked with imperfect discrimination at the thicker belts of life below. (322). Eliot never abandons his craft to the point of becoming a clumsy personification of a “positivist”; but it can certainly be said that within Middlemarch are all the elements required to create a fictional Comtean. An unnatural union of Casaubon and Lydgate's characters might indeed suffice: Casaubon's application of his principles to all aspects of his life combined, perhaps, with Lydgate's commitment to a positivist approach in his work. It is intriguing, therefore, in light of the idea that Eliot could not accept postivism in its "systematizing" totality, to conclude that neither Lydgate, Casaubon nor the aristocracy of Middlemarch are sufficiently positivist. This would, it seems, reveal a paradox or at least an ambivalence at the heart of Middlemarch; something further complicated by the idea that Eliot's heroine, Dorothea, is herself a kind of positivist, albeit an unconscious one. It is clear that Dorothea possesses the fundamental positivist attributes: "a completely ardent, theoretical and intellectually consistent nature... What seemed best to her, she wanted to justify with the most complete knowledge." 8 (28). I would therefore say that it is not positivism itself that Eliot resists. Indeed, positivism is described as a valuable and morally desirable philosophy on which to base one's life, but as an absolute imprisonment of individuals in artificial philosophical systems; systems made necessarily rudimentary by their inability toencompass all the complexities of human nature. Such a conclusion not only reinforces Eliot's notion as opposed to systems, but also recalls his emphasis on image rather than diagram. As Walter Pater later observed: "This is the question of imaginative or artistic literature: this transcription, not of mere facts, but of facts in their infinite variety, as modified by human preferences in all their infinitely varied forms. » (106). Sentiments that could easily come from Eliot herself, and which are foreshadowed by her insistence on the necessary mediating function rooted in the artist's imaginative propensities: "How triumphant opinions originally spread, how institutions are born...what circumstances affect individual lots the decadence of long established systems, all these great elements of history require the illumination of a special imaginative treatment. » (Pinney, 446). Further evidence of Eliot's reluctance to adopt totalizing systems appears in his resistance to the alliance "between the priests of science and the captains of industry" (Scott, 70), a key element of the Comtean project. Comte asserts that the new scientific priesthood will need the support of bankers if it does not want to wither away, deprived of an effective administration. Such a relationship would "usually" lead to "close relations between the priesthood and the bankers...so that the banking class [would be] the civic body responsible for inaugurating the most important links between science and industry ". (System, IV, 71). However, as TR Wright concludes, Eliot does not allow a positivist alliance of capital and science to flourish in Middlemarch: "The doctor makes an alliance with the capitalist, but Bulstrodene can escape his theological prejudices and Middlemarch cannot is completely unprepared for Lydgate's new ideas. Public opinion has the power to remove the hypocritical banker from his position, but it lacks the insight necessary to accept scientific progress. Middlemarch is not ready for positivism. : Until everything that can be known is known, systems fail, and not everything can be known at this stage of human development. For Eliot, the briefest of human interactions has ramifications potential enough to disrupt any system: “But whoever watches carefully stealth. convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of the effects of one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen gaze with which we look at our unprecedented neighbor. Fate remains sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in its hand. » (Middlemarch, 93). For Eliot, the complexity of human nature and behavior, or "the interdependence of all human interests" (Pinney, 409), tends to operate in opposition. Society, according to Middlemarch, is an organic entity constructed from countless millions of human interactions and has a degree of complexity completely resistant to imposed systems. It would indeed be tempting to compare Eliot's thinking, in this area, to that of a totalizing system. A recent pragmatist like Richard Rorty: "Our language and our culture are as much a contingency, as much the result of thousands of small mutations finding niches (and millions more not finding them), as are orchids and anthropoids. » , 16). Such a comparison must, however, remain, if not erroneous, at least partial. Eliot's conception, unlike Rorty's, assumes a linear teleology in which movement goes from fragmentary to whole, from incomplete to complete. and from relative chaos to relative order: “Language must grow inprecision, completeness and unity, as minds grow in clarity, completeness and sympathy. » (Byatt, 128). Eliot's resistance to systems does not constitute, as some might claim, an anticipation of the poststructuralist reverberation of infinite meaning, echoing endlessly in the epistemological void. The world may not yet be ready for the positivist utopia envisioned by Comte, but such an ideal has meaning, is potentially “real,” and remains considered an identifiable aspiration. These notions of “reality” and “meaning” are inherent in Eliot’s synopsis of Dorothea’s life: “Certainly, these defining acts of [Dorothea’s] life were not of ideal beauty. They were the mixed result of a young and noble impulse struggling under the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take on the appearance of an error and great faith the appearance of an illusion. (Middlemarch, 821). This passage also contains as implications the concepts of "good", "evil", "truth" and "perfectibility" which poststructuralist thought tends to reject as being destructive of multiplicity, guilty of promoting the "reassuring approach" . foundation” and as inciting “the end of the game”. (Derrida, 122). Eliot, however, remains "realistic", she insists on the struggle to find a stable meaning and a permanent "truth": "May I constantly aspire to strip everything around me of its conventional, human, ephemeral clothing, to look at it in its essence and in its relationship with eternity". (Letters, I, 70). It is interesting to note that the metaphysical notions of "essence" and "eternity" are exactly those which are most execrated by the Comtian positivism, and this alone would probably be enough to disqualify George Eliot from the priesthood of positivism However, as I have tried to show, there is a significant degree of sympathy towards positivism in Middlemarch, particularly in neighboring countries. connection with the moral and social prescriptions of positivism It is the deterministic and totalizing nature of positivism to which Eliot is most opposed Eliot's suspicions of crude determinism of the type which suggests that prediction and. The exact predictions are possible seem based on the idea that, even if all existing phenomena are the result of previous phenomena, no system yet designed, or to be designed in the future, is capable of encompassing all the details of human activity; the details which are constituted in the "unhistorical acts" of "hidden" individuals: "But the effect of [Dorothea's] existence on those around her was of incalculable diffusion: for the increasing good of world depends in part on non-historical acts; and that things are not half as bad between you and me as they might have been, is partly due to the number of those who faithfully lived a hidden life and lie in unknown tombs. (Middlemarch, 822). If we see the world, as Eliot seems to do, as an infinitely sensitive and complex organism, susceptible to the slightest influence, the positivist project is simply not a delicate enough instrument to expose all the universal laws that govern behavior and human interaction. . As in fiction, so it is in the artist's life: "I have at least so much to do to untangle certain human lots and see how they are woven and intertwined, that all the light I can command should be focused on that particular canvas. , and not scattered across that tempting range of relevances called the universe. (Middlemarch, 139).Notes1 Mill's remarks are used here as emblematic of a particular strain of 19th-century "scientism" but, clearly, he himself had 76.2 (1981): 257-72.