Egoism, Altruism and George Eliot's Religion of Humanity

George Eliot (1819-1880) enjoys the unique distinction of coming to fiction by way of philosophy and journalism. As editor of The Westminster Review she was well grounded in contemporary studies in religion and social sciences. She wrote widely on diverse subjects like geology, botany, anthropology, phrenology, ethics, politics and religion. Her pronouncements on art and literature establish her as one of the first theoreticians of fiction. Her deep interest in human psychology and exploration of the power of the unconscious make her an early modernist, creating complex fictional characters. A woman of formidable intellect, she translated Spinoza, Feuerbach and Strauss into English and their ideas of humanism permeated her fiction. Dissatisfied with the dogmatic aspect of Christianity, she endorsed their Religion of Humanity with its stress on secular humanism, on 'good without God', on pure altruistic action, denying egoism. This book traces the author's thematic preoccupation with the protagonist's egoism, a realization of the pitfalls of the narrow vision, ending in an epiphanic revelation of the bonds of fellowship that bind her/him to humanity. This moral odyssey of the Individual, from egoism to altruism, runs like a common denominator from Eliot's first work to the last.