Where get, you say, a binding law, a rule Enforced by sanction, an Ideal throned With thunder in its hand? I answer, there Whence every faith and rule has drawn its force Since human consciousness awaking owned An Outward, whose unconquerable sway Resisted first and then subdued desire By pressure of the dire impossible Urging to possible ends the active soul And shaping so its terror and its love. Why, you have said it--threats and promises Depend on each man's sentence for their force: All sacred rules, imagined or revealed, Can have no form or potency apart From the percipient and emotive mind. God, duty, love, submission, fellowship, Must first be framed in man, as music is, Before they live outside him as a law. And still they grow and shape themselves anew, With fuller concentration in their life Of inward and of outward energies Blending to make the last result called Man, Which means, not this or that philosopher Looking through beauty into blankness, not The swindler who has sent his fruitful lie By the last telegram: it means the tide Of needs reciprocal, toil, trust and love-- The surging multitude of human claims Which make "a presence not to be put by" Above the horizon of the general soul. Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?-- The outward reason has the world in store, Regenerates passion with the stress of want, Regenerates knowledge with discovery, Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, Widens dependence, knits the social whole In sensible relation more defined. As these words would indicate, George Eliot's faith in the moral meaning and outcome of the world is very strong. All experience is moral, she would have us believe, and capable of teaching man the higher life. That is, all experience tends slowly to bring man into harmony with his environment, and to teach him that certain actions are helpful, while others are harmful. This teaching is very definite and emphatic in her pages, often rising into a lofty eloquence and a rich poetic diction, as her mind is wrought upon by the greatness and the impressiveness of the moral lessons of life.