Starting with a well-defined ideal of social fitness for this world, the harmony in life towards which all action, effort, and individuality must tend, the problem which each novel sets itself to solve is the reconciliation of the conflict arising out of the unfitness of the leading characters (the "hero" or "heroine," as we may call them) as measured by this ideal--the want of harmony between their characters, aspirations, and ambitions, their views of life, and on the other hand the surroundings in which they live. The Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, and all great dramatists, have ever dealt with this central struggle between man and society. But they started with this fact, and had merely the artistic aim of evoking sympathy and pity in the audience because of this tragic struggle, the powerful and perfect representation of which became the final aim of their artistic endeavor. With George Eliot the process of adaptation, the resolution of the discord, and if not the establishment of harmony, then the clear and impressive indication of the best way to its establishment, is the real motive and end of her writing. There is in her no great tragic fatalism, which makes the art of the Greek dramatist so deeply and overwhelmingly tragic. Each one of her leading characters is at fault, when viewed in the light of the healthy social ideal. In the exposition of the character the fault will be shown up strongly; the hero will either be developed into greater social perfection, or the tragic end will impress upon the reader the disease and its remedy, the bane and its antidote. The social failings and shortcomings which stand in the way of this harmony are grouped by her into two leading faults of a general nature: the discord between the individual and selfish and the general and altruistic; between thoughtless social materialism and conformity, and questioning originality and spiritual revolt; between conventionality and originality; between common-sense and prophetic far-sightedness; between the Philistine and the artistic, the humdrum worker and the world-reformer, the materialist and the dreamer. The one looks down before him on the ground and ignores the heights beyond and the clear sky above, and in his heavy-footed advance shoves the sky-gazer aside and walks over him when he has fallen; the other gazes at the heights and the stars, and spurns the clod and soil, tripping over them,--nay, slipping in the mud. They each ignore one another and the world in which each lives, or they despise each other and their respective goals and aims.