It might seem at first sight that Butler ran more to head than heart; but in this as in other things he was like Swift, having the faculty of stating in cold logic what he had conceived in hot wrath. In such a temperament the feelings are more likely to be turned against those responsible for misery than toward the victims, thus producing a negative effect, with the positive side left to our inference. The only one whose work is entirely unemotional is Peacock, and even he waxes warm over the exploitation of the helpless, and the crimes committed in the name of Progress. Aside from this he shines with a hard mental brilliance,--which, be it said, does not insure soundness of viewpoint, as no one on the whole list can surpass him in prejudice and injustice. George Eliot, admitted by all to have a better intellectual equipment than any of her predecessors, admired above others by Meredith because her fiction was “the fruit of a well-trained mind,” herself says, “Our good depends on the quality and breadth of our emotion.”[415] And again, “There is no escaping the fact that want of sympathy condemns us to a corresponding stupidity.”[416] This realization that mental inertness itself is the result of callous or defective emotion, and that these two elements are not only inseparable but mutually dependent, is one secret of the fine quality of her satire.[417] It is the sheen on the surface of a deep current of sympathetic comprehension. Never does she forget or cease to commiserate the great predicament of the human race, condemned to make bricks without straw, under a hard taskmaster, with little prospect of reward to encourage perseverance or satisfy an outraged sense of justice. Yet she is able to apply a few satiric goads,--not to the taskmaster, for he directs from behind the veil and is not subject to human aspersions, nor to the weak or the blundering, but to the shirkers, the selfish, and those who demand more wage than a fair return for work done as well as possible under the circumstances. In 1902 Meredith wrote to his daughter-in-law:[418] “You have a liking for little phrases; I send you three:--Love is the renunciation of self. Passion is noble strength on fire. Fortitude is the one thing for which we may pray, because without it we are unable to bear the Truth.”