She admits the evil as well as the good,
she gives life to both; well knowing that evil, when all is said, is
only righteousness strayed from the path. She reveals to us--not
with the moralist's arbitrary formula, but as men and years reveal
the truths we have wit to grasp--the final helplessness of evil,
brought face to face with life; the final appeasement of all things
in nature as well as in death, "which is only the triumph of life
over one of its specialised forms." She shows how the dexterous lie,
begotten of genius and strength, is forced to bow down before the
most ignorant, puniest truth; she shows the self-deception of hatred
that sows, all unwilling, the seeds of gladness and love in the life
that it anxiously schemes to destroy. She is, perhaps, the first to
base a plea for indulgence on the great law of heredity; and when,
at the end of her book, she goes to the village churchyard and
visits the eternal resting-place of her heroes, the grass grows
green alike over grave of tyrant and martyr; and she wonders how
"any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in
that quiet earth."
102. I am well aware that here we are dealing with a woman of
genius; but genius only throws into bolder relief all that can, and
actually does, take place in the lives of all men; otherwise were it
genius no longer, but incoherence or madness.
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