. . . Certainly George Eliot was not the first novelist to explore religious themes of humanity. Her reading of Aristophanes, Plato, and Goethe is welldocumented and her work reflects the influence of these readings. However, Eliot distinguished herself from other Victorian novelists in her use of an engaging narrator and realism. These elements of Eliot's style together with the philosophical influences of George Henry Lewes, Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Ludwig Feuerbach, David Friedrich Strauss, and Charles Darwin are what set her apart from other novelists.

Eliot began to explore the then-alternative philosophies when she was in her twenties. Although she adhered to her Evangelical beginnings, her own secular creed was a constantly evolving force in her life. Upon translating Feuerbach Essence of Christianity ( 1854), Eliot explored the theories which traced the mutual relationships between people. Her readings on Comtian Positivism enlightened her further as she studied the religion of humanity. These influences, coupled with Darwin's theories on natural selection, gave the Victorian reader a new perspective on one's place and function in society. Eliot's references to "fellow feeling" defined, and still defines in today's larger society, the relation of the individual within the interconnected web of the world.

Of singular profound influence on Eliot's novels was the philosophy, writings, and encouragement of her "husband," George Henry Lewes. Lewes' emphasis on the moral value of literature, particularly realism and the psychological forms of such art, aided in Eliot's own philosophy of writing. Although Eliot did not completely believe in the claims of such nineteenth-century sciences as phrenology, her attention to and sharing of Lewes' interests in the sciences of the mind and of human evolution is well-represented in her novels.

The psychological novel was Eliot's vehicle for promoting her ethos of duty and self-renunciation. Edward Dowden, in Contemporary Review ( August 1872), cites Eliot's penchant for emphasizing duty and everybody's ties to their pasts. "To understand any individual apart from the whole life of the race is impossible." Dowden sees duty as the connection between the self and its external life. As will the many critics who followed him, Dowden quotes from Felix Holt, "There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life." In The Fortnightly Review ( I November 1876), Sidney Colvin, too, refers to Eliot's theme of universal kinship. "Every problem in conduct, every human action and situation, involves some issue or other between personal cravings and instincts and the laws that make for the common good." Colvin goes on to cite the differences between Eliot and George Sand and finds Eliot to be more firmly rooted in her philosophical themes.

In English Language History ( 1951), Claude T. Bissell outlines in his article "Social Analysis in the Novels of George Eliot," Eliot's role as "recorder and reflective observer of man in society." Bissell considers how Eliot dealt with issues of class, family backgrounds, social structure, and status in Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Middlemarch.

The impact of the collective historical self upon the historical world--the individual acts which have combined to create civilization--is explored in Sara Moore Putzell's "George Eliot's Location of Value in History," Renascence (Spring 1980). "Eliot taught her readers to aspire to meliorate present human suffering and to contribute to the moral evolution of the species." Putzell cites examples of the consequences of past deeds and choices in The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Felix Holt, and Daniel Deronda. . .