GHL and GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 9-10 July 1860
Title
GHL and GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 9-10 July 1860
Title
GHL and GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 9-10 July 1860
Sender
George Henry Lewes (and George Eliot)
Recipient
Sara Sophia Hennell
Date(s)
- 1860-07-09–<br /> 1860-07-10
Place
Wandsworth
Letter Content
GHL and GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 9-10 July 1860
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
Holly Lodge, Wandsworth | 9 July 1860.
My dear Miss Hennell
To be frank with you, I did not contemplate reading your book -- it lay so completely out of my present studies. But the notice in the Westminster, and especially what Marian told me of it, as she read on, made me determine to put other things aside and attack it at once. This morning it was finished and I will now tell you in all sincerity that I think it a remarkable and interesting work -- to some minds it will probably be intensely interesting. It shows great industry, and intellectual activity, and is likely to be fruitful in suggestion to many inquiring minds. Its moral tone is high and some of its ideas are of great importance. If I were now exercising the critical function there are many isolated passages which I should quote with emphasis and comment.
On the other hand I must own to an utter inability to seize your meaning both in the general scheme and in many particular passages. You have worked out for yourself a scheme; but what that is you fail to make intelligible to me. I do not say that I agree or disagree -- simply I do not understand. As it has been my lot to read many obscure books, and often to fail in seizing their meaning, or even to make clear to myself a meaning, I have learned in some measure to understand why your book is so obscure. Briefly it is on these accounts: --
In the first place you do not throw your thoughts into the form of propositions. There is assertion -- aper'e7u -- eloquence -- but little or no proposition, and never dependent propositions. If you, who have your own scheme clearly before you, would take the trouble to express it in a series of dependent propositions, you would perhaps make it clear to others. It would be a good exercise for yourself, and in the event of a new edition would serve as a valuable introduction or resum'e9. All, or almost all the vagueness and seeming contradiction might then vanish.
In the next place your mode of presentation is so excessively abstract that only the clearest diction could render it other than wearying and perplexing. Spencer is abstract enough in all conscience, but no one complains of not understanding him: his illustrations are concrete and his style is clear. Whereas your style (excellent in some pages) is often so wordy, involved, and vague that the meaning is lost as in a mist. There are paragraphs which read like a translation from a language into which one cannot retranslate them. Not to keep to uninstructive generalities I will particularize two or three examples of unintelligibility.
You offer the following as a definition -- it is to me Chaldaic: -- "Every framing of a theory is the setting up of a god to govern the idea" -- perhaps so; but one asks what idea? how governed? the definition may be irresistible -- when once it is understood. p. 252 What Spencer is made to say of Bacon -- utter darkness! p. 270 You are endeavouring to express an important idea -- I have read and reread the page to myself and to Marian and the only meaning I can extricate is so trivial that I am sure it is not what was in your mind. Try that passage on some one else! p. 308 "The setting in . . . centre." This sentence reads like one of my quizzical aphorisms in the '91Orphic Fragments.'92 p. 353 is the announcement of one of the great conclusions of your book. I can make nothing of it except 'abthat very'bb the superfluous remark that man's first conception of the Infinite was his first conception of God -- and that the emotions have likewise been rendered objective. What is the "literally external station"? -- It is the frequent use of ordinary words (like this "literally") in unintelligible connections which makes so many passages hazy.
You will remember that I speak under the confession of not having seized your scheme, when I say that there does not seem any new idea or principle, and I should like to learn what it is and where expressed, since it has escaped me. Nor do I at all understand your reconciliation of Feuerbach and Spencer; -- in reading the West[minster] Rev[iew] I imagined a way in which you might have united them, but that way is not the one I imagined you to have found, so that all is mist once more. After this you must not be surprised if Call has "misrepresented" you.
There is only one point more which need be noticed and that is the carelessness, almost culpable, with which you speak of Comte. It is not wise -- it is not right -- to speak of great writers without having previously read them; and it is obvious that you cannot have read Comte or you would not commit such a glaring mistake as to accuse him of not taking the element of History into account. Just run through his '91Cathechism'92 586 (it is the smallest book and therefore I refer to it) and you will find that many of the best ideas in your book have been thoroughly and persistently expounded by him; and indeed with regard to History I venture to say that no philosopher has ever laid so much emphasis on it, no one has more clearly seen and expressed the truth, that the past rules the present, lives in it, and that we are but the growth and outcome of the past.
But I must break off. Had I not a real personal interest in Marian's friend, and a real respect for the mind which produced such a work as "The Thoughts," you must be sure that I should not interrupt my pressing avocations to write so long, and I fear so unpleasant a letter. If it is unpleasant, reflect how much easier it would have been for me to have written a general compliment as to what I did admire, and speak vaguely about the rest. But as "The Thoughts" will not be your last book I thought it more friendly to be frank.
Ever truly yours
G. H. Lewes.
[In GE's hand]
I must amuse you, dear Sara, by telling you of a gentleman who has elected himself into a too-frequent correspondent of mine. He advertises himself in the Athenaeum 587 as the author of "numerous works highly spoken of by the press"; the works, I imagine, are little known to any but the press who spoke highly of them. I put this as one of the many cases in point to confirm what I say to Cara.
MS: Yale. Hitherto unpublished.
Holly Lodge, Wandsworth | 9 July 1860.
My dear Miss Hennell
To be frank with you, I did not contemplate reading your book -- it lay so completely out of my present studies. But the notice in the Westminster, and especially what Marian told me of it, as she read on, made me determine to put other things aside and attack it at once. This morning it was finished and I will now tell you in all sincerity that I think it a remarkable and interesting work -- to some minds it will probably be intensely interesting. It shows great industry, and intellectual activity, and is likely to be fruitful in suggestion to many inquiring minds. Its moral tone is high and some of its ideas are of great importance. If I were now exercising the critical function there are many isolated passages which I should quote with emphasis and comment.
On the other hand I must own to an utter inability to seize your meaning both in the general scheme and in many particular passages. You have worked out for yourself a scheme; but what that is you fail to make intelligible to me. I do not say that I agree or disagree -- simply I do not understand. As it has been my lot to read many obscure books, and often to fail in seizing their meaning, or even to make clear to myself a meaning, I have learned in some measure to understand why your book is so obscure. Briefly it is on these accounts: --
In the first place you do not throw your thoughts into the form of propositions. There is assertion -- aper'e7u -- eloquence -- but little or no proposition, and never dependent propositions. If you, who have your own scheme clearly before you, would take the trouble to express it in a series of dependent propositions, you would perhaps make it clear to others. It would be a good exercise for yourself, and in the event of a new edition would serve as a valuable introduction or resum'e9. All, or almost all the vagueness and seeming contradiction might then vanish.
In the next place your mode of presentation is so excessively abstract that only the clearest diction could render it other than wearying and perplexing. Spencer is abstract enough in all conscience, but no one complains of not understanding him: his illustrations are concrete and his style is clear. Whereas your style (excellent in some pages) is often so wordy, involved, and vague that the meaning is lost as in a mist. There are paragraphs which read like a translation from a language into which one cannot retranslate them. Not to keep to uninstructive generalities I will particularize two or three examples of unintelligibility.
You offer the following as a definition -- it is to me Chaldaic: -- "Every framing of a theory is the setting up of a god to govern the idea" -- perhaps so; but one asks what idea? how governed? the definition may be irresistible -- when once it is understood. p. 252 What Spencer is made to say of Bacon -- utter darkness! p. 270 You are endeavouring to express an important idea -- I have read and reread the page to myself and to Marian and the only meaning I can extricate is so trivial that I am sure it is not what was in your mind. Try that passage on some one else! p. 308 "The setting in . . . centre." This sentence reads like one of my quizzical aphorisms in the '91Orphic Fragments.'92 p. 353 is the announcement of one of the great conclusions of your book. I can make nothing of it except 'abthat very'bb the superfluous remark that man's first conception of the Infinite was his first conception of God -- and that the emotions have likewise been rendered objective. What is the "literally external station"? -- It is the frequent use of ordinary words (like this "literally") in unintelligible connections which makes so many passages hazy.
You will remember that I speak under the confession of not having seized your scheme, when I say that there does not seem any new idea or principle, and I should like to learn what it is and where expressed, since it has escaped me. Nor do I at all understand your reconciliation of Feuerbach and Spencer; -- in reading the West[minster] Rev[iew] I imagined a way in which you might have united them, but that way is not the one I imagined you to have found, so that all is mist once more. After this you must not be surprised if Call has "misrepresented" you.
There is only one point more which need be noticed and that is the carelessness, almost culpable, with which you speak of Comte. It is not wise -- it is not right -- to speak of great writers without having previously read them; and it is obvious that you cannot have read Comte or you would not commit such a glaring mistake as to accuse him of not taking the element of History into account. Just run through his '91Cathechism'92 586 (it is the smallest book and therefore I refer to it) and you will find that many of the best ideas in your book have been thoroughly and persistently expounded by him; and indeed with regard to History I venture to say that no philosopher has ever laid so much emphasis on it, no one has more clearly seen and expressed the truth, that the past rules the present, lives in it, and that we are but the growth and outcome of the past.
But I must break off. Had I not a real personal interest in Marian's friend, and a real respect for the mind which produced such a work as "The Thoughts," you must be sure that I should not interrupt my pressing avocations to write so long, and I fear so unpleasant a letter. If it is unpleasant, reflect how much easier it would have been for me to have written a general compliment as to what I did admire, and speak vaguely about the rest. But as "The Thoughts" will not be your last book I thought it more friendly to be frank.
Ever truly yours
G. H. Lewes.
[In GE's hand]
I must amuse you, dear Sara, by telling you of a gentleman who has elected himself into a too-frequent correspondent of mine. He advertises himself in the Athenaeum 587 as the author of "numerous works highly spoken of by the press"; the works, I imagine, are little known to any but the press who spoke highly of them. I put this as one of the many cases in point to confirm what I say to Cara.
Signature
G. H. Lewes.
Citation
George Henry Lewes (and George Eliot), GHL and GE to Sara Sophia Hennell, Wandsworth, 9-10 July 1860, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/94263