She may have leant
heavily on it at times, it may have served as a weapon of defence when
she was attacked, and used thus it may well have suggested a "pose."
But however used, whatever the purpose--that the maternal instinct was
strong in her there is no denying. To explain definitely her social
and personal moral standards requires a biography that has not yet
been written. Socially she had a hatred of feudalism, of religious and
military despotism. She sympathised with and helped the aspirations
towards a wider, a more humane view of a social system, and fraternal
equality and social liberty were to her holy doctrines. Perhaps fully
to understand George Sand from within may require the genius of a
French mind and one of her own generation; for the French of the
present day neither study her, or appear to care much for her books.
Her letters should aid in giving a discriminating record of her
intense and intricate life as viewed from within, and the ideas on
which that life was lived. What then were the leading principles, and
what was the force in George Sand, which while conquering life and
harmonising it enabled her to realise herself? If heredity influences
moral standards the mystery certainly is whence George Eliot derived
not her morality, but her "fire of insurgency.
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