Certainly the increasing
atheism of her school spoilt her own particular imaginative talent: she
was far less free when she thought like Ladislaw than when she thought
like Casaubon. It also betrayed her on a matter specially requiring
common sense; I mean sex. There is nothing that is so profoundly false
as rationalist flirtation. Each sex is trying to be both sexes at once;
and the result is a confusion more untruthful than any conventions. This
can easily be seen by comparing her with a greater woman who died before
the beginning of our present problem. Jane Austen was born before those
bonds which (we are told) protected woman from truth, were burst by the
Brontes or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that
Jane Austen knew much more about men than either of them. Jane Austen
may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth
that was protected from her. When Darcy, in finally confessing his
faults, says, "I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice
_though not in theory_," he gets nearer to a complete confession of the
intelligent male than ever was even hinted by the Byronic lapses of the
Brontes' heroes or the elaborate exculpations of George Eliot's.
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