CLIFFORD
J.
MARKS
Daniel Deronda:
Community, Spirituality, and
Minor Literature
"No," said Mordecai, "no, Pash, because you have lost the heart of
the Jew. Commun ity was felt before it was called good.
1
praise no
superstition,
I
praise the li ving fountains of en larging belief. What
is growth, completion, development? You began with that question,
I
apply it
to
the history of our people.
I
say that the effect of our
separateness will not be comp leted and have its highest transforma–
tion unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality."
George Eliot,
Daniel Deronda
T
HE CRISIS OF FA ITH
challenged late Victorians
to
reconsider their
intell ectual models that defended and rejected traditional reli–
g ious practice. Typical of the time, an unattributab le articl e in
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine,
"Modern Scepticism and its Fruit"
( 1875),
frames the knotty issues surrounding scientific discovery and
religious devotion:
I remember read ing an exhortation to mankind not to conclude
that effort is useless because modern research has sapped the foun–
dations of all belief, but to put their talents, fortunes, author ity–
nay, their thews a nd sinews-to what were in darker times
accounted good uses, in the hope that sc ience, as it grows brighter
and brighter, may yet show that o ld -fashi oned goodness and use–
fulness are not irreconcil able with en li ghtenment.
The reviewer argues that the rush
to
embrace science as providing all
of soc iety'S answers does not on ly damage the religious enterprise, but,
in many quarters, subj uga tes religion
to
the whims of scient ific experi–
ment and proof. Pitying those who barter "the ir faith, their hope, their
light, their consolation" for reason and fashion, the author contends
that science offers little in the way of verifiable enlightenment. Instead,
sounding "modern," science leads its adherents down a primrose path
that distances mankind from true spiritual sources. To conclude, the
author argues that the defenders of religion should not confine "their
