Despite the scientific advancements that have made the twenty-first century's technological marvels and unprecedented understanding of natural forces commonplace, debates still rage between empirical reason and unprovable faith or superstition. Debates such as these are not new. Nearly two hundred years ago, new theories about geological time and the evolution of all species challenged long-established religious beliefs. The ensuing debate broke free of the rarefied confines of theological discourse and made its way into larger society, appearing in the literature of the times. In the novel Silas Marner, Victorian intellectual and novelist George Eliot explores empirical reason and irrational faith, ultimately bringing them together in a philosophy with room for aspects of both. With the title character's tale, Eliot argues that while there may indeed be supernatural or divine forces at work in the world, those forces can achieve no good without human reason and choice.
Silas Marner's background illustrates the dangers of faith at the expense of reason. The youthful Silas belongs to "a narrow religious sect" that places a strong emphasis on the spiritual and visionary and rejects humanistic, rational explanation of events or phenomena, such as Silas's catalepsy (Eliot 9-10). The Lantern Yard community's prioritizing of divine intervention over empirical reason becomes clear when Silas is wrongly accused of theft. As Eliot writes, "Any resort to legal measures for ascertaining the culprit was contrary to the principles of the church in Lantern Yard...The members...resolved on praying and drawing lots [to solve the mystery]...The lots declared that Silas Marner was guilty" (13). As a result of this conclusion, formed wholly on faith in supernatural intervention, Silas Marner is excommunicated and exiled from the only community he has known. Eliot thus shows that faith alone cannot be relied upon to ensure justice on earth.
Despite this early and painful proof of the unreliability of divine intervention, however, Silas continues to display superstitious tendencies, and receives an unexpected reward for doing so. After the loss of his long-hoarded money--a theft perpetrated by Dunstan Cass, not by any supernatural agency, as some Raveloe villagers suspect (Eliot 57)--Silas takes to "the habit of opening his door and looking out from time to time, as if he thought that his money...[or] some trace, some news of it, might be mysteriously on the road" (Eliot 109). To a rational mind, this behavior makes little sense: waiting for something lost to return is no more likely to cause that return than doing nothing at all. Equally irrational is his acting on his neighbors' suggestion that on New Year's Eve, "he must sit up and hear the old year rung out and the new rung in, because that was good luck, and might bring his money back again" (Eliot 110). Neither opening his door to look for the return of his gold nor sitting up to listen to the ringing in of the new year bring Silas back his gold. If not, however, for his excitement at the possibility of his gold returning, which leads him to look out of his cottage more often than usual, and a sudden attack of his catalepsy at just the right moment, Silas's door would be closed to the infant Eppie, lost in the cold and snow that have already claimed her mother's life. Silas feels convinced of a supernatural connection between the loss of his gold and the discovery of the child, since "my money's gone, I don't know where--and this [child] is come from I don't know where" (118). Eliot neither confirms nor refutes this. Instead, she reconciles the two seemingly opposing possibilities and puts each in its place. It may be true that divine intervention brought Eppie to Silas's door, but the practical reasons for, and consequences of, her arrival are what matter: her origin in the secret marriage of Godfrey Cass, and her needs as a child. Therefore, while Silas clings to the superstitious faith that the child came to him as compensation for the loss of his gold, what he must act upon is the earthly reality of her existence. Silas's actions in response to Eppie's practical needs are what cement his bond to her.
He does continue to believe that she was sent to him by divine forces in compensation for his gold and as a path to redemption, however, a faith tested by the Casses' belief that those same divine forces intend Eppie to return to her natural father, Godfrey Cass. The discovery of Dunstan Cass's body in the Stone-pit, more than a decade after his death, convinces Godfrey that "when God Almighty wills it, our secrets are found out" (Eliot 162). This leads him to confess his previous marriage and fatherhood to his wife, Nancy. Here, again, a possible supernatural cause has produced a direct, earthly action. The Casses decide that their adoption of Eppie is a divinely ordained duty, in direct opposition to Silas's belief that Eppie was sent to him by divine action. Silas's and the Casses' superstitious claims on Eppie clash when the Casses arrive at the Marner cottage to adopt Eppie. Here, crucially, Eppie turns down the prosperous Casses' offer of elevated status in favor of life with Silas not because of his belief that she was sent to him to compensate for his stolen gold, but rather because of the earthly reality of the life they have shared. As Silas says, he and Eppie "eat o' the same bit, and drink o' the same cup" (Eliot 170). Eppie agrees: "He's took care of me and loved me from the first, and I'll cleave to him as long as he lives" (Eliot 172). Human decision, human action, and human choice decide the matter, not abstract questions of unprovable faith.
Eliot thus reconciles faith in the unseen with reason based on experience, allowing each to coexist but putting each in its proper place. Without denigrating faith in itself, however silly or irrational its expressions may sometimes be, she shows that faith alone does not decide destiny or create justice. The forces deciding the courses of earthly lives, and the power to change those lives, lie with human beings themselves. Human decisions and human actions, whether based on faith or on reason, affect the lives of all in tangible if not always comprehensible ways. Eliot shows that the wisest and kindest course of action is to seek truth and guidance not in abstract doctrine, religious principle, or superstitious belief in the unseen and unprovable, but in the solid reality of human experience, human community, and human action. Ultimately, truth and goodness lie in actions done, not doctrines held.
Edition cited: Eliot, George. Silas Marner. Ed. David Carroll. London, England: Penguin Group, 1996. Print.
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