George Eliot, Charles Darwin and the labyrinth of history

Darwin's On the Origin of Species and George Eliot's Middlemarch are both c oncerned with the same question: what makes history happen? To a point, the ir answers are similar. History for both is nonteleological, contingent and interconnected. Lf history has no direction and individuals are virtually powerless, what hope of progress is there? Darwin leaves the point unresolv ed. Eliot finds an answer for human beings alone: while animals, always sub ject to natural selection, may be incapable of true altruism, human beings, with consciousness and conscience, can choose selflessness, acting contrar y to their own instincts in the interest of abstract morality.