 to take care
of life, and to do the best I can think of for it. Science is properly more
scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of
science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.« Alas!
the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation
and selfish respects.
    »Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question
himself as I do?« said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of rebellion
against the oppression of his lot. »And yet they will all feel warranted in
making a wide space between me and them, as if I were a leper! My practice and
my reputation are utterly damned - I can see that. Even if I could be cleared by
valid evidence, it would make little difference to the blessed world here. I
have been set down as tainted and should be cheapened to them all the same.«
    Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him, that
just when he had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully on his feet,
the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely at him, and in two instances
it came to his knowledge that patients of his had called in another
practitioner. The reasons were too plain now. The general black-balling had
begun.
    No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a hopeless
misconstruction easily turned into a dogged resistance. The scowl which
occasionally showed itself on his square brow was not a meaningless accident.
Already when he was re-entering the town after that ride taken in the first
hours of stinging pain, he was setting his mind on remaining in Middlemarch in
spite of the worst that could be done against him. He would not retreat before
calumny, as if he submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no act of
his should show that he was afraid. It belonged to the generosity as well as
defiant force of his nature that he resolved not to shrink from showing to the
full his sense of obligation to Bulstrode. It was true that the association with
this man had been fatal to him - true that if he had had the thousand pounds
still in his hands with all his debts unpaid he would have returned the money to
Bulstrode, and taken beggary rather than the rescue which had been sullied with
the suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of the proudest among the
sons of men) - nevertheless, he would not turn away from this crushed
fellow-mortal whose aid he had used
