Secularism is an orientation to life that places paramount importance on the matters of ‘this world’, and considers observation and reason the best means by which the things of this world can be known and improved. It has its roots in a response to religious belief, but is not necessarily a form of religion in itself. In some forms, secularism has been preoccupied only with the elimination of religious belief; in others, it is concerned with substituting a secular creed in its place. This latter form of secularism was embraced by such ‘advanced’ middle-class writers of the Victorian period as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold and George Eliot. The encounter with secularism of such thinkers was often accompanied by a ‘crisis of faith’, a crisis that had social, intellectual and moral implications for the newly converted non-believer. George Eliot at once represents the reach of secularist philosophy into middle-class circles, and provides its best expression in Victorian fiction. Published in Harris, Margaret, editor. George Eliot in Context. Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 271-278. Click here or on title.