“There must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry”

“There must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry” is Tertius Lydgate’s compact account of how knowledge should advance: thought must alternately contract around a particular object and expand toward the wider human horizon. When the phrase returns in conversation with Camden Farebrother, however, it becomes a measure of the distance between Lydgate’s professed method and his unsettled circumstances.

Meaning and Image

The phrase borrows the paired movements of systole and diastole—the heart’s contraction and expansion—to describe intellectual inquiry. Its image makes investigation rhythmic rather than one-sided: concentration on a specific object is necessary, but it must be balanced by a widening view of human life. Lydgate’s companion formulation, that the mind must expand and shrink between “the whole human horizon” and “the horizon of an object-glass,” clarifies the contrast between broad perspective and close scientific attention.

Lydgate’s Scientific Ideal

The saying represents a standard Lydgate himself has insisted upon: patient, uninterrupted work should leave definite results, or “waymarks,” of sustained pursuit. It treats science not as a collection of sweeping opinions but as disciplined movement between focused observation and comprehensive understanding. The maxim therefore articulates both a method and an ambition, one that Lydgate’s talk about biological views invokes even when he does not produce the concrete signs of research he once required.

Recurrence in Farebrother’s Visit

Camden Farebrother recalls Lydgate’s principle during an evening visit to Middlemarch. In the workroom, Lydgate talks persistently about arguments for and against biological views, yet offers none of the definite things to say or show that would mark patient, uninterrupted inquiry. Farebrother senses that the breadth of the discussion serves to resist its personal bearing. Later, after asking Rosamond to provide music, Lydgate falls silent in his chair, with a strange light in his eyes. Farebrother wonders whether he has taken an opiate, perhaps for tic-douloureux or medical worries, but does not recognize the deeper strain in Lydgate’s private life.

The Ideal and Its Dramatic Irony

The maxim’s recurrence sharpens the contrast between Lydgate’s intellectual doctrine and his visible condition. He can still discuss the proper motions of inquiry, but his conversation that evening lacks the patient evidence of an actual pursuit; the principle is present as remembered language while its practice appears compromised. Farebrother, who knows that Lydgate is proud and recoils from discussion of his private affairs, cannot readily offer direct help. The phrase thus carries a quiet irony: a method grounded in movement between perspectives is voiced by a man whose personal difficulties remain unspoken and unseen by his friend.