George Henry Lewes (April 18, 1817 - November 30, 1878) was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious skepticism. He best known today for having openly lived with George Eliot, a soul-mate whose life and writings were enriched by their friendship, although they were never married. It was not unusual for men in Victorian society to have affairs; Charles Dickens, Friedrich Engels and Wilkie Collins had committed relationships with women they were not married to, though more discreetly than Lewes. What was scandalous was the Lewes' open admission of the relationship. In 1845-46, Lewes published The Biographical History of Philosophy, an attempt to depict the life of philosophers as an ever-renewed fruitless labor to attain the unattainable. The final outcome of his intellectual progress is The Problems of Life and Mind. His sudden death cut short the work, yet it is complete enough to allow a judgment on the author's matured conceptions on biological, psychological and metaphysical problems. He died in 1878 at the age of 61.
