It lay in Deronda's nature usually to contemn the feeble, fastidious sympathy which shrinks from the broad life of mankind; but now, with Mirah before him as a living reality, whose experience he had to care for, he saw every common Jew and Jewess in the light of a comparison with her, and had a presentiment of the collision between her idea of the unknown mother and brother and the discovered fact--a presentiment all the keener in him because of a suppressed consciousness that a not unlike possibility of collision might lie hidden in his own lot. 
Deronda was usually inclined to condemn the feeble, fastidious sympathy which shrinks from the broad life of mankind; but now, with Mirah before him as a living reality, he saw every Jew and Jewess in the light of comparison with her, and feared a collision between her idea of the unknown mother and brother, and the fact. His fear was all the keener because of a suppressed knowledge that a similar collision might lie hidden in his own lot.
