Browning and His Century

there are indications that the twentieth century is taking on a character quite distinct from that of the nineteenth. It looks now as if it were t

ects of the everyday sky, they, at least, occupy a large share of attention in the magazines,

ery run by the perpetual energy of radium-a possibility, if radium can ever be obtained in sufficient quantities to supply the needed power to keep modern civilization on its ceaseless "go"-and we may picture to ourselves, before the end of the twentieth century, youths of ninety starting forth on voyages of thirty years in radium ships, which, like the fairy watch of the Princess Rossetta, will never go wrong and will never need to be wound up, metaphorically speaking. It would almost seem as if some method of enlarging the earth, or of arranging voyages to the moon and Mars, would be necessary in order to give the ne

books and pictures have been sacrificed, in order that all the money procurable could be put into the machines and their running. You hear complaints against the automobile from writers, musicians, and artists. The only thing that really has a good sale is the automobile. What effect rushing about so constantly at high speed in the open air is to have on the brain-power is another interesting

ly startling and interesting, but which it is difficult to believe is beautiful. One has a horrible suspicion that all this emphasis upon motion in art is a running to seed of the art which appeals to the eye and with a psychological content derived principally fro

and in its art manifestation, very interesting developments are taking place in scien

f the nineteenth century, the only aspects of inter

prevalent disbelief and doubt of the century which came with the revelations of science. Many people have regarded Tennyson as the chief prophet of the century. He seems, however, to the present writer to h

e most poignant expression, as in his poem called "Despair." The story is of a man a

over their horrible in

dark ages, you see,

of his cave, and the ow

the dunghill, and crows

of our science are both

ken her heart, running

ow-nothing books are sca

know-all chapel, too,

eligion as it had been taught them was no better. The absolute hopelessness

mitless universe sparkl

of God, but we knew tha

ss hope-but, however t

unning round them were w

ven above, no soul

itten over with l

n the drear nightfold

rowing dawn, we had ho

hat was coming would scat

hat had madden'd the peop

m the Christ, our hum

that He spoke, of a hell

d it came, but the pr

heerless night to the

nd a smoke who was o

in the dust and the

in a world of the weak t

world, all massacre

d, does not reflect any settled conviction on the poet's part, though it shows him liable to moods of the most extreme doubt. In "The Ancient Sage" the agnostic spirit

prove the Name

prove the world

prove that thou

prove that thou

prove thou ar

thou art mort

rove that I who

lf in convers

orthy proving

ven. Wherefore

o the sunnier

ith beyond the

in the storm o

t the clash of

t that glimmers

sun is hid b

summer thro' t

fruit before th

lark within th

untain where the

f the sort of assurance in the reality of God and of immortality which Tennyson was in the habit of giving. In the poem called "Vastness" he presents with genuine power a pessimistic view of humanity and civilization in all its various

him, and love him forever: th

truths of religion, of which the chief assurance lies in the thought of personal love. Not as in Browning, that human love, because of its beauty and ecstasy, is a symbol of divine love, but because of its wish to be reunited to the one beloved is an earnest of continued existence. While Tennyson's poet

ralized theology of the earlier years of the second half of the century. As Joseph Jacobs says, "In Memoriam" has been to the Broad Church Movement what the "Christian Year" has been to the High Church. But where is the Broad Church now? Tennyso

t through his psychic power of self-hypnotism. In "The Ancient Sage" is a passage

e than o

ne, revolvi

t is the sym

mit of the se

to the Namele

n. I touch'd my

t mine-and yet n

rness, and thr

large life as m

park-unshadow

shadows of a

conclusions, that such ecstasies "signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporal one of degeneration and hysteria," that mystical states have an actual value as revelations o

he everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so t

nd in a sense is prophetic of the twentieth century, because in this century revelations attained in this way have been given a credence long

uses, or is emphasized in the existence of evil. The first leads to awe and wonder, and is a constant spur to mankind to seek further knowledge, but the poet insists that the knowledge so accumulated is not actual gain, but only a means to gain in so far as it keeps bringing home to the human mind the fact of its own inadequacy in the discovery of truth. The existence of evil leads to the constant effort to overcome it, and to sympathy and pity, and as the failure of knowledge proves a future of truth to be won, so the failure of mankind to attain perfection in moral actio

in the human consciousness an intuition of the absolute which was the only certain knowledge possessed by man. Here again Browning was at one with Sp

d am answered. Questi

ng itself which question

e thing perceived o

beginning, operativ

d-that this thing li

all that-soul, and bot

ey o'erpass my power of p

his existence is up among the exaltations of aspiration and love. His cosmic sense is a sense of God as Love, and is the quality most characteristic of the man. It is like, though perhaps not identical with, the mysticism of Whitman, which seems to have been an habitual state. He writes: "There is, apart from mere intellect, in the make-up of every superior human identity, a wondrous something that realizes without argument, frequently without what is called education (t

and seems for the time being to conquer-is nowhere more fully, and at the same time more concisely, expressed than in his poem "Reverie," one

the world

I live

with Love

, this di

re and

the effec

far day,

in things

ed, each ch

orn out o

-but to li

the lump,

te through k

eless Powe

d, how vain

esistle

han the p

the pot

whelmed mi

ge the

fect in e

tter's mou

n's quicke

is thought

his soul w

barrier of fl

from the ca

urbidity

own to the

l be' from Ear

is-to wak

not rest,

level where

fected mor

n's height,

what strife

he adventu

e-transports

d from wor

l's world, spu

ith such e

rst, Power

made cl

e but for c

e as pla

When there

the home

der, wor

range and ne

comes full

the central doctrine of Christianity he had so profound a reverence that he recurs to it again and again in his poetry, and at times his feeling seems to carry him to the v

e dramatic and it might be made without necessarily expressing the feeling of the poet. What Browning felt was that in historical Christianity the highest symbol of divine love had been reached. Though he may at times have had moods in which he would fain have believed true an

l purport likely to be realized. The thought of the century is showing ever

y. While the scientists themselves plod on, often quite unconscious that they are not dealing with ultimates, the thinkers are no longer satisfied

dolf Eucken done an almost similar thing. Like Browning, he is a strong individualist and believes that the development of the soul is the one thing of supreme moment. "There is a spontaneous springing up of the individual spiritual life," he writes, "only within the soul of the individual. All social and all historical life that does not unc

g at 77

e. "Our whole life is an indefatigable seeking and pressing forward. In self-consciousness the framework is given which has to be filled; in it we have acquired only the basis upon which the superstructure has to be raised. We have to find experience in life itself to reveal somet

himself to be under the influence of the dualism of the past which regarded matter and spirit as antagonistic. In B

hings and into an effeminate play, and which takes away that bitterness from evil without which there is no strenuousness in the struggle and no vitality in life. Thus it remains true that religion does not so much explain as presuppose evil." An attempt to explain evil, he says, belongs to speculation rather than to religion. That he has an inkling

e unconditional Lord and Master to whom the ages must do homage. And while the person of Jesus retains a wonderful majesty apart from dogma, its greatness is confined to the realm of humanity, and whatever of new and divine life it brings to us must be potential and capable of realization in us all. We therefore see no more in this figure the normative and universally valid type of all human life, but merely an incomparable individuality which cannot be directly imitated. At any rate the figure of Jesus, thus understood in all its height and pure humanity, can no longer be an object of faith and divine honor. All attempts to take shelter in a mediating position are shattered against a relentless either-or. Between man and God there is no intermediate form of being for us, for we cannot sink back into the ancient cult of heroes. If Jesus, therefore, is not God, if Christ is not the second person in the Trinity, then he is a man; not a man like any average man among ourselves, but still man. We can therefore honor him as a leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot directly bind ourselves to him or root ourselves in him; we cannot submit to him unconditionally. Still less can we make

what I tell yo

an of us, re

pageant's end

once the life, h

here, keep the

al, a thing the

wledge that one

se work, old

ch from other

e need of Temple

that? What use of

r, Priests' cries,

far from vanis

ses but to

verse that fe

emblance between his thought, which belongs to the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, and Browning's is certain, but the fact remains that the poet made a sy

l is, "believe in, or rather follow, that ideal which will be of the most use to you, and if it turns out not to be successful, then try another one." The poet declares that Blougram said good things but called them by wrong names. If the ideal is a high one there

ed to be the climbing of pleasure's heights forever the seeking of a flying point of bliss remote. In his last volume the idea is more fully brought out in "Rephan." In this it is held that a state of perfect bliss might grow monotonous, and that a preferable state would be to aspire, yet never attain,

I stand on m

, alone, one

ing else have

in other lives

m all the heights

hought very deeply imbedded in their consciousness, yet the mere fact that one hears the remark so often proves what a hold the theory has on the imagination of mankind. As Browning gives it in "One Word More," the successive incarnations take one on to higher heights-"other lives in other worlds." Thus regarded, it is the final outcome

rld the utmost certainty of God, the soul and immortality, and the most inspiring ideals of human love, will be more completely recognized in the future. As time goes on he will emerge above the tumultuous intellectual life of the present, which, with its enormous increase of knowledge of phenomena, bringing with it a fairly titanic mastery of the forces of nature, and its generation of multitudes of ideas upon every conceivable subject, many of them trite, many of them puerile, and some of them no doubt of genuine value, obscures for the time being the greatness of any one voice. A little later, when the winnowing of ideas shall come, Browning will be recognized as one of the greatest men of his own age or any age-a man combining knowledge, wisdom, aspiration, and vision to a marvelous degree. He belongs to the master-order of poets, who write some things which will pass into the popular knowledge of the day, but whose serious achievements will be read and studied by the cultured and scholarly of all time. No students of Greek literature will feel that they can omit from their reading his Greek poems, no students of sociology will feel th

m, strange as it may seem, I came to an appreciation of all other poets. His poetry, fortunately for me an early influence in my life, awakened my, until then, dormant faculty for poetic appreciation. I owe him, therefore, a double debt of gratitude: Not only has he given me the joy of knowing his own great work, but through him I have entered the land of all poésie, led as I truly think by his

r work in that direction seems hardly necessary for the present. There will for many a day to come be those who feel h

in the complexity of its growth, both in practical affairs and in intellectual developments, that it has been possible in the space of one volume to touch onl

o the fascinating vistas of the nineteenth century in its relation to Browning to inspire others to make further excursions for thems

E

FE PRESS, GARD

tno

which was placed in the Browning alcove in the Boston Public Library. In the "Life of Browning," published the same year and not read by the writer until recently, Mr. Hall Griffin touches upon the same thought in the

thor's "Browni

to "Ring and Book"-