Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

life, and takes much satisfaction in the world. It's a very strange and curio

s view of the world; nothing which can be called a new idea disturbed his outline sketch of the universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in, showing with ever greater detail the relations of man to man in history, and emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in human action. There is evidence, it is true, that the for

nd chose his battleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to his life's close. In his Pauline and in his Epilogue to

, he sings each

think he never

ine careles

houghts f

another and a higher; or rather, they penetrated through the husk of time and saw that eternity is even here, a tranquil element underlying the noisy antagonisms of man's earthly life. Both of them, like

t the collision of the old and new, and in the midst of the confusion. He, more than any other English writer, was the instrument of the change from the Deism of the eighteenth century and the despair which followed it, into the larger faith of our own. But, for Browning, there was a new heaven and a new earth, and old thin

he other hand, deny these rights, or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It at least attempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature, without compromising any of them. It cannot be called either individualistic or socialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so that both man and society mean more to this age than they ever did before. The narrow formul

e were all but unintelligible. The general English reader could make little of the strange figures that had broken into the realm of literature; and the value and significance of their work, as well as its originality, will be recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurried

the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism, which cast on the bright earth the sombre shadow

W

sober upris

e bui

u

right

el, piece of

Hohenstiel

t, but man reduced to his beggarly elements-a being animated solely by the sensuous springs of pleasure and pain, which should properly, as Carlyle thought, go on all fours, and not lay claim to the dignity of being moral. All things were reduced to what they seemed, robbed of their suggestiveness, changed into definite, sharp-edged, mutually exclusive particulars. The world was an aggregate of isolated facts, or, at the best, a mechanism into which

tched endlessly far back into the past and forward into the future. Psychology gave way to metaphysics. The universal element in the thought of man was revealed. Instead of mechanism there was life. A new spirit of poetry and philosophy brought God back into the world, revealed his incarnation in the mind of man, and changed nature into a pellucid garment within which throbbed the love divine. The antagonism of hard alternatives was at an end; the universe was spirit-woven and every smallest object was "filled full of magical m

rt. The true poet finds God everywhere; for the ideal is actual wherever beauty dwells. And there is the closest affinity between art and religion, as its history proves, from Job and Isaiah, Homer and Aeschylus, to our own poet; for both art and religion lift us, each in its own way, above one-sidedness and limitation, to the region of the universal. The one draws God to man, brings perfection here, and re

made quiet

and the deep

o the life

ntern

ways true of the poet, as it

e w

d the wonder

gs, their colours,

, surpr

Lippo

k to God, wh

itness to the divine

as given to this century its poetic grandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era, we m

ns, the many c

r ever shines, ea

dome of many-

hite radianc

ramples it to

Ado

felt," say

hat disturbs

thoughts; a

far more deep

is the light

ocean and th

sky, and in t

d a spirit,

ngs, all objects

through al

ntern

ion whose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet has his own worth, and reflects by his own facet the universal truth-his poetry contains in it larger elements, and the promise of a deeper harmony from th

se smile kindle

which all thing

wretchedness. For Wordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and felt along the heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil restoration," and issued "in a serene and blessed mood"; but Browning's poetry is not merely the poetry of the emotions however sublimated. He starts with the hard repellent fact, crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind, presses into it, and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatness of Browning's poetry is in its p

gnizes the presence of God in nature, is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be sur

e heaves undern

changes like

e burst up am

tone's heart, ou

es, spots bar

fine sand wher

. The wroth sea'

te as the bitt

olitary waste,

anos come up,

er with their

easure in their

ill; earth is

like a dancing

st to waken i

upon rough b

e-roots and the

triving with a

fly in merry f

up, shivering

sleeps; white

strand is purpl

pets; savage

wood and plai

pture. Thus He

inute beginni

onsummation

mpletion of this

arac

roves, while he kept grave watch o'er man's mortality, and saw the shades of the prison-house gather round him. From the life of man they garnered nought but mad indignation, or mellowed sadness. It was a foolish and furious strife with unknown powers fought in the dark, from which the poet kept aloof, for he could not see that God dwelt amidst the chaos. But Browning found "harmony in immortal souls, spite of the muddy vesture of decay." He found nature crowned in man, though man was mean and miserable. At the heart of the most wretched abortion of wickedness there was the mark of the loving touch of God. Shelley turned away from m

into; a new depth to penetrate with hope; a

to

st and unex

ously

undless regio

ty; and to understand it demands a deeper insi

he previous age, the new spirit extended the horizon of man's active and contemplative life, and made him free of the universe, and the repository of the past conquests of his race. It proposed to man the great task of solving the problem of humanity, but it strengthened him with its past achievement, and inspired him with the conviction of its boundless progress. It is not that the

t will therefore be achieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not mean, to those who comprehend it, the supplanting of the individual thought by the collective thought, or the substitution of humanity for man. The universal is in the particular, the fact is the law. There is no collision between the whole and the part, for the whole lives in the part. As each individual plant has its own life and beauty and worth, although the universe has conspired to bring it

man never t

ll creation

of such facu

Hohenstiel

at man speaks the thought of his people, and his invocations as their priest are just the expression of their dumb yearnings. And even the mean and insignificant man is what

l," in the old sense of a being opposed to society and opposed to the world, is found to be a fiction of abstract thought, not discoverable anywhere, becau

iew of the life of man as the life of humanity in him, with the old individualism, we may say that morality also has at last, in Bacon's phrase, passed from the narrow seas into the open ocean. And after all, the greatest achievement of our age may be not that it has established the sciences of nature, but that it has made possible the science of man. We have, at length, reached a point of view from which we may hope to understand ourselves. Law, order, continuity, in human action-the essential pre-conditions of a moral science-were beyond the reach of an individualistic theory. It left to ethical writers no choice but that of either sacrificing man to la

anity, which is incarnated anew in each of them. It elevates the individual above the distinctions of time; it treasures up the past in him as the active energy of his kno

as the voices of our brethren; and we now know that our fate is involved in theirs, and that the problem of their welfare is also ours. We grapple with social questions at last, and recognize that the issues of life and death lie in the solution of these enigmas. Legislators and economists, teachers of religion and socialists, are all alike social reformers. Philanthropy has taken a deeper meaning; and all sects bear its banner. But their forces are beaten back by the social wretchedness, for they have not found the sovereign remedy of a great idea; and the result is in many ways sad enough. Our social remedies often work mischief; for we degrade those whom we would elevate, and in our charity forget justice. We insist on the rights of the people and the duties of the privileged classes, and thereby tend to teach greed to those for whom we labour, and goodness to those whom we condemn. The task that lies before us is plain: we want the wel

ough symbols to the immortal ideas, condemned all shibboleths, and revealed the soul of humanity behind the external modes of man's activity. He showed us, in a word, that the world is spiritual, that loyalty to duty is the foundation of all human good, and that national welfare rests on character. After reading him, it is impossible for any one who reflects on the nature of duty to ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" He not only imagined, but knew, how "all things the minutest that man does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing or new cursing. I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipeg, can quarr

Is it not true, on the contrary, that no man ever saw a duty beyond his strength, and that "man can because he ought" and ought only because he can? The evils an individual cannot overcome are the moral opportunities of his fellows. The good are not lone workers of God's purposes, and there is no need of despair. Carlyle, like the ancient prophet, was too conscious of his own mission, and too forgetful of that of others. "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forgotten Thy covenant, thrown down Thine alters, and slain Thy prophets, and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." He needed, beside the consciousness of his prophetic function, a consciousness of brotherhood with humbler workers. "Yet I have left Me seven thousan

e. That morality is the essence of things, that wrong must prove its weakness, that right is the only might, is reiterated and illustrated on all his pages; they are now commonplaces of speculation on matters of history, if not conscious practical principles which guide its makers. But Carlyle never inquired into the character of this

ion at its best sank into failure. His only virtue is obedience, and his last rendering even of himself is "unprofitable servant." In this he has much of the combined strength and weakness of the old Scottish Calvinism. "He stands between the individual and the Infinite without hope or guide. He has a constant disposition to crush the human being by comparing him with God," said Mazzini,

l environment are recognized as set by ourselves; for, in matters of morality, the eye sees only what the heart prompts. The very statement of the difficulty contains the potency of its solution; for evil, when understood, is on the way towards being overcome, and the good, when seen, contains the promise of its own fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as when the cries of humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take a comfort, denied to Carlyle, from the fact th

orce those who seek light on the deeper mysteries of man's moral nature, to go beyond anything that the poet has to say. Even the poet himself grows, at least in some directions, less confident of the completeness of his triumph as he grows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but it is the faith of one who confe