Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

by Sir Henry Jones

A: Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.

Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of the goal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposed tendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, and earliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition and ghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is, in essence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in like manner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has been traced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the vengeance of a savage chief. A similar process in the same direction reduces the love divine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust; somewhat sublimated, it is true, in its highest forms, but not fundamentally changed.

"Philosophers deduce you chastity

Or shame, from just the fact that at the first

Whoso embraced a woman in the field,

Threw club down and forewent his brains beside;

So, stood a ready victim in the reach

Of any brother-savage, club in hand.

Hence saw the use of going out of sight

In wood or cave to prosecute his loves."^B