Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

by Sir Henry Jones

The all-including Future!"^A

A: Gerard de Lairesse.

But, whether or not the new point of view renders some of the old disputations of ethics meaningless, it is certain that Browning viewed moral life as a growth through conflict.

"What were life

Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife

Through the ambiguous Present to the goal

Of some all-reconciling Future?"^B

B: Ibid.

To become, to develop, to actualize by reaction against the natural and moral environment, is the meaning both of the self and of the world it works upon. "We are here to learn the good of peace through strife, of love through hate, and reach knowledge by ignorance."