Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

by Sir Henry Jones

I think this is the authentic sign and seal

Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,

And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts

Into a rage to suffer for mankind,

And recommence at sorrow."^A

A: Balaustion's Adventure.

I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the present era is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of man, and the new significance it has given to that life by its view of the continuity of history. This view finds expression, on its social and ethical side, in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both of whom are interested exclusively, one may almost say, in the evolution of human character; and both of whom, too, regard that evolution as the realization by man of the purposes, greater than man's, which rule in the world. And, although neither of them developed the organic view of humanity, which is implied in their doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the moral life of the individual is for each of them the infinite life in the finite. The meaning of the universe is moral, its last might is rightness; and the task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert it into his own motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, the inmost principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finite and the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile them.

But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was incomplete on every side—even within the sphere of duty, with which alone, as moralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral law was imposed upon man by a higher power, in the presence of whom man was awed and crushed; for that power had stinted man's endowment, and set him to fight a hopeless battle against endless evil. God was everywhere around man, and the universe was just the expression of His will—a will inexorably bent on the good, so that evil could not prevail; but God was not within man, except as a voice of conscience issuing imperatives and threats. An infinite duty was laid upon a finite being, and its weight made him break out into a cry of despair.

Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the reconciliation, but succeeded, in so far as that is possible in terms of mere feeling. His poetry contains suggestions that the moral will without is also a force within man; that the power which makes for righteousness in the world has penetrated into, or rather manifests itself as, man. Intelligence and will, the reason which apprehends the nature of things, and the original impulse of self-conscious life which issues in action, are God's power in man; so that God is realizing Himself in the deeds of man, and human history is just His return to Himself. Outer law and inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent purpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative, or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin, a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very nature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he would find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must finally reach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In the language of theology, it may be said that the moral process is the spiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love, effecting itself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is turned by Browning into a song of victory. While the former regards the struggle between good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the forces are immovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of battling against a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming triumph gives joyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality into an optimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the distinctive mark and mission which give to him such power of moral inspiration.