Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher | Page 7

The knower, seer, feeler, beside,--instinctive Art
Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part However poor,
surpass the fragment, and aspire To reconstruct thereby the ultimate
entire."[A]
[Footnote A: Fifine at the Fair, xliv.]

No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to penetrate
to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I think, fundamentally
different from that of any other of our great writers. He often seems to
be roused into speech, rather by the intensity of his spiritual convictions
than by the subtle incitements of poetic sensibility. His convictions
caught fire, and truth became beauty for him; not beauty, truth, as with
Keats or Shelley. He is swayed by ideas, rather than by sublime moods.
Beneath the endless variety of his poems, there are permanent
principles, or "colligating conceptions," as science calls them; and
although these are expressed by the way of emotion, they are held by
him with all the resources of his reason.
His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God by
first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when regarded
as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's life and
destiny that can be maintained, not only during the impassioned moods
of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism and doubt. His faith, like
Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the plucking fiend." He has given to us
something more than intuitive glimpses into, the mysteries of man's
character. Throughout his life he held up the steady light of an
optimistic conception of the world, and by its means injected new
vigour into English ethical thought. In his case, therefore, it is not an
immaterial question, but one almost forced upon us, whether we are to
take his ethical doctrine and inspiring optimism as valid truths, or to
regard them merely as subjective opinions held by a religious poet. Are
they creations of a powerful imagination, and nothing more? Do they
give to the hopes and aspirations that rise so irrepressibly in the heart of
man anything better than an appearance of validity, which will prove
illusory the moment the cold light of critical inquiry is turned upon
them?
It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the main, the
impressiveness of his deliverances on morality and religion. And this
unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of life
methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other English

poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already hinted, that he
has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned view of the ethical
nature of man, and of his relation to the world--has sought, in fact, to
establish a philosophy of life. In his case, not without injustice, it is true,
but with less injustice than in the case of any other poet, we may
disregard, for our purposes, the artistic method of his thought, and lay
stress on its content only. He has a right to a place amongst
philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There is such
deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his teaching, that
Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The Rational is the
Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning held to his view
of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism; and that Idealism,
like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis in the moral consciousness.
But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to apply these
critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him pay the penalty for
assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is certain that what he says
of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly valued, till it is regarded in the
light of his guiding principles. We shall miss much of what is best in
him, even as a poet, if, for instance, we regard his treatment of love
merely as the expression of elevated passion, or his optimism as based
upon mere hope. Love was to him rather an indwelling element in the
world, present, like power, in everything.
"From the first, Power was--I knew. Life has made clear to me That,
strive but for closer view, Love were as plain to see."[A]
[Footnote: A _Reverie--Asolando_.]
Love yielded to him, as Reason did to Hegel, a fundamental exposition
of the nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in another way, it
was a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply to facts and to
test by their means, almost in the same manner as that in which natural
science