rejoiced that his country has come safely through the fiery trial, and he sings her glories whole-heartedly. A little later he is defiant, because dangers have begun to threaten. In old age he is touched with doubt. Where is this wild democracy driving to? The ignorance of those who are now to rule, and the wanton outrages of a populace becoming conscious of political freedom before they have learnt to control themselves, almost terrify him. But whatever the form it assumes the subject is always a great one in his eyes. In Browning we do not find it in this shape, but we do find that to him the whole meaning of life lies in its social relations. No one, in his opinion, can live his life alone. In his sympathies he is with the Greek philosophers, who ascribed nearly everything to society, rather than with the popular thought in his own day, which sought to limit the functions of society almost to police duties.

CHAPTER XII.

FAITH AND DOUBT.

WITHIN the last hundred years two forces have seemed at times to threaten with imminent destruction every spiritual interpretation of the universe; or perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of them as one force showing itself in two different aspects. Through the agency of the red republicans the materialising philosophy of the eighteenth century secured a practical triumph, and the bells that celebrated the enthronement of the Goddess of Reason sounded to many like the deathknell of the elder goddess, Faith. And unquestionably the alliance of the Church with a doomed political system, and that tenacious championship of abuses which is the special danger of a conservatism so intense as that fostered by the system of catholicism, did in truth lay it open to a wound from which, in some parts of Europe, it has not yet recovered. The progress of physical science, in the second place, has led to results in some respects similar. As, point by point, the intimate connexion between matter and spirit was demonstrated, the conclusion seemed inevitable that the supposed division was a mere illusion; and only a few thought that it might be as legitimate to say that all is spirit as it would be to assert that all is matter.

When such forces were at work it was almost impossible that any powerful mind should remain quiescent. It was also probable a priori that the real handling of the questions involved would fall to those who were some little distance in time removed from the starting point of them. The soldier in the heat of the fight knows less about what is taking place than the spectator from a distance. The actor in a violent struggle merely feels; it is only he who reflects at leisure who knows. Thus, Shelley's crude atheism, contradicted, if we interpret it strictly, by almost every line of his poetry, was in reality only an expression of

sympathy with those who in the interests of reason rose up against authority. "I used it [the word atheism]," he said, "to express my abhorrence of superstition. I took up the word as a knight takes up a gauntlet in defiance of injustice.' Similarly, Byron's attitude of intellectual and moral revolt was, in its excess, the result of reaction; for mere revolt is impossible as a permanent state. On the other hand, the conservatism of Wordsworth was equally the result of the reaction, upon a spirit of another kind, of the excesses of the Revolution. Goethe, it is true, though he lived through this period, contrived to regard it with a luminous and comprehensive wisdom not yet surpassed. That he did so was partly due to his own qualities, and partly to the condition of his country. Germany was intellectually riper than England, and Goethe was undoubtedly greater than any contemporary Englishman.

When after the great convulsion the world began to settle down and count its gains and losses, when doubts began to spring up whether mere material progress could possibly lead to any "islands of the blest," there were two principal ways in which an interest in more spiritual things showed itself and made headway. From the beginning of his career Thomas Carlyle laboured to spread a knowledge of the heterodox, but still idealising and spiritual, thought of Germany. He traced the progress of a soul fallen on evil times, but resolute to work out its own salvation, not by ostrich-like ignoring the danger, but by facing the problem and solving it; and just when the century was at its turning-point he was thundering in LatterDay Pamphlets against "dismal sciences" and "mud philosophies" and all that tended to materialism. There are still, and there may always be, wide differences of opinion as to the value of Carlyle's solution of the fundamental problems of life; but at any rate his was one of the two methods by which, it would seem, the solution must be attempted. Either the individual soul stands erect, not foolishly casting away the help to be got from others, nor ignoring "the long result of time,” but still in the last resort responsible for its own solution and owning no appeal except to reason. The other method was attempted, just a little later, by the band of scholars who headed

1 Trelawny's Records, quoted in Dowden's Life of Shelley, p. 117.

what is known as "the Oxford Movement". Newman, the most penetrating intellect among them, went over to Rome, but the majority found a satisfactory via media within the pale of Anglicanism, and only emphasised the principle of authority as against the Protestant conception of individual right and individual responsibility.

There was, then, a choice of three paths open to the thoughtful Englishman of the middle period of the present century. There was, in the first place, the path of the native philosophy, dominated by the Utilitarians and the economists. They were materialistic in their tendency, and generally negative in their attitude towards questions of a spiritual character. There was, secondly, the path of faith, leading to an acceptance of views on such questions, not as proved, but on authority, as incapable of proof. The third attempted the solution of the problem by reason, like the Utilitarians, but found under the guidance of reason not a materialistic but a spiritual solution. It is not the business of a poet to range himself either with or in opposition to any school of philosophers or theologians; but no poet, if he thinks, can help being influenced by the views current around him as to the ultimate meaning of life; and certainly neither Browning nor Tennyson nor Arnold escaped their influence.

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It will be easy to trace this influence in the case of all from the beginning of their work; but it was not till near the middle of the century that questions of this sort seemed to reach maturity. It is remarkable that in 1850 both Tennyson and Browning gave more formal and decisive expression to their convictions than they had hitherto done, the former in In Memoriam, the latter in Christmas Eve and Easter Day. Tennyson's subject, made for him by the death of his friend, naturally suggested such treatment; but Browning was free to choose, and his choice was probably, at least in part, determined by the events of the time. As for Arnold, he from the beginning showed that he considered such questions, or the same questions in their social aspects, the most interesting of all; and though he is last in time it will be convenient, for a reason already assigned—that he reflects more clearly than either of the others the spirit of the age-to treat him first.

Arnold may be described as the poet of doubt whose reason nevertheless points to another kind of faith. This position is in

harmony with that which, as we have already seen, he takes with regard to all great human interests. One of the most remarkable features of his work is the perfect consistency of one part with another: a second is the close articulation of his thought. His opinions on religion are plainly of a piece with his social and political views, and all flow from the one fundamental conception of an old world which has been worn out and which has therefore fallen to pieces, leaving to the present century the task of beginning to build up a new one in its stead.

The very position in which fortune placed Matthew Arnold seemed partly to mark out what he was to be. The son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, the friend of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, could hardly miss sympathy with the party of faith. But theirs was a faith based upon a broad foundation of reason, and reached by a method not fundamentally different from that which led the sceptical philosophy to its results. Matthew Arnold followed their method with a greater courage and a more inexorable logic. On the other hand, his famous, but by no means happy, prose definition of the power behind the visible order of nature as "a stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," proves how far he had gone with the opposite school of scepticism. But it also proves that he refused to take, or rather found himself on grounds of reason precluded from taking, the last and greatest step. This alone would be cause sufficient for ranking Arnold in this respect with the other two poets, both of whom agree with him in rejecting the materialistic explanation. All their points of difference are subordinate to this point of agreement.

In a passage already quoted Arnold speaks of the "rigorous teachers" who seized his youth. The reader of Arnold owes much to that habit of self-revelation which, while never obtruding trifles, rarely fails to give a clue to the most important facts of his spiritual experience. The guidance is peculiarly valuable here. The teachers in question were principally German. Goethe has had no more faithful follower and panegyrist in English verse than Arnold. It was he alone who, in Arnold's judgment, taught how to front the troubles of the age, not to put them by, and how to act in face of them, not passively to endure. It was from Goethe that he drew his uncompromising love of truth. Like Goethe, he saw no guide but reason; and he determined to accept its teaching, whatever