Goethe and from Kant to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source and
spring of the constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social,
political, and religious life. The virtues and the vices of the
aristocracy of the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of the
poets and philosophers, so far from being filled with impracticable
dreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts for
its guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and invent no
telephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that attitude towards
nature, man and God, and generate those moods of the general mind, from
which issue, not only the scientific, but also the social, political and
religious forces of the age.

It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme utterances
of Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to connect them
into a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in his supreme
confidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite height of the
moral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in the good, and his
profound conviction of the evanescence of evil, there lies a vital
energy whose inspiring power we are yet destined to feel. Until a spirit
kindred to his own arises, able to push the battle further into the same
region, much of the practical task of the age that is coming will
consist in living out in detail the ideas to which he has given
expression.

I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer view
of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside the poets
and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the sciences alone
occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent. There is a
universal brotherhood of which all who think are members. Not only do
they all contribute to man's victory over his environment and himself,