The second world that he
alludes to is the next purpose. Like the Scholar Gypsy’s purpose of unity, this purpose could
retrieve the serenity
of the past. Yet, he does not share
Mill’s hope. Arnold describes Mill and
Browning’s proposal of social progress through active and free individuals
as, “this strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry [and]
its divided aims….” John Stuart Mill believed that if the individual is
fed and fertilized with freedom, then the individual, like an
orchard, would flourish, branching out and bearing fruits to the society
that has valued him or her. For him, social institutions only served
as barriers to the universal human aspiration: progress.
Robert Browning agreed with Mill’s assertion that the individual must
be free of social constraints, so the Fra Lippi Lippo’s of the world
can enlighten society; on the other hand, he agreed with Matthew
Arnold’s bleak prognosis of excessive individualism. Arnold foresaw and lamented a chaotic world, wherein the removal of
tradition and culture would leave the individual alienated from the
rest of society.