The aim of the psychologic method is to interpret man from within, in his motives and impulses.  It endeavors to show why he acts, and it unfolds the subtler elements of his character.  This method George Eliot uses in connection with her evolutionary philosophy, and uses it for the purpose of showing that man is a product of hereditary conditions, that he has been shaped into his life of the emotions and sentiments by the influence of tradition.  The psychologic method may be applied, however, without connection with the positive or evolutionary philosophy.  The mind may be regarded as a distinct force and power, exercised within social and material limits, and capable of being studied in all its inner motives and impulses.  Yet in her mental inquiries George Eliot did not regard man as an eternal soul in the process of development by divine methods, but as the inheritor of the past, moulded by every surrounding circumstance, and as the creature of the present.  Instead of regarding man as sub specie eternitatis, she regarded him as an animal who has through feeling and social development come to know that he cannot exist beyond the present.  This limitation of his nature affected her work throughout.

The psychologic method in literature has also been that of Robert Browning, and he has been as faithful to it as any other.  He, too, analyzes his characters, penetrates all the hidden causes of motive and deed, lays bare the soul.  No other poet has surpassed him in power to unveil the inner workings of the mind, to discover all the influences affecting it or in revealing how motives are created and how motives lead up to deeds.  In two important particulars Robert Browning differs from George Eliot.  His characters speak for themselves, reveal the secrets of their own minds.  He does not talk about them, does not criticise their words and conduct, does not stand off from them as a spectator.  He differs from her also in his conception of man as a being who is here developing an eternal existence under the laws of an Infinite Spirit.  He, too, believes in the natural, and believes that the highest law of the soul is, to be true to every pure impulse arising within us.  To calculate, to philosophize, he holds to be always to man’s injury, that nature when perfectly obeyed is the only guide.  He studies man as affected by all the circumstances of his existence, and as wrought upon by the great social forces which have made him what he is.  His analysis is as keen as George Eliot’s; he makes the soul appear before us in all its reality.  His is a more creative, a more dramatic method than hers; yet he is fully as subjective, as much an interpreter of the soul.  Neither is content to record the deeds of men; both wish to know why men act.