BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHER

by

HENRY JONES

Professor of Philosophy in the University of Glasgow

[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING. ]

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TOMY DEAR FRIENDS

MISS HARRIET MACARTHURANDMISS JANE MACARTHUR. 

PREFACE

The purpose of this book is to deal with Browning, not simply as a poet, but rather as the exponent of a system of ideas on moral and religioussubjects, which may fairly be called a philosophy. I am conscious thatit is a wrong to a poet to neglect, or even to subordinate, the artisticaspect of his work. At least, it would be a wrong, if our final judgmenton his poetry were to be determined on such a method. But there is aplace for everything; and, even in the case of a great poet, there issometimes an advantage in attempting to estimate the value of what hehas said, apart from the form in which he has said it. And of all modernpoets, Browning is the one who most obviously invites and justifies sucha method of treatment. For, in the first place, he is clearly one ofthat class of poets who are also prophets. He was never merely "the idlesinger of an empty day, " but one for whom poetic enthusiasm wasintimately bound up with religious faith, and who spoke "in numbers, "not merely "because the numbers came, " but because they were for him thenecessary vehicle of an inspiring thought. If it is the business ofphilosophy to analyze and interpret all the great intellectual forcesthat mould the thought of an age, it cannot neglect the works of one whohas exercised, and is exercising so powerful an influence on the moraland religious life of the present generation. 

In the second place, as will be seen in the sequel, Browning has himselfled the way towards such a philosophical interpretation of his work. For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the line thatdivides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke through thestrict limits of art in the effort to express--and we might even say topreach--his own idealistic faith. In his later works he did this almostwithout any disguise, raising philosophical problems, and discussing allthe _pros_ and _cons_ of their solution, with no little subtlety anddialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to bereceiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetic inspiration, ifit were not for those powerful imaginative utterances, those wingedwords, which Browning has always in reserve, to close the ranks of hisargument. If the question is stated in a prosaic form, the final answer, as in the ancient oracle, is in the poetic language of the gods. 

From this point of view I have endeavoured to give a connected accountof Browning's ideas, especially of his ideas on religion and morality, and to estimate their value. In order to do so, it was necessary todiscuss the philosophical validity of the principles on which hisdoctrine is more or less consciously based. The more immediatelyphilosophical chapters are the second, seventh, and ninth; but they willnot be found unintelligible by those who have reflected on thedifficulties of the moral and religious life, even although they may beunacquainted with the methods and language of the schools. 

I have received much valuable help in preparing this work for the pressfrom my colleague, Professor G. B. Mathews, and still more from ProfessorEdward Caird. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude. 

HENRY JONES. 

1891. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER II. ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

CHAPTER III. BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY

CHAPTER IV. BROWNING'S OPTIMISM

CHAPTER V. OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION

CHAPTER VI. BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLEOF LOVE

CHAPTER VII. BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICALJUSTIFICATION

CHAPTER VIII. BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEMOF EVIL

CHAPTER IX. A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OFTHE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE

CHAPTER X. THE HEART AND THE HEAD. --LOVE ANDREASON

CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION

ROBERT BROWNING. 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

 "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum. " (_Faust_. )

There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great mancondemns the world to the task of explaining him. " The condemnation is adouble one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man himself, who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last refinement ofthis species of cruelty is to expound a poet. I therefore begin with anapology in both senses of the term. I acknowledge that no commentator onart has a right to be heard, if he is not aware of the subordinate andtemporary nature of his office. At the very best he is only a guide tothe beautiful object, and he must fall back in silence so soon as he hasled his company into its presence. He may perhaps suggest "the line ofvision, " or fix the point of view, from which we can best hope to dojustice to the artist's work, by appropriating his intention andcomprehending his idea; but if he seeks to serve the ends of art, hewill not attempt to do anything more. 

In order to do even this successfully, it is essential that everyjudgment passed should be exclusively ruled by the principles whichgovern art. "Fine art is not real art till it is free"; that is, tillits value is recognized as lying wholly within itself. And it is not, unfortunately, altogether unnecessary to insist that, so far fromenhancing the value of an artist's work, we only degrade it into meremeans, subordinate it to uses alien, and therefore antagonistic to itsperfection, if we try to show that it gives pleasure, or refinement, ormoral culture. There is no doubt that great poetry has all these uses, but the reader can enjoy them only on condition of forgetting them; forthey are effects that follow the sense of its beauty. Art, morality, religion, is each supreme in its own sphere; the beautiful is not morebeautiful because it is also moral, nor is a painting great because itssubject is religious. It is true that their spheres overlap, and art isnever at its best except when it is a beautiful representation of thegood; nevertheless the points of view of the artist and of the ethicalteacher are quite different, and consequently also the elements withinwhich they work and the truth they reveal. 

In attempting, therefore, to discover Robert Browning's philosophy oflife, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate. Browningis, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can be finallyjudged; and the greatness of a poet is to be measured by the extent towhich his writings are a revelation of what is beautiful. 

I undertake a different and a humbler task, conscious of itslimitations, and aware that I can hardly avoid doing some violence tothe artist. What I shall seek in the poet's writings is not beauty, buttruth; and although truth is beautiful, and beauty is truth, still thepoetic and philosophic interpretation of life are not to be confused. Philosophy must separate the matter from the form. Its synthesis comesthrough analysis, and analysis is destructive of beauty, as it is of alllife. Art, therefore, resists the violence of the critical methods ofphilosophy, and the feud between them, of which Plato speaks, will lastthrough all time. The beauty of form and the music of speech whichcriticism destroys, and to which philosophy is, at the best, indifferent, are essential to poetry. When we leave them out of accountwe miss the ultimate secret of poetry, for they cling to the meaning andpenetrate it with their charm. Thought and its expression areinseparable in poetry, as they never are in philosophy; hence, in theformer, the loss of the expression is the loss of truth. The pure ideathat dwells in a poem is suffused in the poetic utterance, as sunshinebreaks into beauty in the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh, or as an impassioned thought breathes in a thinker's face. 

But, although art and philosophy are supreme, each in its own realm, andneither can be subordinated to the uses of the other, they may help eachother. They are independent, but not rival powers of the world of mind. Not only is the interchange of truth possible between them; but each mayshow and give to the other all its treasures, and be none the pooreritself. "It is in works of art that some nations have deposited theprofoundest intuitions and ideas of their hearts. " Job and Isaiah, Æschylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe, were first of all poets. Mankind is indebted to them in the first place for revealing beauty; butit also owes to them much insight into the facts and principles of themoral world. It would be an unutterable loss to the ethical thinker andthe philosopher, if this region were closed against them, so that theycould no longer seek in the poets the inspiration and light that lead togoodness and truth. In our own day, almost above all others, we need thepoets for these ethical and religious purposes. For the utterances ofthe dogmatic teacher of religion have been divested of much of theirancient authority; and the moral philosopher is often regarded either asa vendor of commonplaces or as the votary of a discredited science, whose primary principles are matter of doubt and debate. There are not afew educated Englishmen who find in the poets, and in the poets alone, the expression of their deepest convictions concerning the profoundestinterests of life. They read the poets for fresh inspiration, partly, nodoubt, because the passion and rapture of poetry lull criticism andsoothe the questioning spirit into acquiescence. 

But there are further reasons; for the poets of England are greater thanits moral philosophers; and it is of the nature of the poetic art that, while eschewing system, it presents the strife between right and wrongin concrete character, and therefore with a fulness and truth impossibleto the abstract thought of science. 

 "A poet never dreams: We prose folk do: we miss the proper duct For thoughts on things unseen. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lxxxviii. ]

It is true that philosophy endeavours to correct this fragmentariness bystarting from the unity of the whole. But it can never quite get rid ofan element of abstraction and reach down to the concrete individual. 

The making of character is so complex a process that the poeticrepresentation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always morecomplete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis. Sciencecan deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method becomes moreand more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete, unless itproceeds from the unity in which all the aspects are held together. Inthe case of life, and still more so in that of human conduct, the wholemust precede the part, and the moral science must, therefore, more thanany other, partake of the nature of poetry; for it must start fromliving spirit, go from the heart outwards, in order to detect themeaning of the actions of man. 

On this account, poetry is peculiarly helpful to the ethicalinvestigator, because it always treats the particular thing as amicrocosm. It is the great corrective of the onesidedness of sciencewith its harsh method of analysis and distinction. It is a witness tothe unity of man and the world. Every object which art touches intobeauty, becomes in the very act a whole. The thing that is beautiful isalways complete, the embodiment of something absolutely valuable, theproduct and the source of love; and the beloved object is all the worldfor the lover--beyond all praise, because it is above all comparison. 

 "Then why not witness, calmly gazing, If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her? Above this tress, and this, I touch But cannot praise, I love so much!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Song_ (Dramatic Lyrics). ]

This characteristic of the work of art brings with it an importantpractical consequence, because being complete, it appeals to the wholeman. 

"Poetry, " it has been well said, is "the idealized and monumentalutterance of the deepest feelings. " And poetic feelings, it must not beforgotten, _are_ deepest; that is, they are the afterglow of thefullest activity of a complete soul, and not shallow titillations, orsurface pleasures, such as the palate knows. Led by poetry, theintellect so sees truth that it glows with it, and the will is stirredto deeds of heroism. For there is hardly any fact so mean, but that whenintensified by emotion, it grows poetic; as there is hardly any man sounimaginative, but that when struck with a great sorrow, or moved by agreat passion, he is endowed for a moment with the poet's speech. Apoetic fact, one may almost say, is just any fact at its best. Art, itis true, looks at its object through a medium, but it always seems itsinmost meaning. In Lear, Othello, Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone, there is a revelation of the inner truth of human life beyond the powerof moral science to bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets, for though they teach only by hints and parables, they neverthelessreflect the concrete truth of life, as it is half revealed and halfconcealed in facts. On the other hand, the reflective process ofphilosophy may help poetry; for, as we shall show, there is a nearkinship between them. Even the critical analyst, while severing elementfrom element, may help art and serve the poet's ends, provided he doesnot in his analysis of parts forget the whole. His function, thoughhumble and merely preliminary to full poetic enjoyment, is notunimportant. To appreciate the grandeur of the unity of the work of art, there must be knowledge of the parts combined. It is quite true that theguide in the gallery is prone to be too talkative, and there are manywho can afford to turn the commentator out of doors, especially if hemoralizes. But, after all, man is not pure sensibility, any more than heis pure reason. And the aesthete will not lose if he occasionally allowsthose whom he may think less sensitive than himself to the charm ofrhythmic phrase, to direct sober attention to the principles which lieembedded in all great poetry. At the worst, to seek for truth in poetryis a protest against the constant tendency to read it for the sake ofthe emotions which it stirs, the tendency to make it a refined amusementand nothing more. That is a deeper wrong to art than any which thetheoretical moralist can inflict. Of the two, it is better to readpoetry for ethical doctrines than for fine sensations; for poetrypurifies the passions only when it lifts the reader into the sphere oftruths that are universal. 

The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different ways. Oneof these, with which we have been made familiar by critics ofShakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by itselfand regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea; the otheris to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem, to reach thepoet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign truths which rulehis mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to follow. 

Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover inall our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose universalitybaffles every classifier. As a rule, the English poets have been caughtup, and inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some single idea, inwhose service they spend themselves with that prodigal thrift whichfinds life in giving it. Such an idea gives them a fresh way of lookingat the world, so that the world grows young again with their newinterpretation. In the highest instances, poets may become makers ofepochs; they reform as well as reveal; for ideas are never dead things, "but grow in the hand that grasps them. " In them lies the energy of anation's life, and we comprehend that life only when we make clear toourselves the thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepestsense, that those who make the songs of a people make its history. Inall true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, inorder to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them, andbreak into music in their poems. 

Whether it is always possible, and whether it is at any time fair to apoet to define the idea which inspires him, I shall not inquire atpresent. No doubt, the interpretation of a poet from first principlescarries us beyond the limits of art; and by insisting on the unity ofhis work, more may be attributed to him, or demanded from him, than heproperly owns. To make such a demand is to require that poetry should bephilosophy as well, which, owing to its method of intuition, it cannever be. Nevertheless, among English poets there is no one who lendshimself so easily, or so justly, to this way of treatment as Browning. Much of his poetry trembles on the verge of the abyss which is supposedto separate art from philosophy; and, as I shall try to show, there wasin the poet a growing tendency to turn the power of dialectic on thepre-suppositions of his art. Yet, even Browning puts great difficultiesin the way of a critic, who seeks to draw a philosophy of life from hispoems. It is not by any means an easy task to lift the truths he uttersunder the stress of poetic emotion into the region of placidcontemplation, or to connect them into a system, by means of theprinciple from which he makes his departure. 

The first of these difficulties arises from the extent and variety ofhis work. He was prodigal of poetic ideas, and wrote for fifty years onnature, art, and man, like a magnificent spendthrift of spiritualtreasures. So great a store of knowledge lay at his hand, so real andinformed with sympathy, that we can scarcely find any great literaturewhich he has not ransacked, any phase of life which is not representedin his poems. All kinds of men and women, in every station in life, andat every stage of evil and goodness, crowd his pages. There are fewforms of human character he has not studied, and each individual he hasso caught at the supreme moment of his life, and in the hardest stressof circumstance, that the inmost working of his nature is revealed. Thewealth is bewildering, and it is hard to follow the central thought, "the imperial chord, which steadily underlies the accidental mists ofmusic springing thence. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_. ]

A second and still graver difficulty lies in the fact that his poetry, as he repeatedly insisted, is "always dramatic in principle, and so manyutterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine. "[B] In his earlierworks, especially, Browning is creative rather than reflective, a Makerrather than a Seer; and his creations stand aloof from him, working outtheir fate in an outer world. We often lose the poet in the imaginativecharacters, into whom he penetrates with his keen artistic intuition, and within whom he lies as a necessity revealing itself in their actionsand words. It is not easy anywhere to separate the elements, so that wecan say with certainty, "Here I catch the poet, there lies hismaterial. " The identification of the work and worker is too intimate, and the realization of the imaginary personage is too complete. 

[Footnote B: Pref. To _Pauline_, 1888. ]

In regard to the dramatic interpretation of his poetry, Browning hasmanifested a peculiar sensitiveness. In his Preface to _Pauline_ and inseveral of his poems--notably _The Mermaid_, the _House_, and the_Shop_--he explicitly cuts himself free from his work. He knew thatdirect self-revealment on the part of the poet violates the spirit ofthe drama. "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart, " saidWordsworth; "Did Shakespeare?" characteristically answers Browning, "Ifso, the less Shakespeare he!" And of himself he asks:

 "Which of you did I enable Once to slip inside my breast, There to catalogue and label What I like least, what love best, Hope and fear, believe and doubt of, Seek and shun, respect--deride? Who has right to make a rout of Rarities he found inside?"[A]

[Footnote A: _At the Mermaid_. ]

He repudiates all kinship with Byron and his subjective ways, andrefuses to be made king by the hands which anointed him. "He will notgive his woes an airing, and has no plague that claims respect. " Both asman and poet, in virtue of the native, sunny, outer-air healthiness ofhis character, every kind of subjectivity is repulsive to him. He handsto his readers "his work, his scroll, theirs to take or leave: his soulhe proffers not. " For him "shop was shop only"; and though he dealt ingems, and throws

 "You choice of jewels, every one, Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun, "[A]

[Footnote A: _Shop_. ]

he still _lived_ elsewhere, and had "stray thoughts and fanciesfugitive" not meant for the open market. The poems in which Browning hasspoken without the disguise of another character are very few. There arehardly more than two or three of much importance which can be consideredas directly reflecting his own ideas, namely, _Christmas Eve_ and_Easter Day, La Saisiaz_, and _One Word More_--unless, spite of thepoet's warning, we add _Pauline_. 

But, although the dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders itdifficult to construct his character from his works, while this iscomparatively easy in the case of Wordsworth or Byron; and although itthrows a shade of uncertainty on every conclusion we might draw as toany specific doctrine held by him, still Browning lives in a certainatmosphere, and looks at his characters through a medium, whose subtleinfluence makes all his work indisputably _his_. The light he throws onhis men and women is not the unobtrusive light of day, which revealsobjects, but not itself. Though a true dramatist, he is not objectivelike Shakespeare and Scott, whose characters seem never to have had anauthor. The reader feels, rather, that Browning himself attends himthrough all the sights and wonders of the world of man; he never escapesthe sense of the presence of the poet's powerful personality, or of thegreat convictions on which he has based his life. Browning has, atbottom, only one way of looking at the world, and one way of treatinghis objects; one point of view, and one artistic method. Nay, further, he has one supreme interest, which he pursues everywhere with aconstancy shown by hardly any other poet; and, in consequence, his workshave a unity and a certain originality, which make them in many ways aunique contribution to English literature. 

This characteristic, which no critic has missed, and which generallygoes by the name of "the metaphysical element" in his poetry, makes itthe more imperative to form a clear view of his ruling conceptions. Nopoet, least of all a dramatic poet, goes about seeking concrete vehiclesfor ready-made ideas, or attempts to dress a philosophy in metaphors;and Browning, as an artist, is interested first of all in the objectwhich he renders beautiful for its own sole sake, and not in anyabstract idea it illustrates. Still, it is true in a peculiar sense inhis case, that the eye of the poet brings with it what it sees. He is, as a rule, conscious of no theory, and does not construct a poem for itsexplication; he rather strikes his ideas out of his material, as thesculptor reveals the breathing life in the stone. Nevertheless, it maybe shown that a theory rules him from behind, and that profoundconvictions arise in the heart and rush along the blood at the moment ofcreation, using his soul as an instrument of expression to his age andpeople. 

Of no English poet, except Shakespeare, can we say with approximatetruth that he is the poet of all times. The subjective breath of theirown epoch dims the mirror which they hold up to nature. Missing by theirlimitation the highest universality, they can only be understood intheir setting. It adds but little to our knowledge of Shakespeare's workto regard him as the great Elizabethan; there is nothing temporary inhis dramas, except petty incidents and external trappings--so truly didhe dwell amidst the elements constituting man in every age and clime. But this cannot be said of any other poet, not even of Chaucer orSpenser, far less of Milton, or Pope or Wordsworth. In their case, theartistic form and the material, the idea and its expression, the beautyand the truth, are to some extent separable. We can distinguish inMilton between the Puritanic theology which is perishable, and the artwhose beauty can never pass away. The former fixes his kinship with hisown age, gives him a definite place in the evolution of English life;the latter is independent of time, a thing which has supreme worth initself. 

Nor can it be doubted that the same holds good of Browning. He also isruled by the ideas of his own age. It may not be altogether possible forus, "who are partners of his motion and mixed up with his career, " toallow for the influence of these ideas, and to distinguish between thatwhich is evanescent and that which is permanent in his work; still Imust try to do so; for it is the condition of comprehending him, and ofappropriating the truth and beauty he came to reveal. And if hisnearness to ourselves makes this more difficult, it also makes it moreimperative. For there is no doubt that, with Carlyle, he is theinterpreter of our time, reflecting its confused strength and chaoticwealth. He is the high priest of our age, standing at the altar for us, and giving utterance to our needs and aspirations, our fears and faith. By understanding him, we shall, to some degree, understand ourselves andthe power which is silently moulding us to its purposes. 

It is because I thus regard Browning as not merely a poet but a prophet, that I think I am entitled to seek in him, as in Isaiah or Aeschylus, asolution, or a help to the solution, of the problems that press upon uswhen we reflect upon man, his place in the world and his destiny. He hasgiven us indirectly, and as a poet gives, a philosophy of life; he hasinterpreted the world anew in the light of a dominant idea; and it willbe no little gain if we can make clear to ourselves those constitutiveprinciples on which his view of the world rests. 

CHAPTER II. 

ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. 

 "Art, --which I may style the love of loving, rage Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings 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 theweightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with moreearnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try topenetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I think, fundamentally different from that of any other of our great writers. Heoften seems to be roused into speech, rather by the intensity of hisspiritual convictions than by the subtle incitements of poeticsensibility. His convictions caught fire, and truth became beauty forhim; 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 sciencecalls them; and although these are expressed by the way of emotion, theyare held by him with all the resources of his reason. 

His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God byfirst leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, whenregarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man'slife and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the impassionedmoods of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism and doubt. Hisfaith, like Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the plucking fiend. " Hehas given to us something more than intuitive glimpses into, themysteries of man's character. Throughout his life he held up the steadylight of an optimistic conception of the world, and by its meansinjected new vigour into English ethical thought. In his case, therefore, it is not an immaterial question, but one almost forced uponus, whether we are to take his ethical doctrine and inspiring optimismas valid truths, or to regard them merely as subjective opinions held bya religious poet. Are they creations of a powerful imagination, andnothing more? Do they give to the hopes and aspirations that rise soirrepressibly in the heart of man anything better than an appearance ofvalidity, which will prove illusory the moment the cold light ofcritical inquiry is turned upon them?

It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the main, theimpressiveness of his deliverances on morality and religion. And thisunity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of lifemethods of criticism that would be out of place with any other Englishpoet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already hinted, thathe has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned view of theethical nature of man, and of his relation to the world--has sought, infact, to establish a philosophy of life. In his case, not withoutinjustice, it is true, but with less injustice than in the case of anyother poet, we may disregard, _for our purposes_, the artistic method ofhis thought, and lay stress on its content only. He has a right to aplace amongst philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. Thereis such deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in histeaching, that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "TheRational is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browningheld 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 themoral consciousness. 

But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to applythese critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him pay thepenalty for assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is certain thatwhat he says of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly valued, till itis regarded in the light of his guiding principles. We shall miss muchof what is best in him, even as a poet, if, for instance, we regard histreatment of love merely as the expression of elevated passion, or hisoptimism as based upon mere hope. Love was to him rather an indwellingelement 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 ofthe nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in another way, itwas a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply to facts and totest by their means, almost in the same manner as that in which naturalscience applies and tests its principles. 

That Browning's ethical and religious ideas were for him somethingdifferent from, and perhaps more than, mere poetic sentiments, will, Ibelieve, be scarcely denied. That he held a deliberate theory, and heldit with greater and greater difficulty as he became older, and as hisdialectical tendencies grew and threatened to wreck his artisticfreedom, is evident to any one who regards his work as a whole. But itwill not be admitted so readily that anything other than harm can issuefrom an attempt to deal with him as if he were a philosopher. Even if itbe allowed that he held and expressed a definite theory, will it retainany value if we take it out of the region of poetry and impassionedreligious faith, into the frigid zone of philosophical inquiry? Couldany one maintain, apart from the intoxication of religious and poeticsentiment, that the essence of existence is love? As long as we remainwithin the realm of imagination, it may be argued, we may find in ourpoet's great sayings both solacement and strength, both rest and animpulse towards higher moral endeavour; but if we seek to treat them astheories of facts, and turn upon them the light of the understanding, will they not inevitably prove to be hallucinations? Poetry, we think, has its own proper place and function. It is an invaluable anodyne tothe cark and care of reflective thought; an opiate which, by steepingthe critical intellect in slumber, sets the soul free to rise on thewings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell; and the world ofpoetry, and religion--a world which to them is always beautiful and goodwith God's presence--becomes a system of inexorable laws, dead, mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as an equipoise of constantlychanging forms of energy. 

There is, at the present time, a widespread belief that we had betterkeep poetry and religion beyond the reach of critical investigation, ifwe set any store by them. Faith and reason are thought to be finallydivorced. It is an article of the common creed that every attempt whichthe world has made to bring them together has resulted in denial, or atthe best in doubt, regarding all supersensuous facts. The one conditionof leading a full life, of maintaining a living relation betweenourselves and both the spiritual and material elements of our existence, is to make our lives an alternating rhythm of the head and heart, todistinguish with absolute clearness between the realm of reason and thatof faith. 

Now, such an assumption would be fatal to any attempt like the present, to find truth in poetry; and I must, therefore, try to meet it beforeentering upon a statement and criticism of Browning's view of life. Icannot admit that the difficulties of placing the facts of man'sspiritual life on a rational basis are so great as to justify theassertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not discoverable byman. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual death the conditionof spiritual life. If such a condition were imposed on man, it mustinevitably defeat its own purpose; for man cannot possibly continue tolive a divided life, and persist in believing that for which his reasonknows no defence. We must, in the long run, either rationalize our faithin morality and religion, or abandon them as illusions. And we should atleast hesitate to deny that reason--in spite of its apparent failure inthe past to justify our faith in the principles of spiritual life--mayyet, as it becomes aware of its own nature and the might which dwells init, find beauty and goodness, nay, God himself, in the world. We shouldat least hesitate to condemn man to choose between irreflectiveignorance and irreligion, or to lock the intellect and the highestemotions of our nature and principles of our life, in a mortal struggle. Poetry and religion may, after all, be truer then prose, and havesomething to tell the world that science, which is often ignorant of itsown limits, cannot teach. 

The failure of philosophy in the past, even if it were as complete as isbelieved by persons ignorant of its history, is no argument against itssuccess in the future. Such persons have never known that the world ofthought like that of action makes a stepping stone of its dead self. Hewho presumes to decide what passes the power of man's thought, or toprescribe absolute limits to human knowledge, is rash, to say the least;and he has neither caught the most important of the lessons of modernscience, nor been lifted to the level of its inspiration. For sciencehas done one thing greater than to unlock the secrets of nature. It hasrevealed something of the might of reason, and given new grounds for thefaith, which in all ages has inspired the effort to know, --the faiththat the world is an intelligible structure, meant to be penetrated bythe thought of man. Can it be that nature is an "open secret, " but thatman, and he alone, must remain an enigma? Or does he not rather bearwithin himself the key to every problem which he solves, and is it not_his_ thought which penetrates the secrets of nature? The success ofscience, in reducing to law the most varied and apparently unconnectedfacts, should dispel any suspicion which attaches to the attempt togather these laws under still wider ones, and to interpret the world inthe light of the highest principles. And this is precisely what poetryand religion and philosophy do, each in its own way. They carry the workof the sciences into wider regions, and that, as I shall try to show, bymethods which, in spite of many external differences, are fundamentallyat one with those which the sciences employ. 

There is only one way of giving the quietus to the metaphysics of poetsand philosophers, and of showing the futility of a philosophy of life, or of any scientific explanation of religion and morals. It is to showthat there is some radical absurdity in the very attempt. Till this isdone, the human mind will not give up problems of weighty import, however hard it may be to solve them. The world refused to believeSocrates when he pronounced a science of nature impossible, andcenturies of failure did not break man's courage. Science, it is true, has given up some problems as insoluble; it will not now try toconstruct a perpetually moving machine, or to square the circle. But ithas given them up, not because they are difficult, but because they areunreasonable tasks. The problems have a surd or irrational element inthem; and to solve them would be to bring reason into collision withitself. 

Now, whatever may be the difficulties of establishing a theory of life, or a philosophy, it has never been shown to be an unreasonable task toattempt it. One might, on the contrary, expect, _prima facie_, that ina world progressively proved to be intelligible to man, man himselfwould be no exception. It is impossible that the "light in him should bedarkness, " or that the thought which reveals the order of the worldshould be itself chaotic. 

The need for philosophy is just the ultimate form of the need forknowledge; and the truths which philosophy brings to light are impliedin every rational explanation of things. The only choice we can have isbetween a conscious metaphysics and an unconscious one, betweenhypotheses which we have examined and whose limitations we know, andhypotheses which rule us from behind, as pure prejudices do. It isbecause of this that the empiric is so dogmatic, and the ignorant man socertain of the truth of his opinion. They do not know their postulates, nor are they aware that there is no interpretation of an object whichdoes not finally point to a theory of being. We understand no joint orligament, except in relation to the whole organism, and no fact, orevent, except by finding a place for it in the context of ourexperience. The history of the pebble can be given, only in the light ofthe story of the earth, as it is told by the whole of geology. We mustbegin very far back, and bring our widest principles to bear upon theparticular thing, if we wish really to know what it is. It is a law thatexplains, and laws are always universal. All our knowledge, even themost broken and inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception, in virtue of which all the variety of objects constitute one world, oneorderly kosmos, even to the meanest mind. It is true that the centralthought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun's light, be brokenagainst particular facts. But there is no need of forgetting the realsource of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a synthesiswithout law, or an addition of fact to fact without any guidingprinciples. 

Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they keepalive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles. Theyalways dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their object _one_. To them the world is always, and necessarily, a harmonious whole, as itis also to the religious spirit. It is because of this that the universeis a thing of beauty for the poet, a revelation of God's goodness to thedevout soul, and a manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher. Art, religion, and philosophy fail or flourish together. The age ofprose and scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the wholein the particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled. Andthere is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as awhole is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, thenpoetry will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion. 

Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these upperregions, be confined to them. On the contrary, it will spread downwardsto science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot out thevalleys. For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt to know, however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in the unityof the world. Each of the sciences works within its own region, andcolligates its details in the light of its own hypothesis; and all thesciences taken together presuppose the presence in the world of aprinciple that binds it into an orderly totality. Scientific explorersknow that they are all working towards the same centre. And, ever andanon, as the isolated thinker presses home his own hypothesis, he findshis thought beating on the limits of his science, and suggesting somewider hypothesis. The walls that separate the sciences are wearing thin, and at times light penetrates from one to the other. So that to theirvotaries, at least, the faith is progressively justified, that there isa meeting point for the sciences, a central truth in which the dispersedrays will again be gathered together. In fact, all the sciences areworking together under the guidance of a principle common to them all, although it may not be consciously known and no attempt is made todefine it. In science, as in philosophy and art and religion, there is aprinciple of unity, which, though latent, is really prior to allexplanation of particular matters of fact. 

In truth, man has only one way of knowing. There is no fundamentaldifference between scientific and philosophic procedure. We always lightup facts by means of general laws. The fall of the stone was a perfectenigma, a universally unintelligible bit of experience, till themajestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universalgravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos, poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitiveflash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly whence--thoughwe do know that it comes neither from the dead facts nor from the vacantregion of _a priori_ thought, but somehow from the interaction of boththese elements of knowledge. After the intuitive flash comes the slowlabour of proof, the application of the principle to details. And thatapplication transforms both the principle and the details, so that theformer is enriched with content and the latter are made intelligible--averitable conquest and valid possession for mankind. And in this labourof proof, science and philosophy alike take their share. 

Philosophy may be said to come midway between poetry and science, and topartake of the nature of both. On the one side it deals, like poetry, with ideals of knowledge, and announces truths which it does notcompletely verify; on the other, it leaves to science the task ofarticulating its principles in facts, though it begins the articulationitself. It reveals subsidiary principles, and is, at the same time, awitness for the unity of the categories of science. We may say, if wewish, that its principles are mere hypotheses. But so are the ideaswhich underlie the most practical of the sciences; so is every forecastof genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended; so is everyprinciple of knowledge not completely worked out. To say that philosophyis hypothetical implies no charge, other than that which can belevelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body of scientificknowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each case alike is, howfar, if at all, does the hypothesis enable us to understand particularfacts. 

The more careful of our scientific thinkers are well aware of the limitsunder which they work and of the hypothetical character of theirresults. "I take Euclidean space, and the existence of materialparticles and elemental energy for granted, " says the physicist; "denythem, and I am helpless; grant them, and I shall establish quantitativerelations between the different forms of this elemental energy, and makeit tractable and tame to man's uses. All I teach depends upon myhypothesis. In it is the secret of all the power I wield. I do notpretend to say what this elemental energy is. I make no declarationregarding the actual nature of things; and all questions as to theultimate origin or final destination of the world are beyond the scopeof my inquiry. I am ruled by my hypothesis; I regard phenomena _from mypoint of view_; and my right to do so I substantiate by the practicaland theoretical results which follow. " The language of geology, chemistry, zoology, and even mathematics is the same. They all startfrom a hypothesis; they are all based on an imaginative conception, andin this sense their votaries are poets, who see the unity of being throbin the particular fact. 

Now, so far as the particular sciences are concerned, I presume that noone will deny the supreme power of these colligating ideas. The sciencesdo not grow by a process of empiricism, which rambles tentatively andblindly from fact to fact, unguided of any hypothesis. But if they donot, if, on the contrary, each science is ruled by its own hypothesis, and uses that hypothesis to bind its facts together, then the questionarises, are there no wider colligating principles amongst thesehypotheses themselves? Are the sciences independent of each other, oris their independence only surface appearance? This is the questionwhich philosophy asks, and the sciences themselves by their progresssuggest a positive answer to it. 

The knowledge of the world which the sciences are building is not achaotic structure. By their apparently independent efforts, the outerkosmos is gradually reproduced in the mind of man, and the temple oftruth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to connect wing withwing, or to declare definitely the law of the whole. The logical orderof the hypotheses of the various sciences, the true connection of thesecategories of constructive thought, may yet be uncertain. But, still, there _is_ such an order and connection: the whole building has itsplan, which becomes more and more intelligible as it approaches to itscompletion. Beneath all the differences, there are fundamentalprinciples which give to human thought a definite unity of movement anddirection. There are architectonic conceptions which are guiding, notonly the different sciences, but all the modes of thought of an age. There are intellectual media, "working hypotheses, " by means of whichsuccessive centuries observe all that they see; and these far-reachingconstructive principles divide the history of mankind into distinctstages. In a word, there are dynasties of great ideas, such as the ideaof development in our own day; and these successively ascend the throneof mind, and hold a sway over human thought which is well-nigh absolute. 

Now, if this is so, is it certain that all _knowledge_ of these rulingconceptions is impossible? In other words, is the attempt to construct aphilosophy absurd? To say that it is, to deny the possibility ofcatching any glimpse of those regulative ideas, which determine the maintendencies of human thought, is to place the supreme directorate of thehuman intelligence in the hands of a necessity which, _for us_, isblind. For, an order that is hidden is equivalent to chance, so far asknowledge is concerned; and if we believe it to exist, we do so in theface of the fact that all we see, and all we _can_ see, is the oppositeof order, namely lawlessness. Human knowledge, on this view, would besubjected to law in its details and compartments, but to disorder as awhole. Thinking men would be organized into regiments; but the regimentswould not constitute an army, nor would there be any unity of movementin the attack on the realm of ignorance. 

But, such is not the conclusion to which the study of human historyleads, especially when we observe its movements on a large scale. On thecontrary, it is found that history falls into great epochs, each ofwhich has its own peculiar characteristics. Ages, as well as nations andindividuals, have features of their own, special and definite modes ofthinking and acting. The movement of thought in each age has its owndirection, which is determined by some characteristic and fundamentalidea, that fulfils for it the part of a working hypothesis in aparticular science. It is the prerogative of the greatest leaders ofthought in an age to catch a glimpse of this ruling idea when it firstmakes its appearance; and it is their function, not only to discover it, but also to reveal it to others. And, in this way, they are at once theexponents of their time, and its prophets. They reveal that which isalready a latent but active power--"a tendency"; but they reveal it to ageneration which will see the truth for itself, only after the potencywhich lies in it has manifested itself in national institutions andhabits of thought and action. _After_ the prophets have left us, webelieve what they have said; as long as they are with us, they arevoices crying in the wilderness. 

Now, these great ideas, these harmonies of the world of mind, firststrike upon the ear of the poet. They seem to break into theconsciousness of man by the way of emotion. They possess the seer; he isdivinely mad, and he utters words whose meaning passes his own calmercomprehension. What we find in Goethe, we find also in a manner inBrowning: an insight which is also foresight, a dim and partialconsciousness of the truth about to be, sending its light before it, andanticipating all systematic reflection. It is an insight which appearsto be independent of all method; but it is in nature, though not insweep and expanse, akin to the intuitive leap by which the scientificexplorer lights upon his new hypothesis. We can find no other law forit, than that sensitiveness to the beauty and truth hidden in facts, which much reflection on them generates for genius. For these greatminds the "muddy vesture" is worn thin by thought, and they hear theimmortal music. 

The poet soon passes his glowing torch into the hands of thephilosopher. After Aeschylus and Sophocles, come Plato and Aristotle. The intuitive flash grows into a fixed light, which rules the day. Thegreat idea, when reflected upon, becomes a system. When the light ofsuch an idea is steadily held on human affairs, it breaks into endlessforms of beauty and truth. The content of the idea is gradually evolved;hypotheses spring out of it, which are accepted as principles, rule themind of an age, and give it its work and its character. In this way, Hobbes and Locke laid down, or at least defined, the boundaries withinwhich moved the thought of the eighteenth century; and no one acquaintedwith the poetic and philosophic thought of Germany, from Lessing toGoethe and from Kant to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source andspring of the constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social, political, and religious life. The virtues and the vices of thearistocracy of the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of thepoets and philosophers, so far from being filled with impracticabledreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts forits guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and invent notelephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that attitude towardsnature, man and God, and generate those moods of the general mind, fromwhich issue, not only the scientific, but also the social, political andreligious forces of the age. 

It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme utterancesof Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to connect theminto a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in his supremeconfidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite height of themoral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in the good, and hisprofound conviction of the evanescence of evil, there lies a vitalenergy whose inspiring power we are yet destined to feel. Until a spiritkindred to his own arises, able to push the battle further into the sameregion, much of the practical task of the age that is coming willconsist in living out in detail the ideas to which he has givenexpression. 

I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer viewof the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside the poetsand philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the sciences aloneoccupy the region of valid thought in all its extent. There is auniversal brotherhood of which all who think are members. Not only dothey all contribute to man's victory over his environment and himself, but they contribute in a manner which is substantially the same. Thereare many points of superficial distinction between the processes ofphilosophy and science, and between both and the method of poetry; butthe inner movement, if one may so express it, is identical in all. It istime to have done with the notion that philosophers occupy atranscendent region beyond experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by _apriori_ methods, and with the view that scientific men are mereempirics, building their structures from below by an _a posteriori_ wayof thought, without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alikeendeavour to interpret experience, but none of them get their principlesfrom it. 

 "But, friends, Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. "

There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy andpoetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, morenarrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. Thequantitative relations between material objects, which are investigatedby mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of the knowable, soas to leave no place for the poet's, or the philosopher's view of theworld. The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgetsthe limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premisesfor religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popularpreacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are notconsistent with his theological presuppositions. Looking only at theirprimary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and thescientific interpretation of facts are either consistent orinconsistent: they are simply different. Their harmony or discord cancome only when the higher principles of philosophy have been fullydeveloped, and when the departmental ideas of the various sciences areorganized into a view of the world as a whole. And this is a task whichhas not as yet been accomplished. The forces from above and below havenot met. When they do meet, they will assuredly find that they arefriends, and not foes. For philosophy can articulate its supremeconception only by interaction with the sciences; and, on the otherhand, the progress of science, and the effectiveness of its division oflabour, are ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints, given by poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue ofwhich the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, whocannot see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot seethe trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were ableto turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance ofinvention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been slowto return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a morecomprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show thatnone labour in vain. For its movement is that of a thing which _grows_!and in growth there is always movement towards both unity anddifference. Science, in pursuing truth into greater and greater detail, is constrained by its growing consciousness of the unlimited wealth ofits material, to divide and isolate its interests more and more; andthus, at the same time, the need for the poets and philosophers isgrowing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult of achievement, and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved. Both science andphilosophy are working towards a more concrete view of the world as anarticulated whole. If we cannot quite say with Browning that "poetsnever dream, " we may yet admit with gratitude that their dreams are aninspiration. 

 "Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear. Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Abt Vogler_. ]

And side by side with the poetry that grasps the truth in immediateintuition, there is also the uniting activity of philosophy, which, catching up its hints, carries "back our scattered knowledge of thefacts and laws of nature to the principle upon which they rest; and, onthe other hand, develops that principle so as to fill all the details ofknowledge with a significance which they cannot have in themselves, butonly as seen _sub specie aeternitatis_. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time_, byProfessor Caird. ]

So far we have spoken of the function of philosophy in theinterpretation of the phenomena of the outer world. It bears witness tothe unity of knowledge, and strives by the constructive criticism of thecategories of science to render that unity explicit. Its function is, nodoubt, valid and important, for it is evident that man cannot restcontent with fragmentary knowledge. But still, it might be objected thatit is premature at present to endeavour to formulate that unity. Physics, chemistry, biology, and the other sciences, while theynecessarily presuppose the unity of knowledge, and attempt in their ownway and in their own sphere to discover it, are making very satisfactoryheadway without raising any of the desperate questions of metaphysics asto its ultimate nature. For them it is not likely to matter for a longtime to come whether Optimism or Pessimism, Materialism or Idealism, ornone of them, be true. In any case the principles they establish arevalid. Physical relations always remain true; "ginger will be hot i' themouth, and there will be more cakes and ale. " It is only when thesciences break down beneath the weight of knowledge and prove themselvesinadequate, that it becomes necessary or advantageous to seek for morecomprehensive principles. At present is it not better to persevere inthe way of science, than to be seduced from it by the desire to solveultimate problems, which, however reasonable and pressing, seem to bebeyond our power to answer?

Such reasonings are not convincing; still, so far as natural science isconcerned, they seem to indicate that there might be no great harm inignoring, for a time, its dependence on the wider aspects of humanthought. There is no department of nature so limited, but that it maymore than satisfy the largest ambition of the individual for knowledge. But this attitude of indifference to ultimate questions is liable at anymoment to be disturbed. 

 "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides, -- And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again, -- The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. There the old misgivings, crooked questions are. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram's Apology. _]

Amongst the facts of our experience which cry most loudly for some kindof solution, are those of our own inner life. We are in pressing need ofa "working hypothesis" wherewith to understand ourselves, as well as ofa theory which will explain the revolution of the planets, or thestructure of an oyster. And this self of ours intrudes everywhere. It isonly by resolutely shutting our eyes, that we can forget the part itplays even in the outer world of natural science. So active is it in theconstitution of things, so dependent is their nature on the nature ofour knowing faculties, that scientific men themselves admit that theirsurest results are only hypothetical. Their truth depends on laws ofthought which natural science does not investigate. 

But quite apart from this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, whichis generally first acknowledged and then ignored, every man, the worstand the best alike, is constrained to take some _practical_ attitudetowards his fellows. Man is never alone with nature, and the connectionswith his fellows which sustain his intelligent life, are liable to bringhim into trouble, if they are not to some degree understood. 

 "There's power in me, " said Bishop Blougram, "and will to dominate Which I must exercise, they hurt me else. "

The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to actand to be. The specialist's devotion to his science is his answer to ademand, springing from his practical need, that he realize himselfthrough action. He does not construct his edifice of knowledge, as thebird is supposed to build its nest, without any consciousness of an endto be attained thereby. Even if, like Lessing, he values the pursuit oftruth for its own sake, still what stings him into effort is the sensethat in truth only can he find the means of satisfying and realizinghimself. Beneath all man's activities, as their very spring and source, there lies some dim conception of an end to be attained. This is hismoral consciousness, which no neglect will utterly suppress. All humaneffort, the effort to know like every other, conceals within it areference to some good, conceived at the time as supreme and complete;and this, in turn, contains a theory both of man's self and of theuniverse on which he must impress his image. Every man must have hisphilosophy of life, simply because he must act; though, in many cases, that philosophy may be latent and unconscious, or, at least, not adefinite object of reflection. The most elementary question directed athis moral consciousness will at once elicit the universal element. Wecannot ask whether an action be right or wrong without awakening all theechoes of metaphysics. As there is no object on the earth's surfacewhose equilibrium is not fixed by its relation to the earth's centre, sothe most elementary moral judgment, the simplest choice, the mostirrational vagaries of a will calling itself free and revelling in itssupposed lawlessness, are dominated by the conception of a universalgood. Everything that a man does is an attempt to articulate his view ofthis good, with a particular content. Hence, man as a moral agent isalways the centre of his own horizon, and stands right beneath thezenith. Little as he may be aware of it, his relation between himselfand his supreme good is direct. And he orders his whole world from hispoint of view, just as he regards East and West as meeting at the spoton which he stands. Whether he will or not, he cannot but regard theuniverse of men and objects as the instrument of his purposes. Heextracts all its interest and meaning from himself. His own shadow fallsupon it all. If he is selfish, that is, if he interprets the self thatis in him as vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-menfall for him into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knowshimself as spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the primenecessity he recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, thenthe universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character isevolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an effort to rob the worldof its alien character, and to translate it into terms of himself. 

We are in the habit of fixing a chasm between a man's deeds and hismetaphysical, moral, and religious creed; and even of thinking that hecan get on "in a sufficiently prosperous manner, " without any suchcreed. Can we not digest without a theory of peptics, or do justicewithout constructing an ideal state? The truest answer, though it is ananswer easily misunderstood, is that we cannot. In the sphere ofmorality, at least, action, depends on knowledge: Socrates was right insaying that virtuous conduct ignorant of its end is accidental. Man'saction, so far as it is good or evil, is shot through and through withhis intelligence. And once we clearly distinguish between belief andprofession, between the motives which really impel our actions and thepsychological account of them with which we may deceive ourselves andothers, we shall be obliged to confess that we always act our creed. Aman's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view ofhimself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes intortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. Noone ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough, half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good orevil he always has God as an accomplice. And this is why charactercannot be really bettered by any peddling process. Moralists andpreachers are right in insisting on the need of a new life, that is, ofa new principle, as the basis of any real improvement; and such aprinciple necessarily carries in it a new attitude towards men, and anew interpretation of the moral agent himself and of his world. 

Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at oncereferred to a metaphysic. His creed is the heart of his character, andit beats as a pulse in every action. Hence, when we deal with morallife, we _must_ start from the centre. In our intellectual life, it isnot obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no need ofendeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which makes theuniverse one, but when we act, such self-deception is not possible. As amoral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not only may, but musthave his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be all-inclusive. As there are natural laws which connect man's physical movements withthe whole system of nature, so there are spiritual relations whichconnect him with the whole spiritual universe; and spiritual relationsare always direct. 

Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider man as a moralagent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things, theneed of a philosophy becomes evident. Instead of condemning idealinterpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish productsof an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the limits of thehuman intellect, we shall understand that philosophers and poets arereally striving with greater clearness of vision, and in a moresustained manner, to perform the task which all men are obliged toperform in some way or other. Man subsists as a natural being only oncondition of comprehending, to some degree, the conditions of hisnatural life, and the laws of his natural environment. From earliestyouth upwards, he is learning that fire will burn and water drown, andthat he can play with the elements with safety only within the spherelit up by his intelligence. Nature will not pardon the blunders ofignorance, nor tamely submit to every hasty construction. And this truthis still more obvious in relation to man's moral life. Here, too, and ina pre-eminent degree, conduct waits on intelligence. Deep will onlyanswer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation onthe things that are highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstructionof life's meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his actionnugatory. Byronism was driven "howling home again, " says the poet. Theuniverse will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated ascarrion, as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No, "because it is a wrong view of man and of the world. Or rather, thenegative is not everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair, through the "Centre of Indifference, " till he finds a "Universal Yea"--atrue view of his relation to the universe. 

There is given to men the largest choice to do or to let alone, at everystep in life. But there is one necessity which they cannot escape, because they carry it within them. They absolutely must try to make theworld their home, find some kind of reconciling idea between themselvesand the forces amidst which they move, have some kind of workinghypothesis of life. Nor is it possible to admit that they will find resttill they discover a true hypothesis. If they do not seek it byreflection--if, in their ardour to penetrate into the secrets of nature, they forget themselves; if they allow the supreme facts of their morallife to remain in the confusion of tradition, and seek to compromise thedemands of their spirit by sacrificing to the idols of their childhood'sfaith; if they fortify themselves in the indifference ofagnosticism, --they must reap the harvest of their irreflection. Ignorance is not harmless in matters of character any more than in theconcerns of our outer life. There are in national and in individualhistory seasons of despair, and that despair, when it is deepest, isever found to be the shadow of moral failure--the result of going outinto action with a false view of the purpose of human life, and a wrongconception of man's destiny. At such times, the people have notunderstood themselves or their environment, and, in consequence, theycome into collision with their own welfare. There is no experiment sodangerous to an age or people, as that of relegating to the commonignorance of unreasoning faith the deep concerns of moral conduct; andthere is no attitude more pitiable than that which leads it to turn adeaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those philosophers who carrythe spirit of scientific inquiry into these higher regions, andendeavour to establish for mankind, by the irrefragable processes ofreason, those principles on which rest all the great elements of man'sdestiny. We cannot act without a theory of life; and to whom shall welook for such a theory, except to those who, undaunted by thedifficulties of the task, ask once more, and strive to answer, thoseproblems which man cannot entirely escape, as long as he continues tothink and act?

CHAPTER III. 

BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY. 

 "But there's a great contrast between him and me. He seems very content with life, and takes much satisfaction in the world. It's a very strange and curious spectacle to behold a man in these days so confidently cheerful. " (_Carlyle_. )

It has been said of Carlyle, who may for many reasons be considered asour poet's twin figure, that he laid the foundations of his world ofthought in _Sartor Resartus_, and never enlarged them. His _Orientirung_was over before he was forty years old--as is, indeed, the case withmost men. After that period there was no fundamental change in his viewof the world; nothing which can be called a new idea disturbed hisoutline sketch of the universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in, showing with ever greater detail the relations of man to man in history, and emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in humanaction. There is evidence, it is true, that the formulae from which hemore or less consciously set forth, ultimately proved too narrow forhim, and we find him beating himself in vain against their limitations;still, on the whole, Carlyle speculated within the range and influenceof principles adopted early in life, and never abandoned for higher orricher ideas, or substantially changed. 

In these respects, there is considerable resemblance between Carlyle andBrowning. Browning, indeed, fixed his point of view and chose hisbattleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to his life'sclose. In his _Pauline_ and in his Epilogue to _Asolando_ we catch thetriumphant tone of a single idea, which, during all the long interval, had never sunk into silence. Like

 "The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Home Thoughts from Abroad_. ]

Moreover, these two poets, if I may be permitted to call Carlyle a poet, taught the same truth. They were both witnesses to the presence of Godin the spirit of man, and looked at this life in the light of anotherand a higher; or rather, they penetrated through the husk of time andsaw that eternity is even here, a tranquil element underlying the noisyantagonisms of man's earthly life. Both of them, like Plato'sphilosopher, made their home in the sunlight of ideal truth: they werenot denizens of the cave taking the things of sense for those ofthought, shadows for realities, echoes for the voices of men. 

But, while Carlyle fought his way into this region, Browning foundhimself in it from the first; while Carlyle bought his freedom with agreat sum, the poet "was free born. " Carlyle saw the old world faithbreak up around him, and its fragments never ceased to embarrass hispath. He was _at_ the point of transition, present at the collision ofthe old and new, and in the midst of the confusion. He, more than anyother English writer, was the instrument of the change from the Deism ofthe eighteenth century and the despair which followed it, into thelarger faith of our own. But, for Browning, there was a new heaven and anew earth, and old things had passed away. This notable contrast betweenthe two men, arising at once from their disposition and their moralenvironment, had far-reaching effects on their lives and their writings. But their affinity was deeper than the difference, for they areessentially heirs and exponents of the same movement in English thought. 

The main characteristic of that movement is that it is both moral andreligious, a devotion to God and the active service of man, arecognition at once of the rights of nature and of spirit. It does not, on the one hand, raise the individual as a natural being to the throneof the universe, and make all forces social, political, and spiritualstoop to his rights; nor does it, on the other hand, deny these rights, or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It at leastattempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature, withoutcompromising any of them. It cannot be called either individualistic orsocialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so that both man andsociety mean more to this age than they ever did before. The narrowformulae that cramped the thought of the period which preceded ours havebeen broken through. No one can pass from the hedonists andindividualists to Carlyle and Browning without feeling that these twomen are representatives of new forces in politics, in religion, and inliterature, --forces which will undoubtedly effect momentous changesbefore they are caught again and fixed in creeds. 

That a new epoch in English thought was veritably opened by them isindicated by the surprise and bewilderment they occasioned at theirfirst appearance. Carlyle had Emerson to break his loneliness andBrowning had Rossetti; but, to most other men at that day, _Sartor_ and_Pauline_ were all but unintelligible. The general English reader couldmake little of the strange figures that had broken into the realm ofliterature; and the value and significance of their work, as well as itsoriginality, will be recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurriedglance at the times which lay behind them. Its main worth will be foundto lie in the fact that they strove to bring together again certainfundamental elements, on which the moral life of man must always rest, and which had fallen asunder in the ages which preceded their own. 

The whole-hearted, instinctive life of the Elizabethan age was narrowedand deepened into the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism, which cast onthe bright earth the sombre shadow of a life to come. England was givenup for a time to a magnificent half-truth. It did not

 "Wait The slow and sober uprise all around O' the building, "

but

 "Ran up right to roof A sudden marvel, piece of perfectness. "[A]

[Footnote A:_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

After Puritanism came Charles the Second and the rights of the flesh, which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted themselvesin the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism. David Hume ledthe world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed that it was only anobject of the five senses; or of six, if we add that of "hunger. " Thedivine element was explained away, and the proper study of mankind was, not man, as that age thought, but man reduced to his beggarlyelements--a being animated solely by the sensuous springs of pleasureand pain, which should properly, as Carlyle thought, go on all fours, and not lay claim to the dignity of being moral. All things were reducedto what they seemed, robbed of their suggestiveness, changed intodefinite, sharp-edged, mutually exclusive particulars. The world was anaggregate of isolated facts, or, at the best, a mechanism into whichparticulars were fitted by force; and society was a gathering of mereindividuals, repelling each other by their needs and greed, with a ringof natural necessity to bind them together. It was a fit time forpolitical economy to supplant ethics. There was nowhere an ideal whichcould lift man above his natural self, and teach him, by losing it, tofind a higher life. And, as a necessary consequence, religion gave wayto naturalism and poetry to prose. 

After this age of prose came our own day. The new light first flushedthe modern world in the writings of the philosopher-poets of Germany:Kant and Lessing, Fichte and Schiller, Goethe and Hegel. They broughtabout the Copernican change. For them this world of the five senses, ofspace and time and natural cause, instead of being the fixed centrearound which all things revolved, was explicable only in its relation toa system which was spiritual; and man found his meaning in hisconnection with society, the life of which stretched endlessly far backinto the past and forward into the future. Psychology gave way tometaphysics. The universal element in the thought of man was revealed. Instead of mechanism there was life. A new spirit of poetry andphilosophy brought God back into the world, revealed his incarnation inthe mind of man, and changed nature into a pellucid garment within whichthrobbed the love divine. The antagonism of hard alternatives was at anend; the universe was spirit-woven and every smallest object was "filledfull of magical music, as they freight a star with light. " There were nolonger two worlds, but one; for "the other" world penetrated this, andwas revealed in it: thought and sense, spirit and nature, werereconciled. These thinkers made room for man, as against the Puritans, and for God, as against their successors. Instead of the hopelessstruggle of ascetic morality, which divides man against himself, theyawakened him to that sense of his reconciliation with his ideal whichreligion gives: "Psyche drinks its stream and forgets her sorrows. "

Now, this is just the soil where art blooms. For what is beauty but theharmony of thought and sense, a universal meaning caught and tamed inthe particular? To the poet each little flower that blooms has endlessworth, and is regarded as perfect and complete; for he sees that thespirit of the whole dwells in it. It whispers to him the mystery of theinfinite; it is a pulse in which beats the universal heart. The truepoet finds God everywhere; for the ideal is actual wherever beautydwells. And there is the closest affinity between art and religion, asits history proves, from Job and Isaiah, Homer and Aeschylus, to our ownpoet; for both art and religion lift us, each in its own way, aboveone-sidedness and limitation, to the region of the universal. The onedraws God to man, brings perfection _here_, and reaches its highest formin the joyous life of Greece, where the natural world was clothed withalmost supernatural beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds thislife good because it reflects and suggests the greater life that is tobe. Both poetry and religion are a reconciliation and a satisfaction;both lift man above the contradictions of limited existence, and placehim in the region of peace--where, "with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, He sees into the life of things. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Tintern Abbey. _]

In this sense, it will be always true of the poet, as it is of thereligious man, that

 "the world, The beauty and the wonder and the power, The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades, Changes, surprises, "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fra Lippo Lippi_. ]

lead him back to God, who made it all. 

He is essentially a witness to the divine element in the world. 

It is the rediscovery of this divine element, after its expulsion by theage of Deism and doubt, that has given to this century its poeticgrandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era, we maysay that England first felt the breath of the returning spirit in thepoems of Shelley and Wordsworth. 

 "The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until death tramples it to fragments. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Adonais_. ]

"And I have felt, " says Wordsworth, "A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Tintern Abbey_. ]

Such notes as these could not be struck by Pope, nor be understood bythe age of prose. Still they are only the prelude of the fuller song ofBrowning. Whether he be a greater poet than these or not, --a questionwhose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet has his own worth, andreflects by his own facet the universal truth--his poetry contains in itlarger elements, and the promise of a deeper harmony from the harsherdiscords of his more stubborn material. Even where their spheres touch, Browning held by the artistic truth in a different manner. To Shelley, perhaps the most intensely spiritual of all our poets, "That light whose smile kindles the universe, That beauty in which all things work and move, "

was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning itwas a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man, andheld in the sober moments when the heart is silent. "The heavy and theweary weight of all this unintelligible world" was lightened forWordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free fromthe "dreary intercourse of daily life"; but Browning weaved his song ofhope right amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and wretchedness. ForWordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and felt along theheart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil restoration, " and issued"in a serene and blessed mood"; but Browning's poetry is not merely thepoetry of the emotions however sublimated. He starts with the hardrepellent fact, crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind, presses into it, and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatnessof Browning's poetry is in its perceptive grip: and in nothing is hemore original than in the manner in which he takes up his task, andassumes his artistic function. In his postponement of feeling to thoughtwe recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannotestimate as yet. But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning ofthe new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact, which isnot less striking, that the region from which he quarries his materialis new. 

And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors. Hiskinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in nature, is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be surpassed byany of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing with thesupernaturalism of nature. 

 "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, And the earth changes like a human face; The molten ore burst up among the rocks, Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds, Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask-- God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate, When, in the solitary waste, strange groups Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like, Staring together with their eyes on flame-- God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face. 

 * * * * *

 "Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all, From life's minute beginnings, up at last To man--the consummation of this scheme Of being, the completion of this sphere of life. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus. _]

Such passages as these contain neither the rapt, reflective calm ofWordsworth's solemn tones, nor the ethereal intoxication of Shelley'sspirit-music; but there is in them the same consciousness of theinfinite meaning of natural facts. And beyond this, there is also, inthe closing lines, a hint of a new region for art. Shelley andWordsworth were the poets of Nature, as all truly say; Browning was thepoet of the human soul. For Shelley, the beauty in which all things workand move was well-nigh "quenched by the eclipsing curse of the birth ofman"; and Wordsworth lived beneath the habitual sway of fountains, meadows, hills and groves, while he kept grave watch o'er man'smortality, and saw the shades of the prison-house gather round him. Fromthe life of man they garnered nought but mad indignation, or mellowedsadness. It was a foolish and furious strife with unknown powers foughtin the dark, from which the poet kept aloof, for he could not see thatGod dwelt amidst the chaos. But Browning found "harmony in immortalsouls, spite of the muddy vesture of decay. " He found nature crowned inman, though man was mean and miserable. At the heart of the mostwretched abortion of wickedness there was the mark of the loving touchof God. Shelley turned away from man; Wordsworth paid him rare visits, like those of a being from a strange world, made wise and sad withlooking at him from afar; Browning dwelt with him. He was a comrade inthe fight, and ever in the van of man's endeavour bidding him be of goodcheer. He was a witness for God in the midmost dark, where meet indeathless struggle the elemental powers of right and wrong. For God ispresent for him, not only in the order and beauty of nature, but in theworld of will and thought. Beneath the caprice and wilful lawlessness ofindividual action, he saw a beneficent purpose which cannot fail, but"has its way with man, not he with it. "

Now this was a new world for poetry to enter into; a new depth topenetrate with hope; and Browning was the first of modern poets to

 "Stoop Into the vast and unexplored abyss, Strenuously beating The silent boundless regions of the sky. "

It is also a new world for religion and morality; and to understand itdemands a deeper insight into the fundamental elements of human life. 

To show this in a proximately adequate manner, we should be obliged, asalready hinted, to connect the poet's work, not merely with that of hisEnglish predecessors, but with the deeper and more comprehensivemovement of the thought of Germany since the time of Kant. It would benecessary to indicate how, by breaking a way through the narrow creedsand equally narrow scepticism of the previous age, the new spiritextended the horizon of man's active and contemplative life, and madehim free of the universe, and the repository of the past conquests ofhis race. It proposed to man the great task of solving the problem ofhumanity, but it strengthened him with its past achievement, andinspired him with the conviction of its boundless progress. It is notthat the significance of the individual or the meaning of his endeavouris lost. Under this new view, man has still to fight for his own hand, and it is still recognized that spirit is always burdened with its ownfate and cannot share its responsibility. Morality does not give way toreligion or pass into it, and there is a sense in which the individualis always alone in the sphere of duty. 

But from this new point of view the individual is re-explained for us, and we begin to understand that he is the focus of a light which isuniversal, "one more incarnation of the mind of God. " His moral task isno longer to seek his own in the old sense, but to elevate humanity; forit is only by taking this circuit that he can come to his own. Such atask as this is a sufficiently great one to occupy all time; but it isto humanity in him that the task belongs, and it will therefore beachieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not mean, to those whocomprehend it, the supplanting of the individual thought by thecollective thought, or the substitution of humanity for man. Theuniversal is _in_ the particular, the fact _is_ the law. There is nocollision between the whole and the part, for the whole lives in thepart. As each individual plant has its own life and beauty and worth, although the universe has conspired to bring it into being; so also, andin a far higher degree, man has his own duty and his own dignity, although he is but the embodiment of forces, natural and spiritual, which have come from the endless past. Like a letter in a word, or aword in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; _but thesentence is meaningless without him_. "Rays from all round converge inhim, " and he has no power except that which has been lent to him; butall the same, nay, all the more, he must

 "Think as if man never thought before! Act as if all creation hung attent On the acting of such faculty as his. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

His responsibility, his individuality, is not less, but greater, in thathe can, in his thought and moral action, command the forces that therace has stored for him. The great man speaks the thought of his people, and his invocations as their priest are just the expression of theirdumb yearnings. And even the mean and insignificant man is what he is, in virtue of the humanity which is blurred and distorted within him; andhe can shed his insignificance and meanness, only by becoming a truervehicle for that humanity. 

Thus, when spirit is spiritually discerned, it is seen that man is boundto man in a union closer than any physical organism can show; while "theindividual, " in the old sense of a being _opposed_ to society and_opposed_ to the world, is found to be a fiction of abstract thought, not discoverable anywhere, because not real. And, on the other hand, society is no longer "collective, " but so organic that the whole ispotentially in every part--an organism _of_ organisms. 

The influence of this organic idea in every department of thought whichconcerns itself with man is not to be measured. It is already fastchanging all the practical sciences of man--economics, politics, ethicsand religion. The material, being newly interpreted, is wrought into anew purpose, and revelation is once more bringing about a reformation. But human action in its ethical aspect is, above all, charged with a newsignificance. The idea of duty has received an expansion almostillimitable, and man himself has thereby attained new worth anddignity--for what is duty except a dignity and opportunity, man's chanceof being good? When we contrast this view of the life of man as the lifeof humanity in him, with the old individualism, we may say that moralityalso has at last, in Bacon's phrase, passed from the narrow seas intothe open ocean. And after all, the greatest achievement of our age maybe not that it has established the sciences of nature, but that it hasmade possible the science of man. We have, at length, reached a point ofview from which we may hope to understand ourselves. Law, order, continuity, in human action--the essential pre-conditions of a moralscience--were beyond the reach of an individualistic theory. It left toethical writers no choice but that of either sacrificing man to law, orlaw to man; of denying either the particular or the universal element inhis nature. Naturalism did the first. Intuitionism, the second. Theformer made human action the _re_action of a natural agent on theincitement of natural forces. It made man a mere object, a _thing_capable of being affected by other things through his faculty of beingpained or pleased; an object acting in obedience to motives that had anexternal origin, just like any other object. The latter theory cut manfree from the world and his fellows, endowed him with a will that had nolaw, and a conscience that was dogmatic; and thereby succeeded instultifying both law and morality. 

But this new consciousness of the relation of man to mankind and theworld takes him out of his isolation and still leaves him free. Itrelates men to one another in a humanity, which is incarnated anew ineach of them. It elevates the individual above the distinctions of time;it treasures up the past in him as the active energy of his knowledgeand morality in the present, and also as the potency of the ideal lifeof the future. On this view, the individual and the race are possibleonly through each other. 

This fundamental change in our way of looking at the life of man isbound to abolish the ancient landmarks and bring confusion for a time. Out of the new conception, _i. E. , _ out of the idea of evolution, hassprung the tumult as well as the strength of our time. The present ageis moved with thoughts beyond the reach of its powers: great aspirationsfor the well-being of the people and high ideals of social welfare flashacross its mind, to be followed again by thicker darkness. There ishardly any limit to its despair or hope. It has a far larger faith inthe destiny of man than any of its predecessors, and yet it is _sure_ ofhardly anything--except that the ancient rules of human life are false. Individualism is now detected as scepticism and moral chaos in disguise. We know that the old methods are no longer of use. We cannot now cutourselves free of the fate of others. The confused cries for help thatare heard on every hand are recognized as the voices of our brethren;and we now know that our fate is involved in theirs, and that theproblem of their welfare is also ours. We grapple with social questionsat last, and recognize that the issues of life and death lie in thesolution of these enigmas. Legislators and economists, teachers ofreligion and socialists, are all alike social reformers. Philanthropyhas taken a deeper meaning; and all sects bear its banner. But theirforces are beaten back by the social wretchedness, for they have notfound the sovereign remedy of a great idea; and the result is in manyways sad enough. Our social remedies often work mischief; for we degradethose whom we would elevate, and in our charity forget justice. Weinsist on the rights of the people and the duties of the privilegedclasses, and thereby tend to teach greed to those for whom we labour, and goodness to those whom we condemn. The task that lies before us isplain: we want the welfare of the people as a whole. But we fail tograsp the complex social elements together, and our very remedies tendto sunder them. We know that the public good will not be obtained byseparating man from man, securing each unit in a charmed circle ofpersonal rights, and protecting it from others by isolation. We mustfind a place for the individual within the social organism, and we knownow that this organism has not, as our fathers seemed to think, thesimple constitution of a wooden doll. Society is not put togethermechanically, and the individual cannot be outwardly attached to it, ifhe is to be helped, He must rather share its life, be the heir of thewealth it has garnered for him in the past, and participate in itsonward movement. Between this new social ideal and our attainment, between the magnitude of our social duties and the resources ofintellect and will at our command, there lies a chasm which we despairof bridging over. 

The characteristics of this epoch faithfully reflect themselves in thepages of Carlyle, with whose thoughts those of Browning are immediatelyconnected. It was Carlyle who first effectively revealed to England thecontinuity of human life, and the magnitude of the issues of individualaction. Seeing the infinite in the finite, living under a continuedsense of the mystery that surrounds man, he flung explosive negationsamidst the narrow formulae of the social and religious orthodoxy of hisday, blew down the blinding walls of ethical individualism, and, amidstmuch smoke and din, showed his English readers something of thegreatness of the moral world. He gave us a philosophy of clothes, penetrated through symbols to the immortal ideas, condemned allshibboleths, and revealed the soul of humanity behind the external modesof man's activity. He showed us, in a word, that the world is spiritual, that loyalty to duty is the foundation of all human good, and thatnational welfare rests on character. After reading him, it is impossiblefor any one who reflects on the nature of duty to ask, "Am I mybrother's keeper?" He not only imagined, but knew, how "all things theminutest that man does, minutely influence all men, and the very look ofhis face blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates evernew blessing or new cursing. I say, there is not a Red Indian, huntingby Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world mustsmart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematicalfact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre ofgravity of the universe. " Carlyle dealt the deathblow to the"laissez-faire" theory rampant in his day, and made each individualresponsible for the race. He has demonstrated that the sphere of dutydoes not terminate with ourselves and our next-door neighbours. Therewill be no pure air for the correctest Levite to breathe, till the lawsof sanitation have been applied to the moral slums. "Ye are mybrethren, " said he, and he adds, as if conscious of his too denunciatoryway of dealing with them, "hence my rage and sorrow. "

But his consciousness of brotherhood with all men brought only despairfor him. He saw clearly the responsibility of man, but not the dignitywhich that implies; he felt the weight of the burden of humanity uponhis own soul, and it crushed him, for he forgot that all the good of theworld was there to help him bear it, and that "One with God is amajority. " He taught only the half-truth, that all men are united on theside of duty, and that the spiritual life of each is conditional onstriving to save all. But he neglected the complement of this truth, andforgot the greatness of the beings on whom so great a duty could belaid. He therefore dignifies humanity only to degrade it again. The"twenty millions" each must try to save "are mostly fools. " But howfools, when they can have such a task? Is it not true, on the contrary, that no man ever saw a duty beyond his strength, and that "man canbecause he ought" and ought only because he can? The evils an individualcannot overcome are the moral opportunities of his fellows. The good arenot lone workers of God's purposes, and there is no need of despair. Carlyle, like the ancient prophet, was too conscious of his own mission, and too forgetful of that of others. "I have been very jealous for theLord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forgotten Thycovenant, thrown down Thine alters, and slain Thy prophets, and I, evenI only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away. " He needed, beside the consciousness of his prophetic function, a consciousness ofbrotherhood with humbler workers. "Yet I have left Me seven thousand inIsrael, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouthwhich hath not kissed him. " It would have helped him had he remembered, that there were on all sides other workers engaged on the temple notmade with hands, although he could not hear the sound of their hammersfor the din he made himself. It would have changed his despair into joy, and his pity into a higher moral quality, had he been able to believethat, amidst all the millions against whom he hurled his anathemas, there is no one who, let him do what he will, is not constrained toillustrate either the folly and wretchedness of sin, or the glory ofgoodness. It is not given to any one, least of all to the wicked, tohold back the onward movement of the race, or to destroy the impulse forgood which is planted within it. 

But Carlyle saw only one side of the truth about man's moral nature anddestiny. He knew, as the ancient prophets did, that evil is potentialwreck; and he taxed the power of metaphor to the utmost to indicate, howwrong gradually takes root, and ripens into putrescence andself-combustion, in obedience to a necessity which is absolute. Thatmorality is the essence of things, that wrong _must_ prove itsweakness, that right is the only might, is reiterated and illustrated onall his pages; they are now commonplaces of speculation on matters ofhistory, if not conscious practical principles which guide its makers. But Carlyle never inquired into the character of this moral necessity, and he overlooked the beneficence which places death at the heart ofsin. He never saw wrong except on its way to execution, or in the deaththroes; but he did not look in the face of the gentle power that led iton to death. He saw the necessity which rules history, but not thebeneficent character of that necessity. 

The same limitations marred his view of duty, which was his greatestrevelation to his age. He felt its categorical authority and its bindingforce. But the power which imposed the duty was an alien power, awful inmajesty, infinite in might, a "great task-master"; and the duty itselfwas an outer law, written in letters of flame across the high heavens, in comparison with which man's action at its best sank into failure. Hisonly virtue is obedience, and his last rendering even of himself is"unprofitable servant. " In this he has much of the combined strength andweakness of the old Scottish Calvinism. "He stands between theindividual and the Infinite without hope or guide. He has a constantdisposition to crush the human being by comparing him with God, " saidMazzini, with marvellous penetration. "From his lips, at times sodaring, we seem to hear every instant the cry of the Breton Mariner--'MyGod protect me! My bark is so small, and Thy ocean so vast. '" Hisreconciliation of God and man was incomplete: God seemed to him to havemanifested Himself _to_ man but not _in_ man. He did not see that "theEternity which is before and behind us is also within us. "

But the moral law which commands is just the reflection of theaspirations of progressive man, who always creates his own horizon. Theextension of duty is the objective counterpart of man's growth; a proofof victory and not of failure, a sign that man is mounting upwards. And, if so, it is irrational to infer the impossibility of success from themagnitude of the demands of a moral law, which is itself the promise ofa better future. The hard problems set for us by our social environmentare recognized as set by ourselves; for, in matters of morality, the eyesees only what the heart prompts. The very statement of the difficultycontains the potency of its solution; for evil, when understood, is onthe way towards being overcome, and the good, when seen, contains thepromise of its own fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as whenthe cries of humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take acomfort, denied to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake toour social duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it isonly natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense ofbewildered helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope, and England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs. Carlyle has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now takinga step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he diedthere, and was denied the view from Pisgah. 

Now, this view was given to Robert Browning, and he broke out into asong of victory, whose strains will give strength and comfort to many inthe coming time. That his solution of the evils of life is not final, may at once be admitted. There are elements in the problem of which hehas taken no account, and which will force those who seek light on thedeeper mysteries of man's moral nature, to go beyond anything that thepoet has to say. Even the poet himself grows, at least in somedirections, less confident of the completeness of his triumph as hegrows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but it is the faith ofone who confesses to ignorance, and links himself to his finitude. Still, so thorough is his conviction of the moral purpose of life, ofthe certainty of the good towards which man is moving, and of thebeneficence of the power which is at work everywhere in the world, thatmany of his poems ring like the triumphant songs of Luther. 

CHAPTER IV. 

BROWNING'S OPTIMISM. 

 "Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World! I think this is the authentic sign and seal Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad, And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts Into a rage to suffer for mankind, And recommence at sorrow. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Balaustion's Adventure_. ]

I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the presentera is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of man, and thenew significance it has given to that life by its view of the continuityof history. This view finds expression, on its social and ethical side, in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both of whom are interestedexclusively, one may almost say, in the evolution of human character;and both of whom, too, regard that evolution as the realization by manof the purposes, greater than man's, which rule in the world. And, although neither of them developed the organic view of humanity, whichis implied in their doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still themoral life of the individual is for each of them the infinite life inthe finite. The meaning of the universe is moral, its last might isrightness; and the task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert itinto his own motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, theinmost principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finiteand the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile them. 

But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was incomplete onevery side--even within the sphere of duty, with which alone, asmoralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral law was imposed uponman by a higher power, in the presence of whom man was awed and crushed;for that power had stinted man's endowment, and set him to fight ahopeless battle against endless evil. God was everywhere around man, andthe universe was just the expression of His will--a will inexorably benton the good, so that evil could not prevail; but God was not _within_man, except as a voice of conscience issuing imperatives and threats. Aninfinite duty was laid upon a finite being, and its weight made himbreak out into a cry of despair. 

Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the reconciliation, but succeeded, in so far as that is possible _in terms of mere feeling_. His poetry contains suggestions that the moral will without is also aforce within man; that the power which makes for righteousness in theworld has penetrated into, or rather manifests itself _as_, man. Intelligence and will, the reason which apprehends the nature of things, and the original impulse of self-conscious life which issues in action, are God's power in man; so that God is realizing Himself in the deeds ofman, and human history is just His return to Himself. Outer law andinner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the same beneficentpurpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative, or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin, a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the verynature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself hewould find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of alaw which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power hasloaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances offailure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divineendowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must finallyreach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In thelanguage of theology, it may be said that the moral process is thespiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love, effectingitself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is turned byBrowning into a song of victory. While the former regards the strugglebetween good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the forces areimmovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of battlingagainst a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming triumph givesjoyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality into anoptimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the distinctivemark and mission which give to him such power of moral inspiration. 

In order, however, to estimate the value of this feature of the poet'swork, it is necessary to look more closely into the character of hisfaith in the good. Merely to attribute to him an optimistic creed is tosay very little; for the worth, or worthlessness, of such a creeddepends upon its content--upon its fidelity to the facts of human life, the clearness of its consciousness of the evils it confronts, and theintensity of its realism. 

There is a sense, and that a true one, in which it may be said that allmen are optimists; for such a faith is implied in every conscious anddeliberate action of man. There is no deed which is not an attempt torealize an ideal; whenever man acts he seeks a good, however ruinouslyhe may misunderstand its nature. Final and absolute disbelief in anultimate good in the sphere of morals, like absolute scepticism in thesphere of knowledge, is a disguised self-contradiction, and therefore animpossibility in fact. The one stultifies action, and asserts an effectwithout any cause, or even contrary to the cause; the other stultifiesintellectual activity: and both views imply that the critic has soescaped the conditions of human life, as to be able to pass acondemnatory judgment upon them. The belief that a harmonious relationbetween the self-conscious agent and the supreme good is possible, underlies the practical activity of man; just as the belief in the unityof thought and being underlies his intellectual activity. A moralorder--that is, an order of rational ends--is postulated in all humanactions, and we act at all only in virtue of it, --just as truly as wemove and work only in virtue of the forces which make the spheresrevolve, or think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from thethought-woven world, through all the pores of sense. A true ethics, likea true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean uponmetaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start _ab initio_. We live in theCopernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in obedience towhose laws he finds his welfare. And this is simply the assertion of anoptimistic creed, for it implies a harmonious world. 

But, though this is true, it must be remembered that this faith is aprophetic anticipation, rather than acquired knowledge. We are only onthe way towards reconstructing in thought the fact which we are, ortowards bringing into clear knowledge the elemental power whichmanifests itself within us as thought, desire, and deed. And, until thisis achieved, we have no full right to an optimistic creed. Therevelation of the unity which pervades all things, even in the naturalworld, will be the last attainment of science; and the reconciliation ofnature and man and God is still further in the future, and will be thelast triumph of philosophy. During all the interval the world will be ascene of warring elements; and poetry, religion, and philosophy can onlyhold forth a promise, and give to man a foretaste of ultimate victory. And in this state of things even _their_ assurance often falters. Faithlapses into doubt, poetry becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votaryexhibits, "through Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of hisbleeding heart. " The optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and adesire, a "Grand Perhaps, " which knows no defence against the criticalunderstanding, and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of areligious conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often, it rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance, which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberatedreason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into afaith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as theheart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only ageneral hypothesis, a mere leap to God which spurns the intermediatesteps, a universal without content, a bare form that lacks reality. 

Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from facts, was Emerson's. Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle whichreveals this very pointedly. It seems that Carlyle once led the serenephilosopher through the abominations of the streets of London atmidnight, asking him with grim humour at every few steps, "Do youbelieve in the devil _now_?" Emerson replied that the more he saw of theEnglish people the greater and better he thought them. This littleincident lays bare the limits of both these great men. Where the onesaw, the other was blind. To the one there was the misery and theuniversal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was scarcely broken. Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he fought his greatbattle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely wounded. " Emerson wasSir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail, his armour spotless-white, his virtue cloistered and unbreathed, his race won without the dust andheat. But his optimism was too easy to be satisfactory. His victory wasnot won in the enemy's citadel, where sin sits throned amidst the chaos, but in the placid upper air of poetic imagination. And, in consequence, Emerson can only convince the converted; and his song is not heard inthe dark, nor does it cheer the wayfarer on the muddy highway, alongwhich burthened humanity meanly toils. 

But Browning's optimism is more earnest and real than any pious hope, ordogmatic belief, or benevolent theory held by a placid philosopher, protected against contact with the sins and sorrows of man as by aninvisible garment of contemplative holiness. It is a conviction whichhas sustained shocks of criticism and the test of facts; and ittherefore, both for the poet and his readers, fulfils a mission beyondthe reach of any easy trust in a mystic good. Its power will be felt andits value recognized by those who have themselves confronted thecontradictions of human life and known their depths. 

No lover of Browning's poetry can miss the vigorous manliness of thepoet's own bearing, or fail to recognize the strength that flows fromhis joyous, fearless personality, and the might of his intellect andheart. "When British literature, " said Carlyle of Scott and Cobbett, "lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism and otherSentimentalisms, nature was kind enough to send us two healthy men. " Andhe breaks out into a eulogy of mere health, of "the just balance offaculties that radiates a glad light outwards, enlightening andembellishing all things. " But he finds it easy to account for the healthof these men: they had never faced the mystery of existence. Suchhealthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle at hisside, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral fatalist. And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth of the joyousmeaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism was not aconstitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be accounted for on theground that "the great mystery of existence was not great to him: didnot drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for an answer, tobe answered or to perish. " There are, indeed, certain rash and foolishpersons who pretend to trace Browning's optimism to his mixed descent;but there is a "pause in the leading and the light" of those wiseacres, who pretend to trace moral and mental characteristics to physiologicalantecedents. They cannot quite catch a great man in the making, nor, even by the help of evolution, say anything wiser about genius than that"the wind bloweth where it listeth. " No doubt the poet's optimismindicates a native sturdiness of head and heart. He had the invaluableendowment of a pre-disposition to see the sunny side of life, and anative tendency to revolt against that subjectivity, which is the rootof our misery in all its forms. He had little respect for the_Welt-schmerz, _ and can scarcely be civil to the hero of the bleedingheart. 

 "Sinning, sorrowing, despairing, Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked-- Should I give my woes an airing, -- Where's one plague that claims respect?

 "Have you found your life distasteful? My life did, and does, smack sweet. Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I saved and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me I'll complain. Must in death your daylight finish? My sun sets to rise again. 

 * * * * *

 "I find earth not grey but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. Do I stand and stare? All's blue. "[A]

[Footnote A: _At the Mermaid_. ]

Browning was no doubt least of all men inclined to pout at his "plainbun"; on the contrary, he was awake to the grandeur of his inheritance, and valued most highly "his life-rent of God's universe with the tasksit offered and the tools to do them with. " But his optimism sent itsroots deeper than any "disposition"; it penetrated beyond mere healthof body and mind, as it did beyond a mere sentiment of God's goodness. Optimisms resting on these bases are always weak; for the former leavesman naked and sensitive to the evils that crowd round him when thepowers of body and mind decay, and the latter is, at best, useful onlyfor the individual who possesses it, and it breaks down under the stressof criticism and doubt. Browning's optimism is a great element inEnglish literature, because it opposes with such strength the shocksthat come from both these quarters. His joyousness is the reflection _infeeling_ of a conviction as to the nature of things, which he hadverified in the darkest details of human life, and established forhimself in the face of the gravest objections that his intellect wasable to call forth. In fact, its value lies, above all, in this, --thatit comes after criticism, after the condemnation which Byron and Carlylehad passed, each from his own point of view, on the world and on man. 

The need of an optimism is one of the penalties which reflection brings. Natural life takes the goodness of things for granted; but reflectiondisturbs the placid contentment and sets man at variance with his world. The fruit of the tree of knowledge always reveals his nakedness to man;he is turned out of the paradise of unconsciousness and doomed to forceNature, now conceived as a step-dame, to satisfy needs which are nowfirst felt. Optimism is the expression of man's new reconciliation withhis world; as the opposite doctrine of pessimism is the consciousness ofan unresolved contradiction. Both are a judgment passed upon the world, from the point of view of its adequacy or inadequacy to meet demands, arising from needs which the individual has discovered in himself. 

Now, as I have tried to show, one of the main characteristics of theopening years of the present era was its deeper intuition of thesignificance of human life, and, therefore, by implication, of its wantsand claims. The spiritual nature of man, lost sight of during thepreceding age, was re-discovered; and the first and immediateconsequence was that man, as man, attained infinite worth. "Man was bornfree, " cried Rousseau, with a conviction which swept all before it; "hehas original, inalienable, and supreme rights against all things whichcan set themselves against him. " And Rousseau's countrymen believed him. There was not a _Sans-culotte_ amongst them all but held his head high, being creation's lord; and history can scarcely show a parallel to theirgreat burst of joy and hope, as they ran riot in their new-foundinheritance, from which they had so long been excluded. They flungthemselves upon the world, as if they would "glut their sense" upon it. 

 "Expend Eternity upon its shows, Flung them as freely as one rose Out of a summer's opulence. "[A]

[Footnote A:_Easter Day_. ]

But the very discovery that man is spirit, which is the source of allhis rights, is also an implicit discovery that he has outgrown theresources of the natural world. The infinite hunger of a soul cannot besatisfied with the things of sense. The natural world is too limitedeven for Carlyle's shoe-black; nor is it surprising that Byron shouldfind it a waste, and dolefully proclaim his disappointment tomuch-admiring mankind. Now, both Carlyle and Browning apprehended thecause of the discontent, and both endured the Byronic utterance of itwith considerable impatience. "Art thou nothing other than a vulture, then, " asks the former, "that fliest through the universe seeking aftersomewhat _to eat, _ and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is notgiven thee? Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe. "

 "Huntsman Common Sense Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense Quiet i' the kennel: taught that ocean might be blue, And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too, Its touch of God's own flame, which He may so expand 'Who measured the waters i' the hollow of His hand' That ocean's self shall dry, turn dew-drop in respect Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect Once fairly matched. "[A]

[Footnote A:_Fifine at the Fair_, lxvii. ]

But Carlyle was always more able to detect the disease than to suggestthe remedy. He had, indeed, "a glimpse of it. " "There is in man a Higherthan love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereoffind Blessedness. " But the glimpse was misleading, for it penetrated nofurther than the first negative step. The "Everlasting Yea" was, afterall, only a deeper "No!" only _Entsagung_, renunciation: "the fractionof life can be increased in value not so much by increasing yournumerator as by lessening your denominator. " Blessed alone is he thatexpecteth nothing. The holy of holies, where man hears whispered themystery of life, is "the sanctuary of sorrow. " "What Act of Legislaturewas there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadstno right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not tobe Happy, but to be Unhappy? Nay, is not 'life itself a disease, knowledge the symptom of derangement'? Have not the poets sung 'Hymns tothe Night' as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day were but a smallmotley-coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom ofNight, and did but deform and hide from us its pure transparent eternaldeeps. " "We, the whole species of Mankind, and our whole existence andhistory, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All. . . Borne this way and that way by its deep-swelling tides, and grandocean currents, of which what faintest chance is there that we shouldever exhaust the significance, ascertain the goings and comings? Aregion of Doubt, therefore, hovers for ever in the back-ground. . . . Onlyon a canvas of Darkness, such is man's way of being, could themany-coloured picture of our Life paint itself and shine. "

In such passages as these, there is far deeper pessimism than inanything which Byron could experience or express. Scepticism is directedby Carlyle, not against the natural elements of life--the mere sensuousoutworks, but against the citadel of thought itself. Self-consciousness, or the reflecting interpretation by man of himself and his world, thevery activity that lifts him above animal existence and makes him man, instead of being a divine endowment, is declared to be a disease, apoisonous subjectivity destructive of all good. The discovery that manis spirit and no vulture, which was due to Carlyle himself more than toany other English writer of his age, seemed, after all, to be a greatcalamity; for it led to the renunciation of happiness, and filled manwith yearnings after a better than happiness, but left him nothingwherewith they might be satisfied, except "the duty next to hand. " Andthe duty next to hand, as interpreted by Carlyle, is a means ofsuppressing by action, not idle speech only, but thought itself. But, ifthis be true, the highest in man is set against itself. And what kind ofaction remains possible to a "speck on the illimitable ocean, borne thisway and that way by its deep-swelling tides"? "Here on earth we aresoldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the plan ofthe campaign, and have no need to understand it, seeing what is at ourhand to be done. " But there is one element of still deeper gloom in thisblind fighting; it is fought for a foreign cause. It is God's cause andnot ours, or ours only in so far as it has been despotically imposedupon us; and it is hard to discover from Carlyle what interest we canhave in the victory. Duty is to him a menace--like the duty of a slave, were that possible. It lacks the element which alone can make itimperative to a free being, namely, that it be recognized as _his_ good, and that the outer law become his inner motive. The moral law is rarelylooked at by Carlyle as a beneficent revelation, and still more rarelyas the condition which, if fulfilled, will reconcile man with nature andwith God. And consequently, he can draw little strength from religion;for it is only love that can cast out fear. 

To sum up all in a word, Carlyle regarded evil as having penetrated intothe inmost recesses of man's being. Thought was disease; morality wasblind obedience to a foreign authority; religion was awe of anUnknowable, with whom man can claim no kinship. Man's nature wasdiscovered to be spiritual, only on the side of its Wants. It was anendowment of a hunger which nothing could satisfy--not the infinite, because it is too great, not the finite, because it is too little; notGod, because He is too far above man, not nature, because it is too farbeneath him. We are unable to satisfy ourselves with the things ofsense, and are also "shut out of the heaven of spirit. " What have beencalled, "the three great terms of thought"--the World, Self, andGod--have fallen asunder in his teaching. It is the difficulty ofreconciling these which brings despair, while optimism is evidently theconsciousness of their harmony. 

Now, these evils which reflection has revealed, and which are so muchdeeper than those of mere sensuous disappointment, can only be removedby deeper reflection. The harmony of the world of man's experience, which has been broken by "the comprehensive curse of sceptical despair, "can, as Goethe teaches us, be restored only by thought--

 "In thine own soul, build it up again. "

The complete refutation of Carlyle's pessimistic view can only come, byreinterpreting each of the contradicting terms in the light of a higherconception. We must have a deeper grasp and a new view of the Self, theWorld, and God. And such a view can be given adequately only byphilosophy. Reason alone can justify the faith that has been disturbedby reflection, and re-establish its authority. 

How, then, it may be asked, can a poet be expected to turn back theforces of a scepticism, which have been thus armed with the weapons ofdialectic? Can anything avail in this region except explicitdemonstration? A poet never demonstrates, but perceives; art is not aprocess, but a result; truth for it is immediate, and it neither admitsnor demands any logical connection of ideas. The standard-bearers andthe trumpeters may be necessary to kindle the courage of the army and tolead it on to victory, but the fight must be won by the thrust of swordand pike. Man needs more than the intuitions of the great poets, if heis to maintain solid possession of the truth. 

Now, I am prepared to admit the force of this objection, and I shallendeavour in the sequel to prove that, in order to establish optimism, more is needed than Browning can give, even when interpreted in the mostsympathetic way. His doctrine is offered in terms of art, and it cannothave any demonstrative force without violating the limits of art. Insome of his poems, however, --for instance, in _La Saisiaz, FerishtatisFancies_ and the _Parleyings_, Browning sought to advance definiteproofs of the theories which he held. He appears before us at timesarmed _cap-à-pie, _ like a philosopher. Still, it is not when he arguesthat Browning proves: it is when he sees, as a poet sees. It is not bymeans of logical demonstrations that he helps us to meet the despair ofCarlyle, or contributes to the establishment of a better faith. Browning's proofs are least convincing when he was most aware of hisphilosophical presuppositions; and a philosophical critic could wellafford to agree with the critic of art, in relegating the demonstratingportions of his poems to the chaotic limbo lying between philosophy andpoetry. 

When, however, he forgets his philosophy, and speaks as poet andreligious man, when he is dominated by that sovereign thought which gaveunity to his life-work, and which, therefore, seemed to lie deeper inhim than the necessities of his art and to determine his poeticfunction, his utterances have a far higher significance. For he so liftsthe artistic object into the region of pure thought, and makes sense andreason so to interpenetrate, that the old metaphors of "the noble lie"and "the truth beneath the veil" seem no longer to help. He seems toshow us the truth so vividly and simply, that we are less willing tomake art and philosophy mutually exclusive, although their methodsdiffer. Like some of the greatest philosophers, and notably Plato andHegel, he constrains us to doubt, whether the distinction penetrates lowbeneath the surface; for philosophy, too, when at its best, is athinking of things together. In their light we begin to ask, whether itis not possible that the interpretation of the world in terms of spirit, which is the common feature of both Hegel's philosophy and Browning'spoetry, does not necessarily bring with it a settlement of the ancientfeud between these two modes of thought. 

But, in any case, Browning's utterances, especially those which he makeswhen he is most poet and least philosopher, have something of theconvincing impressiveness of a reasoned system of optimism. And thiscomes, as already suggested, from his loyalty to a single idea, whichgives unity to all his work. That idea we may, in the end, be obliged totreat not only as a hypothesis--for all principles of reconciliation, even those of the sciences, as long as knowledge is incomplete, must beregarded as hypotheses--but also as a hypothesis which he had no rightto assume. It may be that in the end we shall be obliged to say of him, as of so many others--

 "See the sage, with the hunger for the truth, And see his system that's all true, except The one weak place, that's stanchioned by a lie!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

It may be that the religious form, through which he generally reacheshis convictions, is not freed from a dogmatic element, which sopenetrates his thought as to vitiate it as a philosophy. Nevertheless, it answered for the poet all the uses of a philosophy, and it may do thesame for many who are distrustful of the systems of the schools, and whoare "neither able to find a faith nor to do without one. " It containsfar-reaching hints of a reconciliation of the elements of discord in ourlives, and a suggestion of a way in which it may be demonstrated, thatan optimistic theory is truer to facts than any scepticism oragnosticism, with the despair that they necessarily bring. 

For Browning not only advanced a principle, whereby, as he conceived, man might again be reconciled to the world and God, and all things beviewed as the manifestation of a power that is benevolent; he alsosought to apply his principle to the facts of life. He illustrates hisfundamental hypothesis by means of these facts; and he tests itsvalidity with the persistence and impressive candour of a scientificinvestigator. His optimism is not that of an eclectic, who can ignoreinconvenient difficulties. It is not an attempt to justify the whole byneglecting details, or to make wrong seem right by reference to afar-off result, in which the steps of the process are forgotten. Hestakes the value of his view of life on its power to meet _all_ facts;one fact, ultimately irreconcilable with his hypothesis, will, he knows, destroy it. 

 "All the same, Of absolute and irretrievable black, --black's soul of black Beyond white's power to disintensify, -- Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck My life and ruin my philosophy Tomorrow, doubtless. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean Stripe_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_. ]

He knew that, to justify God, he had to justify _all_ His ways to man;that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and that a singleexception would confute his optimism. 

 "So, gazing up, in my youth, at love As seen through power, ever above All modes which make it manifest, My soul brought all to a single test-- That He, the Eternal First and Last, Who, in His power, had so surpassed All man conceives of what is might, -- Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, --Would prove as infinitely good; Would never, (my soul understood, ) With power to work all love desires, Bestow e'en less than man requires. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Christmas Eve_. ]

 "No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it. And I shall behold Thee, face to face, O God, and in Thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

We can scarcely miss the emphasis of the poet's own conviction in thesepassages, or in the assertion that, --

 "The acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

Consequently, there is a defiant and aggressive element in his attitude. Strengthened with an unfaltering faith in the supreme Good, this knightof the Holy Spirit goes forth over all the world seeking out wrongs. "Hehas, " said Dr. Westcott, "dared to look on the darkest and meanest formsof action and passion, from which we commonly and rightly turn our eyes, and he has brought back for us from this universal survey a convictionof hope. " I believe, further, that it was in order to justify thisconviction that he set out on his quest. His interest in vice--inmalice, cruelty, ignorance, brutishness, meanness, the irrationalperversity of a corrupt disposition, and the subtleties of philosophicand aesthetic falsehood--was no morbid curiosity. Browning was no"painter of dirt"; no artist can portray filth for filth's sake, andremain an artist. He crowds his pages with criminals, because he seesdeeper than their crimes. He describes evil without "palliation orreserve, " and allows it to put forth all its might, in order that hemay, in the end, show it to be subjected to God's purposes. He confrontsevil in order to force it to give up the good, which is all the realitythat is in it. He conceives it as his mission to prove that evil is"stuff for transmuting, " and that there is nought in the world. 

 "But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongue Of elemental flame--no matter whence flame sprung, From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness. "

All we want is--

 "The power to make them burn, express What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind, Howe'er the chance. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_. ]

He had Pompilia's faith. 

 "And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew, Whereby I guessed there would be born a star. "

He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as if hewished once for all to try the resources of evil at their uttermost, andpass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With this view, he seeksevil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerfulcompound of vice in our literature--except Iago, perhaps--merely inorder that we may see evil at its worst; and he places him in anenvironment suited to his nature, as if he was carrying out an_experimentum crucis_. The

 "Midmost blotch of black Discernible in the group of clustered crimes Huddling together in the cave they call Their palace. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 869-872. ]

Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; hismistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit"flash and fade"; and his mother--

 "The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke, The hag that gave these three abortions birth, Unmotherly mother and unwomanly Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame, Womanliness to loathing"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 911-915. ]

Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat thefurnace sevenfold. " While she

 "Sent prayer like incense up To God the strong, God the beneficent, God ever mindful in all strife and strait, Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme, Till at the last He puts forth might and saves. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1384-1388. ]

In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the wholepoem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can travelsafely through the depths of the Inferno--for the flames bend back fromhim; and it is only what we expect as the result of it all, that thereshould come

 "A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place, . . . . Then flood And purify the scene with outside day-- Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark, Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam To the despair of hell. "[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 996-1003. ]

The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the supremacy ofthe good, which led him in _The Ring and the Book_ to depict criminalsat their worst, forced him later on in his life to exhibit evil inanother form. The real meaning and value of such poems as _Fifine at theFair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country, Ferishtah's Francies_, and others, can only be determined by a carefuland complete analysis of each of them. But they have one characteristicso prominent, and so new in poetry, that the most careless reader cannotfail to detect it. Action and dramatic treatment give place to adiscussion which is metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motiveswithin a character, the stress and strain of passion and will incollision with circumstances, there is reflection on action after it haspassed, and the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value ofmotives and ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousnesscondemns without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a newdeparture in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thusdealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries ofthe poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the period ofhis decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which had alreadyappeared in _Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium_, andother poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its prideof strength, has grown wanton. _Fifine at the Fair is_ said to be "adefence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love. " Itshero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artisticand philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strongemotions, and capricious will, " produces arguments "wide in range, ofprofound significance and infinite ingenuity, " to defend and justifyimmoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of thespeculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth andsophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imagery, " andwith no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineationof character. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is spoken of in a similarmanner as the justification, by reference to the deepest principles ofmorality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a selfishness thatbetrays every cause to the individual's meanest welfare. The object ofthe poet is "by no means to prove black white, or white black, or tomake the worse appear the better reason, but to bring a seeming monsterand perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing howit has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or lessself-delusion reconcile itself to itself. "

I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the intentionof the poet, except with reference to _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _ The_Prince_ is a psychological study, like _Mr. Sludge the Medium, _ and_Bishop Blougram_. No doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in thehero of _Fifine at the Fair_ and in the hero of _Red Cotton NightcapCountry;_ but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itselfdetermined by an ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meetingwith the gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacityin vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming, " but opened out before himthe fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, in_Fifine at the Fair_ is not the casuistic defence of an artistic andspeculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the poet toprove, "That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures, And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures, -- All by demonstrating the value of Fifine. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xxviii. ]

Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place evenfor this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most pique usthat we keep. " Having, in the _Ring and the Book_, challenged evil atits worst as it manifests itself practically in concrete characters andexternal action, and having wrung from it the victory of the good, in_Fifine_ and in his other later poems he meets it again in the region ofdialectic. In this sphere of metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed amore dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith hasdriven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powersof darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn thepoet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify theworst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact"the need, " as well as the "transiency of sin and death, " he seeks hereto prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the highest truth ofreligion into a defence of the worst wickedness. 

No doubt the result is sufficiently repulsive to the abstract moralist, who is apt to find in _Fifine_ nothing but a casuistical and shamelessjustification of evil, which is blasphemy against goodness itself. Weare made to "discover, " for instance, that

 "There was just Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust, Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cviii. ]

We are told that--

 "Force, guile were arms which earned My praise, not blame at all. "

Confronted with such utterances as these, it is only natural that, rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as thesophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under thestress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and wrong. But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an apparentjustification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective optimist; and itis implicitly contained even in those religious utterances of _Rabbi BenEzra, Christmas Eve_, and _A Death in the Desert_, with which we notonly identify the poet but ourselves, in so far as we share his faiththat

 "God's in His heaven, -- All's right with the world. "

The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of this, andtoo much boldness and strength of conviction in the might of the good, to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In his laterpoems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to justify the ways ofGod to man; and the difficulties which surround him are not those of acasuist, but the stubborn questionings of a spirit, whose religiousfaith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To a spirit so loyal to thetruth, and so bold to follow its leading, the suppression of suchproblems is impossible; and, consequently, it was inevitable that heshould use the whole strength of his dialectic to try those fundamentalprinciples, on which the moral life of man is based. And it is this, Ibelieve, which we find in _Fifine_, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and the_Parleyings_; not an exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mindwhose strength has become lawless, and which spends itself inintellectual gymnastics, that have no place within the realm of eitherthe beautiful or the true. 

CHAPTER V. 

OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION. 

 "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull. 

 * * * * *

 "But most it is presumption in us, when The help of heaven we count the act of men. "[A]

[Footnote A: _All's Well that Ends Well_. ]

I have tried to show that one of the ruling conceptions of Browning'sview of life is that the Good is absolute, and that it reveals itself inall the events of human life. By means of this conception, heendeavoured to bring together the elements which had fallen asunder inthe sensational and moral pessimism of Byron and Carlyle. In otherwords, through the re-interpreting power which lies in this fundamentalthought when it is soberly held and fearlessly applied, he sought toreconcile man with the world and with God, and thereby with himself. Andthe governing motive, whether the conscious motive or not, of Browning'spoetry, the secret impulse which led him to dramatise the conflicts andantagonisms of human life, was the necessity of finding in them evidenceof the presence of this absolute Good. 

Browning's optimism was deep and comprehensive enough to reject allcompromise. His faith in the good seemed to rise with the demands thatwere made upon it by the misery and wickedness of man, and theapparently purposeless waste of life and its resources. There was in ita deliberate earnestness which led him to grapple, not only with theconcrete difficulties of individual life, but with those also thatspring from reflection and theory. 

The test of a philosophic optimism, as of any optimism which is morethan a pious sentiment, must finally lie in its power to reveal thepresence of the good in actual individual evils. But there aredifficulties still nearer than those presented by concrete facts, difficulties arising out of the very suggestion that evil is a form ofgood. Such speculative difficulties must be met by a reflective mind, before it can follow out the application of an optimistic theory toparticular facts. Now, Browning's creed, at least as he held it in hislater years, was not merely the allowable exaggeration of an ecstaticreligious sentiment, the impassioned conviction of a God-intoxicatedman. It was deliberately presented as a solution of moral problems, andwas intended to serve as a theory of the spiritual nature of things. Itis, therefore, justly open to the same kind of criticism as that towhich a philosophic doctrine is exposed. The poet deprived himself ofthe refuge, legitimate enough to the intuitive method of art, when, inhis later works, he not only offered a dramatic solution of the problemof life, but definitely attempted to meet the difficulties ofspeculative ethics. 

In this chapter I shall point out some of these difficulties, and thenproceed to show how the poet proposed to solve them. 

A thorough-going optimism, in that it subdues all things to the idea ofthe supreme Good, and denies to evil the right even to dispute theabsoluteness of its sway, naturally seems to imply a pantheistic theoryof the world. And Browning's insistence on the presence of the highestin all things may easily be regarded as a mere revival of the oldest andcrudest attempts at finding their unity in God. For if _all_, as hesays, is for the best, there seems to be no room left for thedifferences apparent in the world, and the variety which gives it beautyand worth. Particular existences would seem to be illusory andevanescent phenomena, the creations of human imagination, itself adelusive appearance. The infinite, on this view, stands over against thefinite, and it overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied inthe phrase that "God is all, " turns at once into a pessimism. For, assoon as we inquire into the meaning of this "all, " we find that it isonly a negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism asthis is self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all thingsupwards to a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwardsto the level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable. It leaves only a choice between akosmism and atheism, and, at the sametime, it makes each of the alternatives impossible. For, in explainingthe world it abolishes it, and in abolishing the world it empties itselfof all signification; so that the Godhood which it attempts to establishthroughout the whole realm of being, is found to mean nothing. "It isthe night, in which all cows are black. "

The optimistic creed, which the poet strove to teach, must, therefore, not only establish the immanence of God, but show in some way how suchimmanence is consistent with the existence of particular things. Hisdoctrine that there is no failure, or folly, or wickedness, or misery, but conceals within it, at its heart, a divine element; that there is noincident in human history which is not a pulsation of the life of thehighest, and which has not its place in a scheme of universal good, mustleave room for the moral life of man, and all the risks which moralitybrings with it. Otherwise, optimism is impossible. For a God who, infilling the universe with His presence, encroaches on the freedom andextinguishes the independence of man, precludes the possibility of allthat is best for man--namely, moral achievement. Life, deprived of itsmoral purpose, is worthless to the poet, and so, in consequence, is allthat exists in order to maintain that life. Optimism and ethics seemthus to come into immediate collision. The former, finding the presenceof God in all things, seems to leave no room for man; and the latterseems to set man to work out his own destiny in solitude, and to givehim supreme and absolute authority over his own life; so that anycharacter which he forms, be it good or bad, is entirely the product ofhis own activity. So far as his life is culpable or praiseworthy, inother words, so far as we pass any moral judgment upon it, wenecessarily think of it as the revelation of a self, that is, of anindependent will, which cannot divide its responsibility. There may be, and indeed there always is for every individual, a hereditarypredisposition and a soliciting environment, tendencies which are hisinheritance from a remote past, and which rise to the surface in his ownlife; in other words, the life of the individual is always led withinthe larger sweep of the life of humanity. He is part of a whole, and hashis place fixed, and his function predetermined, by a power which isgreater than his own. But, if we are to call him good or evil, if he isto aspire and repent and strive, in a word, if he is to have any _moral_character, he cannot be merely a part of a system; there must besomething within him which is superior to circumstances, and whichmakes him master of his own fate. His natural history may begin with thegrey dawn of primal being, but his moral history begins with himself, from the time when he first reacted upon the world in which he isplaced, and transformed his natural relations into will and character. For who can be responsible for what he did not will? What could a moralimperative mean, what could an "ought" signify, to a being who was onlya temporary embodiment of forces, who are prior to, and independent ofhimself? It would seem, therefore, as if morality were irreconcilablewith optimism. The moral life of man cannot be the manifestation of adivine benevolence whose purpose is necessary; it is a trust laid uponhimself, which he may either violate or keep. It surpasses divinegoodness, "tho' matched with equal power" to _make_ man good, as it hasmade the flowers beautiful. From this point of view, spiritualattainment, whether intellectual or moral, is man's own, a spontaneousproduct. Just as God is conceived as all in all in the universe, so manis all in all within the sphere of duty; for the kingdom of heaven iswithin. In both cases alike, there is absolute exclusion of externalinterference. 

For this reason, it has often seemed both to philosophers andtheologians, as if the world were too confined to hold within it bothGod and man. In the East, the consciousness of the infinite seemed attimes to leave no room for the finite; and in the West, where theconsciousness of the finite and interest therein is strongest, and manstrives and aspires, a Deism arose which set God at a distance, andallowed Him to interfere in the fate of man only by a benevolentmiracle. Nor is this collision of pantheism and freedom, nay of religionand morality, confined to the theoretical region. This difficulty is notmerely the punishment of an over-bold and over-ambitious philosophy, which pries too curiously into the mystery of being. It lies at the verythreshold of all reflection on the facts of the moral life. Evenchildren feel the mystery of God's permitting sin, and embarrass theirhelpless parents with the contradiction between absolute benevolence andthe miseries and cruelties of life. "A vain interminable controversy, "says Teufels-dröckh, "which arises in every soul since the beginning ofthe world: and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering intoactual endeavouring, must be put an end to. The most, in our own time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of thiscontroversy: to a few Solution of it is indispensable. "

Solution, and not Suppression, is what Browning sought; he did, in fact, propound a solution, which, whether finally satisfactory or not, atleast carries us beyond the easy compromises of ordinary religious andethical teaching. He does not deny the universality of God's beneficenceor power, and divide the realm of being between Him and the adversary:nor, on the other hand, does he limit man's freedom, and stultify ethicsby extracting the sting of reality from sin. To limit God, he knew, wasto deny Him; and, whatever the difficulties he felt in regarding theabsolute Spirit as realising itself in man, he could not be content toreduce man into a temporary phantom, an evanescent embodiment of"spiritual" or natural forces, that take a fleeting form in him as theypursue their onward way. 

Browning held with equal tenacity to the idea of a universal benevolentorder, and to the idea of the moral freedom of man within it. He wasdriven in opposite directions by two beliefs, both of which he knew tobe essential to the life of man as spirit, and both of which heillustrates throughout his poems with an endless variety of poeticexpression. He endeavoured to find God in man and still to leave manfree. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. Thevigour of his ethical doctrine is as pre-eminent, as the fulness of hisconviction of the absolute sway of the Good. Side by side with hisdoctrine that there is no failure, no wretchedness of corruption thatdoes not conceal within it a germ of goodness, is his sense of the evilof sin, of the infinite earnestness of man's moral warfare, and of thesurpassing magnitude of the issues at stake for each individual soul. Sopowerful is his interest in man as a moral agent, that he sees noughtelse in the world of any deep concern. "My stress lay, " he said in hispreface to _Sordello_ (1863), "on the incidents in the development of asoul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so--you, with many known and unknown to me, think so--others may one day thinkso. " And this development of a soul is not at any time regarded by thepoet as a peaceful process, like the growth of a plant or animal. Although he thinks of the life of man as the gradual realization of adivine purpose within him, he does not suppose it to take place inobedience to a tranquil necessity. Man advances morally by fighting hisway inch by inch, and he gains nothing except through conflict. He doesnot become good as the plant grows into maturity. "The kingdom of heavensuffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. "

 "No, when the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, Satan looks up between his feet, --both tug-- He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes And grows. Prolong that battle through this life! Never leave growing till the life to come. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram_. ]

Man is no idle spectator of the conflict of the forces of right andwrong; Browning never loses the individual in the throng, or sinks himinto his age or race. And although the poet ever bears within him thecertainty of victory for the good, he calls his fellows to the fight asif the fate of all hung on the valour of each. The struggle is alwayspersonal, individual like the duels of the Homeric heroes. 

It is under the guise of warfare that morality always presents itself toBrowning. It is not a mere equilibrium of qualities--the measured, self-contained, statuesque ethics of the Greeks, nor the asceticism andself-restraint of Puritanism, nor the peaceful evolution of Goethe'sartistic morality: it is valour in the battle of life. His code containsno negative commandments, and no limitations; but he bids each man letout all the power that is within him, and throw himself upon life withthe whole energy of his being. It is better even to seek evil with one'swhole mind, than to be lukewarm in goodness. Whether you seek good orevil, and play for the counter or the coin, stake it boldly!

 "Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

 "The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin: And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

 "Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. You, of the virtue (we issue join) How strive you?--'_De te fabula!_'"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Statue and the Bust_. ]

Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst ofsins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents, "Never again elude the choice of tints! White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1235-1238. ]

In all the greater characters of _The Ring and the Book_, this intensityof vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the mostgentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct ofmotherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off the oldpassivity. 

 "Dutiful to the foolish parents first, Submissive next to the bad husband, --nay, Tolerant of those meaner miserable That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. , 1052-1055. ]

she is found

 "Sublime in new impatience with the foe. "

 "I did for once see right, do right, give tongue The adequate protest: for a worm must turn If it would have its wrong observed by God. I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low The neutralizer of all good and truth. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1591-1596. ]

 "Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare, At foe from head to foot in magic mail, And off it withered, cobweb armoury Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies And saved me. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. , 1637-1641. ]

Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old age, there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest asCaponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his vigour. Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself together"in God's name, " to do His will on earth once more with concentratedmight. 

 "I smite With my whole strength once more, ere end my part, Ending, so far as man may, this offence. "[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1958-1960. ]

Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends plucking hissleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie roughly"; orshrink from sending the criminal to his account, though it be but oneday before he himself is called before the judgment seat. The sameenergy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates Guido's adoption ofevil for his good. At all but the last moment of his life of monstrouscrime, just before he hears the echo of the feet of the priests, whodescend the stair to lead him to his death, "he repeats his evil deed inwill. "

 "Nor is it in me to unhate my hates, -- I use up my last strength to strike once more Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face, To trample underfoot the whine and wile Of beast Violante, --and I grow one gorge To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale Poison my hasty hunger took for food. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_Guido_, 2400-2406. ]

If there be any concrete form of evil with which the poet's optimism isnot able to cope, any irretrievable black "beyond white's power todisintensify, " it is the refusal to take a definite stand and resolutefor either virtue or vice; the hesitancy and compromise of a life thatis loyal to nothing, not even to its own selfishness. The cool self-loveof the old English moralists, which "reduced the game of life toprinciples, " and weighed good and evil in the scales of prudence, is toour poet the deepest damnation. 

 "Saint Eldobert--I much approve his mode; With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize; But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts While pulling back, refuses yet concedes, --

 * * * * *

 "Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"

In him, even

 "thickheads ought to recognize The Devil, that old stager, at his trick Of general utility, who leads Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Red Cotton Nightcap Country. _]

For the bold sinner, who chooses and sustains his part to the end, thepoet has hope. Indeed, the resolute choice is itself the beginning ofhope; for, let a man only give _himself_ to anything, wreak _himself_ onthe world in the intensity of his hate, set all sail before the gusts ofpassion and "range from Helen to Elvire, frenetic to be free, " let himrise into a decisive self-assertion against the stable order of themoral world, and he cannot fail to discover the nature of the task hehas undertaken, and the meaning of the power without, against which hehas set himself. If there be sufficient strength in a man to venthimself in action, and "try conclusions with the world, " he will thenlearn that it has another destiny than to be the instrument of evil. Self-assertion taken by itself is good; indeed, it is the very law ofevery life, human and other. 

 "Each lie Redounded to the praise of man, was victory Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Fifine at the Fair_, cxxviii. ]

But it leads to the revelation of a higher law than that of selfishness. The very assertion of the self which leads into evil, ultimately leavesthe self assertion futile. There is the disappointment of utter failure;the sinner is thrown back upon himself empty-handed. He finds himselfsubjected, even when sinning, "To the reign Of other quite as real a nature, that saw fit To have its way with man, not man his way with it. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cxxviii. ]

 "Poor pabulum for pride when the first love is found Last also! and, so far from realizing gain, Each step aside just proves divergency in vain. The wanderer brings home no profit from his quest Beyond the sad surmise that keeping house were best Could life begin anew. "[B]

[Footnote B:_Ibid_. Cxxix. ]

The impossibility of living a divided life, of enjoying at once thesweets of the flesh on the "Turf, " and the security of the "Towers, " isthe text of _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_. The sordid hero of the poemis gradually driven to choose between the alternatives. The best of hisluck, the poet thinks, was the

 "Rough but wholesome shock, An accident which comes to kill or cure, A jerk which mends a dislocated joint!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_. ]

The continuance of disguise and subterfuge, and the retention of "thefirst falsehood, " are ultimately made impossible to Léonce Miranda:

 "Thus by a rude in seeming--rightlier judged Beneficent surprise, publicity Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends, Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps. "[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_. ]

In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deedpossible for _him_. 

 "'Mad!' 'No! sane, I say. Such being the conditions of his life, Such end of life was not irrational. Hold a belief, you only half-believe, With all-momentous issues either way, -- And I advise you imitate this leap, Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once!'"[A]

[Footnote A: _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_. ]

Thus it is the decisive deed that gains the poet's approval. He findsthe universe a great plot against a pied morality. Even Guido claimssome kind of regard from him, since "hate, " as Pompilia said, "was thetruth of him. " In that very hate we find, beneath his endlesssubterfuges, something real, at last. And since, through his hate, he isfrankly measuring his powers against the good at work in the world, there cannot remain any doubt of the issue. To bring the rival forcesface to face is just what is wanted. 

 "I felt quite sure that God had set Himself to Satan; who would spend A minute's mistrust on the end?"[B]

[Footnote B:_Count Gismond_. ]

It is the same respect for strenuous action and dislike of compromise, that inspired the pathetic lines in which he condemns the Lost Leader, who broke "From the van and the free-men, and sunk to the rear and theslaves. " For the good pursues its work without him. 

 "We shall march prospering, --not thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us, --not from his lyre; Deeds will be done, --while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: _Blot out his name_, then, record one lost soul more, One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels, One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!"[A]

[Footnote A: _The List Leader_. ]

Everywhere Browning's ethical teaching has this characteristic featureof vigorous decisiveness. As Dr. Westcott has said, "No room is left forindifference or neutrality. There is no surrender to an idle optimism. Apart must be taken and maintained. The spirit in which Luther said'_Pecca fortiter_' finds in him powerful expression. " Browning isemphatically the poet-militant, and the prophet of struggling manhood. His words are like trumpet-calls sounded in the van of man's struggle, wafted back by the winds, and heard through all the din of conflict byhis meaner brethren, who are obscurely fighting for the good in thethrong and crush of life. We catch the tones of this heart-strengtheningmusic in the earliest poems he sung: nor did his courage fail, or vigourwane, as the shades of night gathered round him. In the latest of allhis poems, he still speaks of

 "One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. "

 "No, at noon-day in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 'Strive and thrive'! cry 'Speed!--fight on, fare ever There as here. '"[A]

[Footnote A: Epilogue to _Asolande_. ]

These are fit words to close such a life. His last act is a kind ofre-enlistment in the service of the good; the joyous venturing forth ona new war under new conditions and in lands unknown, by a heroic man whois sure of himself and sure of his cause. 

But now comes the great difficulty. How can the poet combine suchearnestness in the moral struggle with so deep a conviction of theultimate nothingness of evil, and of the complete victory of the good?Again and again we have found him pronounce such victory to beabsolutely necessary and inevitable. His belief in God, his trust in Hislove and might, will brook no limit anywhere. His conviction is that thepower of the good subjects evil itself to its authority. 

 "My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best, can't end worst. Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Apparent Failure_. ]

It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete of _Fifine_that speaks:--

 "Partake my confidence! No creature's made so mean But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate, Its supreme worth: fulfils, by ordinance of fate, Its momentary task, gets glory all its own, Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone. "

 * * * * *

 "As firm is my belief, quick sense perceives the same Self-vindicating flash illustrate every man And woman of our mass, and prove, throughout the plan, No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime And perfect. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xxix. ]

But if so, --if Helen, Fifine, Guido, find themselves within the plan, fulfilling, after all, the task allotted to them in the universalscheme, how can we condemn them? Must we not plainly either modify ouroptimism and keep our faith in God within bounds, or, on the other hand, make every failure "apparent" only, sin a phantom, and the distinctionbetween right and wrong a helpful illusion that stings man toeffort--but an illusion all the same?

 "What but the weakness in a Faith supplies The incentive to humanity, no strength Absolute, irresistible comforts. How can man love but what he yearns to help?"[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1649-1652. ]

Where is the need, nay, the possibility, of self-sacrifice, except wherethere is misery? How can good, the good which is highest, find itself, and give utterance and actuality to the power that slumbers within it, except as resisting evil? Are not good and evil relative? Is not everycriminal, when really known, working out in his own way the salvation ofhimself and the world? Why cannot he, then, take his stand on his rightto move towards the good by any path that best pleases himself: sincemove he must. It is easy for the religious conscience to admit withPippa that

 "All service ranks the same with God-- With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last or first. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Pippa Passes_. ]

But, if so, why do we admire her sweet pre-eminence in moral beauty, andin what is she really better than Ottima? The doctrine that

 "God's in His heaven-- All's right with the world!"[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

finds its echo in every devout spirit from the beginning of the world:it is of the very essence of religion. But what of its moralconsequences? Religion, when thoroughly consistent, is the triumphantreconciliation of all contradictions. It is optimism, the justificationof things as the process of evolving the good; and its peace and joy arejust the outcome of the conviction, won by faith, that the ideal isactual, and that every detail of life is, in its own place, illuminedwith divine goodness. But morality is the condemnation of things as theyare, by reference to a conception of a good which ought to be. Theabsolute identification of the actual and ideal extinguishes morality, either in something lower or something higher. But the moral ideal, whenreached, turns at once into a stepping-stone, a dead self; and the goodformulates itself anew as an ideal in the future. So that morality isthe sphere of discrepancy, and the moral life a progressive realizationof a good that can never be complete. It would thus seem to beirreconcilably different from religion, which must, in some way orother, find the good to be present, actual, absolute, without shadow ofchange, or hint of limit or imperfection. 

How, then, does the poet deal with the apparently fundamentaldiscrepancy between religion, which postulates the absolute anduniversal supremacy of God, and morality, which postulates the absolutesupremacy of man within the sphere of his own action, in so far as it iscalled right or wrong?

This difficulty, in one or other of its forms, is, perhaps, the mostpressing in modern philosophy. It is the problem of the possibility ofrising above the "Either, Or" of discrepant conceptions, to a positionwhich grasps the alternatives together in a higher idea. It is at bottomthe question, whether we can have a philosophy at all; or whether wemust fall back once more into compromise, and the scepticism and despairwhich it always brings with it. 

It is just because Browning does not compromise between the contendingtruths that he is instructive. The value of his solution of the problemcorresponds accurately to the degree in which he holds both theabsoluteness of God's presence in history, and the complete independenceof the moral consciousness. He refused to degrade either God or man. Inthe name of religion, he refuses to say that "a purpose of reason isvisible in the social and legal structures of mankind"--_only_ "on thewhole "; and in the name of morality, he refuses to "assert theperfection of the actual world" as it is, and by implication to stultifyall human endeavour. He knew the vice of compromising, and strove tohold both the truths in their fulness. 

That he did not compromise God's love or power, and make it dominantmerely "on the whole, " leaving within His realm, which is universal, alimbo for the "lost, " is evident to the most casual reader. 

 "This doctrine, which one healthy view of things, One sane sight of the general ordinance-- Nature, --and its particular object, --man, -- Which one mere eyecast at the character Of Who made these and gave man sense to boot, Had dissipated once and evermore, -- This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal. Why? Because none believed it. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Inn Album_. ]

"O'er-punished wrong grows right, " Browning says. Hell is, for him, theconsciousness of opportunities neglected, arrested growth; and eventhat, in turn, is the beginning of a better life. 

 "However near I stand in His regard, So much the nearer had I stood by steps Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help. That I call Hell; why further punishment?"[B]

[Footnote B: _A Camel-Driver. _]

Another ordinary view, according to which evil is self-destructive, andends with the annihilation of its servant, he does not so decisivelyreject. At least, in a passage of wonderful poetic and philosophicpower, which he puts into the mouth of Caponsacchi, he describes Guidoas gradually lapsing towards the chaos, which is lower then createdexistence. He observes him

 "Not to die so much as slide out of life, Pushed by the general horror and common hate Low, lower, --left o' the very ledge of things, I seem to see him catch convulsively, One by one at all honest forms of life, At reason, order, decency and use, To cramp him and get foothold by at least; And still they disengage them from _his_ clutch. 

 * * * * *

 "And thus I see him slowly and surely edged Off all the table-land whence life upsprings Aspiring to be immortality. "

There he loses him in the loneliness, silence and dusk--

 "At the horizontal line, creation's verge. From what just is to absolute nothingness. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, 1911-1931. ]

But the matchless moral insight of the Pope leads to a differentconclusion, and the poet again retrieves his faith. The Pope puts hisfirst trust "in the suddenness of Guido's fate, " and hopes that thetruth may "be flashed out by the blow of death, and Guido see oneinstant and be saved. " Nor is his trust vain. "The end comes, " said Dr. Westcott. "The ministers of death claim him. In his agony he summonsevery helper whom he has known or heard of--

 "'Abate, --Cardinal, --Christ, --Maria, --God--'

"and then the light breaks through the blackest gloom:

 "'Pompilia! will you let them murder me?'

"In this supreme moment he has known what love is, and, knowing it, hasbegun to feel it. The cry, like the intercession of the rich man inHades, is a promise of a far-off deliverance. "

But even beyond this hope, which is the last for most men, the Pope hadstill another. 

 "Else I avert my face, nor follow him Into that sad obscure sequestered state Where God unmakes but to remake the soul He else made first in vain: _which must not be_. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 2129-2132. ]

This phrase, "which must not be, " seems to me to carry in it theirrefragable conviction of the poet himself. The same faith in thefuture appears in the words in which Pompilia addresses her priest. 

 "O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, No work begun shall ever pause for death! Love will be helpful to me more and more I' the coming course, the new path I must tread, My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Seek--Pompilia_, 1786-1790. ]

For the poet, the death of man brings no change in the purpose of God;nor does it, or aught else, fix a limit to His power, or stultify byfailure the end implied in all God's work, nature no less than manhimself--to wit, that every soul shall learn the lesson of goodness, andreflect the devine life in desire, intelligence, and will. 

Equally emphatic, on some sides at least, is Browning's rejection ofthose compromises, with which the one-sided religious consciousnessthreatens the existence of the moral life. At times, indeed, he seems toteach, as man's best and highest, a passive acquiescence in the divinebenevolence; and he uses the dangerous metaphor of the clay and potter'swheel. _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ bids us feel

 "Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay";

and his prayer is, "So, take and use Thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. ]

But this attitude of quiescent trust, which is so characteristic ofreligion, is known by the poet to be only a phase of man's best life. Itis a temporary resting-place for the pilgrim: "the country of Beulah, whose air is very sweet and pleasant, where he may solace himself for aseason. " But, "the way lies directly through it, " and the pilgrim, "being a little strengthened and better able to bear his sickness, " hasto go forward on his journey. Browning's characteristic doctrine on thismatter is not acquiescence and resignation. "Leave God the way" has, inhis view, its counterpart and condition--"Have you the will!"

 "For a worm must turn If it would have its wrong observed by God. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia, _ 1592-1593. ]

The root of Browning's joy is in the need of progress towards aninfinitely high goal. He rejoices

 "that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled. "

The bliss of endeavour, the infinite worth of the consciousness offailure, with its evidence of coming triumph, "the spark which disturbsour clod, " these are the essence of his optimistic interpretation ofhuman life, and also of his robust ethical doctrine. 

 "Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra. _]

And he prolongs the battle beyond time, for the battle is the moral lifeand man's best, and therefore God's best in man. The struggle upwardfrom the brute, may, indeed end with death. But this only means that man"has learned the uses of the flesh, " and there are in him otherpotencies to evolve:

 "Other heights in other lives, God willing. "

Death is the summing up of this life's meaning, stored strength for newadventure. 

"The future I may face now I have proved the past;" and, in view of it, Browning is

 "Fearless and unperplexed When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armour to indue. "

He is sure that it will be a battle, and a winning one. There is nolimiting here of man's possibility, or confining of man's endeavourafter goodness. 

 "Strive and Thrive! cry 'Speed, ' fight on, fare ever There as here, "

are the last words which came from his pen. 

Now, it may fairly be argued that these allusions to what death maymean, and what may lie beyond death, valuable as they may be as poetry, cannot help in philosophy. They do not solve the problem of the relationbetween morality and religion, but merely continue the antagonismbetween them into a life beyond, of which we have no experience. If theproblem is to be solved, it must be solved as it is stated for us in thepresent world. 

This objection is valid, so far as it goes. But Browning's treatment isvaluable all the same, in so far as it indicates his unwillingness tolimit or compromise the conflicting truths. He, by implication, rejectsthe view, ordinarily held without being examined, that the moral life ispreliminary to the joy and rest of religion; a brief struggle, to befollowed by a sudden lift out of it into some serene sphere, where manwill lead an angel's life, which knows no imperfection and therefore nogrowth. He refuses to make morality an accident in man's history and "toput man in the place of God, " by identifying the process with the ideal;he also refuses to make man's struggle, and God's achievement withinman, mutually exclusive alternatives. As I shall show in the sequel, movement towards an ideal, actualizing but never actualized, is for thepoet the very nature of man. And to speak about either God or man (oreven the absolute philosopher) as "the last term of a development" hasno meaning to him. We are not first moral and then religious, firststruggling with evil and then conscious of overcoming it. God is with usin the battle, and the victory is in every blow. 

But there lies a deeper difficulty than this in the way of reconcilingmorality and religion, or the presence of both God and man in humanaction. Morality, in so far as it is achievement, might conceivably beimmediately identified with the process of an absolute good; butmorality is always a consciousness of failure as well. Its very essenceand verve is the conviction that the ideal is not actual. And the highera man's spiritual attainment, the more impressive is his view of theevil of the world, and of the greatness of the work pressing to be done. "Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? BeholdI say unto you, 'Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they arewhite already to harvest. '" It looks like blasphemy against morality tosay "that God lives in eternity and has, therefore, plenty of time. "Morality destroys one's contentment with the world; and its languageseems to be, "God is not here, but there; the kingdom is still to come. "

Nor does it rest with condemning the world. It also finds flaws in itsown highest achievement; so that we seem ever "To mock ourselves in allthat's best of us. " The beginning of the spiritual life seems just toconsist in a consciousness of complete failure, and that consciousnessever grows deeper. 

This is well illustrated in Browning's account of Caponsacchi; from thetime when Pompilia's smile first "glowed" upon him, and set him--

 "Thinking how my life Had shaken under me--broken short indeed And showed the gap 'twixt what is, what should be-- And into what abysm the soul may slip"--[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, 485-488. ]

up to the time when his pure love for her revealed to him something ofthe grandeur of goodness, and led him to define his ideal and also toexpress his despair. 

 "To have to do with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal--and these, not alone In the main current of the general life, But small experiences of every day, Concerns of the particular hearth and home: To learn not only by a comet's rush But a rose's birth--not by the grandeur, God, But the comfort, Christ. _All this_ how _far away_ Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid. _ 2089-2097. ]

So illimitably beyond his strength is such a life, that he finds himselflike the drudging student who

 "Trims his lamp, Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close, Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'-- Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes To the old solitary nothingness. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, 2098-2103. ]

The moral world with its illimitable horizon had Opened out around him, the voice of the new commandment bidding him "be perfect as his Fatherin heaven is perfect" had destroyed his peace, and made imperative awell nigh hopeless struggle; and, as he compares himself at his bestwith the new ideal, he breaks out into the cry, "O great, just, good God! Miserable Me!"

This humility and contrition, this discontent verging on hopelessness, constituted, as we have seen, the characteristic attitude of Carlyle;and it represents a true and, in fact, an indispensable element of man'smoral life. 

But this self-condemnation in the face of the moral law is nothing morethan an element, and must not be taken either for the whole truth or forthe most fundamental one. It is because it is taken as fundamental andfinal that the discrepancy between morality and religion is held to beabsolute, and the consciousness of evil is turned against faith in theGood. It is an abstract way of thinking that makes us deduce, from thetranscendent height of the moral ideal, the impossibility of attaininggoodness, and the failure of God's purpose in man. And this is whatCarlyle did. He stopped short at the consciousness of imperfection, andhe made no attempt to account for it. He took it as a complete fact, andtherefore drew a sharp line of distinction between the human and thedivine. And, so far, he was right; for, if we look no further than thisnegative side, it is emphatically absurd to identify man, be he"philosopher" or not, with the Absolute. "Why callest thou Me good?there is none good save One, that is God. " The "ought" _must_ standabove _all_ human attainment, and declare that "whatever is, is wrong. "But whence comes the ought itself, the ideal which condemns us? Is itnot also immanent in the fact it condemns?

"Who is not acute enough, " asks Hegel, "to see a great deal in hissurroundings which is really far from being what it ought to be?" Andwho also, we may add, has not enough of the generalizing faculty, oftenmistaken for a philosophical one, to extend this condemnation over thewhole of "this best of all possible worlds"? But what is this"ought-to-be, " which has such potency in it that all things confrontedwith it lose their worth?

The first answer is, that it is an idea which men, and particularly goodmen, carry with them. But a little consideration will show that itcannot be a mere idea. It must be something more valid than a capriciousproduct of the individual imagination. For we cannot wisely condemnthings because they do not happen to answer to any casual conceptionwhich we may choose to elevate into a criterion. A criterion must haveobjective validity. It must be an idea _of_ something and not an emptynotion; and that something must, at the worst, be possible. Nay, when weconsider all that is involved in it, it becomes obvious that a trueideal--an ideal which is a valid criterion--must be not only possiblebut real, and, indeed, more real than that which is condemned byreference to it. Absolute pessimism has in it the same contradiction asabsolute scepticism has, --in fact, it is only its practical counterpart;for both scepticism and pessimism involve the assumption that it ispossible to reach a position outside the realm of being, from which itmay be condemned as a whole. But the rift between actual and ideal mustfall within the real or intelligible world, do what the pessimists will;and a condemnation of man which is not based on a principle realized byhumanity, is a fiction of abstract thought, which lays stress on theactuality of the imperfect and treats the perfect as if it were as goodas nothing, which it cannot be. In other words, this way of regardinghuman life isolates the passing phenomenon, and does not look to thatwhich reveals itself in it and causes it to pass away. Confiningourselves, however, for the present, to the ideal in morality, we caneasily see that, in that sphere at least, the actual and ideal changeplaces; and that the latter contrasts with the former as the real withthe phenomenal. For, in the first place, the moral ideal is somethingmore than a mere idea not yet realized. It is more even than a _true_idea; for no mere knowledge, however true, has such intimate relation tothe self-consciousness of man as his moral ideal. A mathematical axiom, and the statement of a physical law, express what is true; but they donot occupy the same place in our mind as a moral principle. Such aprinciple is an ideal, as well as an idea. It is an idea which hascausative potency in it. It supplies motives, it is an incentive toaction, and, though in one sense a thing of the future, it is also theactual spring and source of present activity. In so far as the agentacts, as Kant put it, not according to laws, but according to an _idea_of law (and a responsible agent always acts in this manner), the idealis as truly actualized in him as the physical law is actualized in thephysical fact, or the vegetable life in the plant. In fact, the ideal ofa moral being is his life. All his actions are its manifestations. And, just as the physical fact is not seen as it really is, nor its realityproved, till science has penetrated through the husk of the sensuousphenomenon, and grasped it in thought as an instance of a law; so anindividual's actions are not understood, and can have no moral meaningwhatsoever, except in the light of the purpose which gave them being. Weknow the man only when we know his creed. His reality is what hebelieves in; that is, it is his ideal. 

It is the consciousness that the ideal is the real which explains thefact of contrition. To become morally awakened is to become conscious ofthe vanity and nothingness of the past life, as confronted with the newideal implied in it. The past life is something to be cast aside asfalse show, just because the self that experienced it was not realizedin it. It is for this reason that the moral agent sets himself againstit, and desires to annihilate all its claims upon him by undergoing itspunishment, and drinking to the dregs its cup of bitterness. Thus histrue life lies in the realization of his ideal, and his advance towardsit is his coming to himself. Only in attaining to it does he attainreality, and the only realization possible for him in the present isjust the consciousness of the potency of the ideal. To him to live is torealize his ideal. It is a power that irks, till it finds expression inmoral habits that accord with its nature, _i. E. _, till the spirit has, out of its environment, created a body adequate to itself. 

The condemnation of self which characterizes all moral life and is thecondition of moral progress, must not, therefore, be regarded as acomplete truth. For the very condemnation implies the actual presence ofsomething better. Both of the terms--both the criterion and the factwhich is condemned by it--fall within the same individual life. Mancannot, therefore, without injustice, condemn himself in all that he is;for the condemnation is itself a witness to the activity of that good ofwhich he despairs. Hence, the threatening majesty of the moralimperative is nothing but the shadow of man's own dignity; and moralcontrition, and even the complete despair of the pessimistic theory, when rightly understood, are recognized as unwilling witnesses to theauthority and the actuality of the highest good. And, on the other hand, the highest good cannot be regarded as a mere phantom, withoutnullifying all our condemnation of the self and the world. 

The legitimate deduction from the height of man's moral ideal is thusfound to be, not, as Carlyle thought, the weakness and worthlessness ofhuman nature, but its promise and native dignity: and in a healthy moralconsciousness it produces, not despair, but faith and joy. For, as hasbeen already suggested in a previous chapter, the authority of the morallaw over man is rooted in man's endowment. Its imperative is nothing butthe voice of the future self, bidding the present self aspire, while itsreproof is only the expression of a moral aspiration which hasmisunderstood itself. Contrition is not a bad moral state which shouldbring despair, but a good state, full of promise of one that is stillbetter. It is, in fact, just the first step which the ideal takes in itsprocess of self-realization: "the sting that bids nor sit, nor stand, but go!"

The moral ideal thus, like every other ideal, even that which we regardas present in natural life, contains a certain guarantee of its ownfulfilment. It is essentially an active thing, an energy, a movementupwards. It may, indeed, be urged that the guarantee is imperfect. Ideals tend to self-realization, but the tendency may remainunfulfilled. Men have some ideals which they never reach, and otherswhich, at first sight at least, it were better for them not to reach. The goal may never be attained, or it may prove "a ruin like the rest. "And, as long as man is moral, the ideal is not, and cannot be, fullyreached, Morality necessarily implies a rift within human nature, acontradiction between what is and what ought to be; although neither therift nor the contradiction is absolute. There might seem for this reasonto be no way of bringing optimism and ethics together, of reconcilingwhat is and what ought to be. 

My answer to these difficulties must at this stage be very brief andincomplete. That the moral good, if attained, should itself prove vainis a plain self-contradiction. For moral good has no meaning except inso far as it is conceived as the highest good. The question. "Why shouldI be moral, " has no answer, because it is self-contradictory. The moralideal contains its justification in itself, and requires to lean onnothing else. 

But it is not easy to prove that it is attainable. In one sense it isnot attainable, at least under the conditions of human life which fallwithin our experience, from which alone we have a right to speak. For, as I shall strive to show in a succeeding chapter, the essence of man'slife as spiritual, that is as intelligent and moral, is itsself-realizing activity. Intellectual and moral life is progress, although it is the progress of an ideal which is real and complete, thereturn of the infinite to itself through the finite. The cessation ofthe progress of the ideal in man, whereby man interprets the world interms of himself and makes it the instrument of his purposes, isintellectual and moral death. From one point of view, therefore, thisspiritual life, or moral and intellectual activity, is inspired at everystep by the consciousness of a "beyond" not possessed, of an unsolvedcontradiction between the self and the not-self, of a good that ought tobe and is not. The last word, or rather the last word _but one_, regarding man is "failure. "

But failure is the last word but one, as the poet well knew. "What'scome to perfection perishes, " he tells us. From this point of view thefact that perfection is not reached, merely means that the process isnot ended. "It seethes with the morrow for us and more. " The recognitionof failure implies more effort and higher progress, and contains asuggestion of an absolute good, and even a proof of its active presence. "The beyond, " for knowledge and morality, is the Land of Promise. Andthe promise is not a false one; for the "land" is possessed. Therecognition of the fact to be known, the statement of the problem, isthe first step in its solution; and the consciousness of the moral idealnot attained is the first step in its self-actualizing progress. Had mannot come so far, he would not have known the further difficulty, orrecognized the higher good. To say that the moral ideal is neverattained, is thus only a half-truth. We must add to it the fact that itis always being attained; nay, that it is always present as an activereality, attaining itself, evolving its own content. Or, to return tothe previous metaphor, the land of promise is possessed, although thepossession always reveals a still better beyond, which is again a landof promise. 

While, therefore, it must always remain true that knowledge does notreach absolute reality, nor morality absolute goodness, this cannot beused as an argument against optimism, except on the presupposition thatmental and moral activity are a disease. And this is a contradiction interms. If the ideal is in itself good, the process whereby it isattained is good; if the process in itself is evil, the ideal it seeksis evil, and therefore the condemnation of the actual by reference to itis absurd. And, on the other hand, to postulate as best the identity ofideal and actual, so that no process is necessary, is to assume a pointof view where both optimism and pessimism are meaningless, for there isno criterion. As Aristotle teaches us, we have no right either to praiseor to blame the highest. A process, such as morality is, which is notthe self-manifestation of an actual idea, and an ideal which does notreveal its potencies in its passing forms, are both fictions ofone-sided thought. The process is not the ideal, but its manifestation;and the ideal is not the process, but the principle which is its sourceand guide. 

But if the process cannot be thus immediately identified with the ideal, or "man take the place of God, " or "human self-consciousness be confusedwith the absolute self-consciousness, " far less can they be separated. The infinitely high ideal of perfect knowledge and perfect goodness, implied in the Christian command, "Be ye perfect as your Father inheaven is perfect, " is an ideal, just because the unity of what is andwhat ought to be is deeper than their difference. The recognition of thelimit of our knowledge, or the imperfection of our moral character, is adirect witness to the fact that there is more to be known and a betterto be achieved. The negative implies the affirmative, and is its effect. Man's confession of the limitation of his knowledge is made on thesupposition that the universe of facts, in all its infinitely richcomplexity, is meant to be known; and his confession of moralimperfection is made by reference to a good which is absolute, and whichyet may be and ought to be his. The good in morality is necessarilysupreme and perfect. A good that is "merely human, " "relative to man'snature, " in the sense of not being true goodness, is a phantom ofconfused thinking. Morality demands "_the_ good, " and not a simulacrumor make-shift. The distinction between right and wrong, and with it allmoral aspiration, contrition, and repentance, would otherwise becomemeaningless. What can a seeming good avail to a moral agent? There is nobetter or worse among merely apparent excellencies, and of phantoms itmatters not which is chosen. And, in a similar way, the distinctionbetween true and false in knowledge, and the common condemnation ofhuman knowledge as merely of phenomena, implies the absolute unity ofthought and being, and the knowledge of that unity as a fact. There isno true or false amongst merely apparent facts. 

But, if the ideal of man as a spiritual being is conceived as perfect, then it follows not only that its attainment is possible, but that it isnecessary. The guarantee of its own fulfilment which an ideal carrieswith it as an ideal, that is, as a potency in process of fulfilment, becomes complete when that ideal is absolute. "If God be for us, who canbe against us?" The absolute good, in the language of Emerson, is "toogood not to be true. " If such an ideal be latent in the nature of man, it brings the order of the universe over to his side. For it implies akinship between him, as a spiritual being, and the whole of existence. The stars in their courses fight for him. In other words, the moralideal means nothing, if it does not imply a law which is universal. Itis a law which exists already, whether man recognizes it or not; it isthe might in things, a law of which "no jot or tittle can in any wisepass away. " The individual does not institute the moral law; he finds itto be written both within and without him. His part is to recognize, notto create it; to make it valid in his own life and so to identifyhimself with it, that his service of it may be perfect freedom. 

We thus conclude that morality, and even the self-condemnation, contrition, and consciousness of failure which it brings with it asphases of its growth, are witnesses of the presence, and the actualproduct of an absolute good in man. Morality, in other words, restsupon, and is the self-evolution of the religious principle in man. 

A similar line of proof would show that religion implies morality. Anabsolute good is not conceivable, except in relation to the processwhereby it manifests itself. In the language of theology, we may saythat God must create and redeem the world in order to be God; or thatcreation and redemption, --the outflow of the universe from God as itssource, and its return to Him through the salvation of mankind, --revealto us the nature of God. Apart from this outgoing of the infinite to thefinite and its return to itself through it, the name God would be anempty word, signifying a something unintelligible dwelling in the voidbeyond the realm of being. But religion, as we have seen, is therecognition not of an unknown but of the absolute good as real; thejoyous consciousness of the presence of God in all things. And morality, in that it is the realization of an ideal which is perfect, is theprocess whereby the absolute good actualizes itself in man. It is truethat the ideal cannot be identified with the process; for it is theprinciple of the process, and therefore more than it. Man does not reach"the last term of development, " for there is no last term to a beingwhose essence is progressive activity. He does not therefore take theplace of God, and his self-consciousness is never the absoluteself-consciousness. But still, in so far as his life is a progresstowards the true and good, it is the process of truth and goodnesswithin him. It is the activity of the ideal. It is God lifting man up toHimself, or, in the language of philosophy, "returning to Himself inhistory. " And yet it is at the same time man's effort after goodness. Man is not a mere "vessel of divine grace, " or a passive recipient ofthe highest bounty. All man's goodness is necessarily man's achievement. And the realization by the ideal of itself is man's achievement of it. For it is his ideal. The law without is also the law within. It is thelaw within because it is recognized as the law without. Thus, the moralconsciousness passes into the religious consciousness. The performanceof duty is the willing service of the absolute good; and, as such, itinvolves also the recognition of a purpose that cannot fail. It is bothactivity and faith, both a struggle and a consciousness of victory, bothmorality and religion. We cannot, therefore, treat these as alternativephases of man's life. There is not first the pain of the moral struggle, and then the joy and rest of religion. The meat and drink is "to do thewill of Him that sent Me, to finish His work. " Heaven is the service ofthe good. "There is nothing in the world or out of it that can be calledunconditionally good, except the good will. " The process of willing--themoral activity--is its own reward; "the only jewel that shines in itsown light. "

It may seem to some to be presumptuous thus to identify the divine andthe human; but to separate them makes both morality and religionimpossible. It robs morality of its ideal, and makes God a mere name forthe "unknown. " Those who think that this identification degrades thedivine, misapprehend the nature of spirit; and forget that it is of itsessence to communicate itself. And goodness and truth do not become lesswhen shared; they grow greater. Spiritual possessions imply communitywherein there is no exclusion; and to the Christian the glory of God isHis communication of Himself. Hence the so-called religious humility, which makes God different in nature from His work, really degrades theobject of its worship. It puts mere power above the gifts of spirit, andit indicates that the worshipper has not been emancipated from theslavishness, which makes a fetish of its God. Such a religion is notfree, and the development of man destroys it. 

 "I never realized God's birth before-- How He grew likest God in being born. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1690-1691. ]

The intense love of the young mother drew the divine and the humantogether, and set at nought the contrast which prose ever draws betweenthem. This thought of the unity of God and man is one which has frequentutterance from the poet when his religious spirit is most deeply moved;for it is the characteristic of religious feeling that it abolishes allsense of separation. It removes all the limitations of finitude andlifts man into rapturous unity with the God he adores; and it gives suchcompleteness to his life that it seems to him to be a joyous pulse ofthe life that is absolute. The feeling of unity may be an illusion. Thiswe cannot discuss here; but, in any case, it is a feeling essential toreligion. And the philosophy which seeks to lift this feeling into clearconsciousness and to account for its existence, cannot but recognizethat it implies and presupposes the essential affinity of the divinenature with the nature of man. 

Thus, both from the side of morality and from that of religion, we arebrought to recognize the unity of God with man as a spiritual being. Themoral ideal is man's idea of perfection, that is, his idea of God. Whiletheology and philosophy are often occupied with the vain task ofbridging a chasm between the finite and the infinite, which they assumeto be separated, the supreme facts of the life of man as a spirit springfrom their unity. In other words, morality and religion are butdifferent manifestations of the same principle. The good that maneffects is, at the same time, the working of God within him. Theactivity that man is, "tending up, Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man Upward in that dread point of intercourse Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

 "God, perchance, Grants each new man, by some as new a mode, Inter-communication with Himself Wreaking on finiteness infinitude. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

And while man's moral endeavour is thus recognized as the activity ofGod within him, it is also implied that the divine being can be knownonly as revealed, and incarnated, if one may so say, in a perfect humancharacter. It was a permanent conviction of Browning, that

 "the acknowledgment of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it. "

So far from regarding the Power in the world which makes forrighteousness, as "not-ourselves, " as Matthew Arnold did in his haste, that Power is known to be the man's true self and more, and morality isthe gradual process whereby its content is evolved. And man's state ofperfection, which is symbolized for the intelligent by the term Heaven, is, for Browning, "The equalizing, ever and anon, In momentary rapture, great with small, Omniscience with intelligency, God With man--the thunder glow from pole to pole Abolishing, a blissful moment-space, Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire-- As sure to ebb as sure again to flow When the new receptivity deserves The new completion. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_. ]

Thus, therefore, does the poet wed the divine strength with humanweakness; and the principle of unity, thus conceived, gives him at oncehis moral strenuousness and that ever present foretaste of victory, which we may call his religious optimism. 

Whether this principle receives adequate expression from the poet, weshall inquire in the next chapter. For on this depends its worth as asolution of the enigma of man's moral life. 

CHAPTER VI. 

BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE. 

 "God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_]

It may be well before going further to gather together the results sofar reached. 

Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moralconsciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its mostuncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he isinstructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in practicalaffairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything to advancehuman thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a peacefulconsciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and therefore inall other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent the moral lifeas a struggle with evil, and a movement through error towards a highestgood which is never finally realized. He sees that the contradiction isnot an absolute one, but that a good man is always both moral andreligious, and, in every good act he does, transcends their difference. He knew that the ideal apart from the process is nothing, and that "aGod beyond the stars" is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, thatthe ideal is not _merely_ the process, but also that which starts theprocess, guides it, and comes to itself through it. God, emptied ofhuman elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process ofhuman evolution does not exhaust the idea of God. The process by itself, _i. E. _, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction ofabstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end; and init neither the head nor the heart of man could find contentment. He isdriven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality into religion. 

It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace backthe moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law with thenature of God. It is this that gives value to his view of moralprogress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being, for whichman's attainments in this life are only preliminary. 

 "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes, Man has Forever. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Grammarian's Funeral_. ]

There are other "adventures brave and new" for man, "more lives yet, "other ways of warfare, other depths of goodness and heights of love. Thepoet lifts the moral ideal into infinitude, and removes all limits tothe possibility and necessity of being good. Nay, the process itself isgood. Moral activity is its own bountiful reward; for moral progress, which means struggle, is the best thing in the world or out of it. Toend such a process, to stop that activity, were therefore evil. But itcannot end, for it is the self-manifestation of the divine life. Thereis plenty of way to make, for the ideal is absolute goodness. Theprocess cannot exhaust the absolute, and it is impossible that manshould be God. And yet this process is the process of the absolute, theworking of the ideal, the presence of the highest in man as a livingpower realizing itself in his acts and in his thoughts. And the absolutecannot fail; not in man, for the process is the evolution of hisessential nature; and not in the world, for that is but the necessaryinstrument of the evolution. By lifting the moral ideal of man toinfinitude, the poet has identified it with the nature of God, and madeit the absolute law of things. 

Now, this idea of the identity of the human and the divine is aperfectly familiar Christian idea. 

 "Thence shall I, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a God though in the germ. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra. _]

This idea is involved in the ordinary expressions of religious thought. But, nevertheless, both theology and philosophy shrink from giving to ita clear and unembarrassed utterance. Instead of rising to the sublimeboldness of the Nazarene Teacher, they set up prudential differencesbetween God and man--differences not of degree only but of nature; and, in consequence, God is reduced into an unknowable absolute, and man ismade incapable not only of moral, but also of intellectual life. Thepoet himself has proved craven-hearted in this, as we shall see. He, too, sets up insurmountable barriers between the divine and the human, and thereby weakens both his religious and his moral convictions. Hismoral inspiration is greatest just where his religious enthusiasm ismost intense. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Death in the Desert_, and _TheRing and the Book_, there prevails a constant sense of the community ofGod and man within the realm of goodness; and the world itself, "withits dread machinery of sin and sorrow, " is made to join the greatconspiracy, whose purpose is at once the evolution of man's character, and the realization of the will of God. 

 "So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too-- So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love Me who have died for thee. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _An Epistle from Karshish_. ]

But, if we follow Browning's thoughts in his later and more reflectivepoems, such as _Ferishtah's_ _Fancies_ for instance, it will not bepossible to hold that the poet altogether realized the importance forboth morality and religion alike, of the idea of the actual immanence ofGod in man. In these poems he seems to have abandoned it in favour ofthe hypotheses of a more timid philosophy. But, if his religious faithhad not been embarrassed by certain dogmatic presuppositions of which hecould not free himself, he might have met more successfully some of thedifficulties which later reflection revealed to him, and might have beenable to set a true value on that "philosophy, " which betrayed his faithwhile appearing to support it. 

But, before trying to criticize the principle by means of which Browningsought to reconcile the moral and religious elements of human life, itmay be well to give it a more explicit and careful statement. 

What, then, is that principle of unity between the divine and the human?How can we interpret the life of man as God's life in man, so that man, in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is at the sametime fulfilling ends which may justly be called divine?

The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to thisquestion--an answer given with the confidence of complete conviction. The meeting-point of God and man is love. Love, in other words, is, forthe poet, the supreme principle both of morality and religion. Love, once for all, solves that contradiction between them which, both intheory and in practice, has embarrassed the world for so many ages. Loveis the sublimest conception attainable by man; a life inspired by it isthe most perfect form of goodness he can conceive; therefore, love is, at the same moment, man's moral ideal, and the very essence of Godhood. A life actuated by love is divine, whatever other limitations it mayhave. Such is the perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has beentranslated into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of anintelligent will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest heightof being. 

 "For the loving worm within its clod, Were diviner than a loveless God Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas Eve_. ]

So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to love, did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him, and thecreature and Creator change parts. 

 "Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift? Here, the creature surpass the Creator, --the end what Began?"[B]

[Footnote B: _Saul_. ]

Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God isHimself the source and fulness of love. 

 "Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive: In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe. All's one gift. "

 * * * * *

 "Would I suffer for him that I love? So would'st Thou, --so wilt Thou! So shall crown Thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown-- And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for the creature to stand in!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Saul_. ]

And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the moralideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence of all createdbeing, both animate and inanimate. 

 "This world's no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely and means good. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Fra Lippo Lippi_. ]

 "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty: And knowing this is love, and love is duty, What further may be sought for or declared?"

In this world then "all's love, yet all's law. " God permits nothing tobreak through its universal sway, even the very wickedness and misery oflife are brought into the scheme of good, and, when rightly understood, reveal themselves as its means. 

 "I can believe this dread machinery Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else, Devised--all pain, at most expenditure Of pain by Who devised pain--to evolve, By new machinery in counterpart, The moral qualities of man--how else?-- To make him love in turn and be beloved, Creative and self-sacrificing too, And thus eventually Godlike. "[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1375-1383. ]

The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and thenature of God, within the limits of the same conception. The idea oflove solves for Browning all the enigmas of human life and thought. 

 "The thing that seems Mere misery, under human schemes, Becomes, regarded by the light Of love, as very near, or quite As good a gift as joy before. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Easter Day_. ]

Taking Browning's work as a whole, it is scarcely possible to deny thatthis is at once the supreme motive of his art, and the principle onwhich his moral and religious doctrine rests. He is always strong andconvincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently his owndeepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the evils of theworld, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music from itsmoans. " It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that Reason fillsfor Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is as fearless asthey are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the activity of hisfirst principle. Love not only gave him firm footing amid the wash andwelter of the present world, where time spins fast, life fleets, and allis change, but it made him look forward with joy to "the immortalcourse"; for, to him, all the universe is love-woven. All life is buttreading the "love-way, " and no wanderer can finally lose it. "Theway-faring men, though fools, shall not err therein. "

Since love has such an important place in Browning's theory of life, itis necessary to see what he means by it. For love has had for differentindividuals, ages and nations, a very different significance; and almostevery great poet has given it a different interpretation. And this isnot unnatural. For love is a passion which, beginning with youth and thehey-day of the blood, expands with the expanding life, and takes newforms of beauty and goodness at every stage. And this is equally true, whether we speak of the individual or of the human race. 

Love is no accident in man's history, nor a passing emotion. It israther a constitutive element of man's nature, fundamental and necessaryas his intelligence. And, like everything native and constitutive, it isobedient to the law of evolution, which is the law of man's being; andit passes, therefore, through ever varying forms. To it--if we may forthe moment make a distinction between the theoretical and practicallife, or between ideas and their causative potency--must be attributedthe constructive power which has built the world of morality, with itsintangible but most real relations which bind man to man and age to age. It is the author of the organic institutions which, standing between theindividual and the rudeness of nature, awaken in him the need, and givehim the desire and the faculty, of attaining higher things than physicalsatisfaction. Man is meant to act as well as to think, to be virtuous aswell as to have knowledge. It is possible that reverence for theintellect may have led men, at times, to attribute the evolution of therace too exclusively to the theoretic consciousness, forgetting that, along with reason, there co-operates a twin power in all that is wisestand best in us, and that a heart which can love, is as essential apre-condition of all worthy attainment, as an intellect which can see. Love and reason[A] are equally primal powers in man, and they reflectmight into each other: for love increases knowledge, and knowledge love. It is their combined power that gives interest and meaning to the factsof life, and transmutes them into a moral and intellectual order. They, together, are lifting man out of the isolation and chaos of subjectivityinto membership in a spiritual kingdom, where collision and exclusionare impossible, and all are at once kings and subjects. 

[Footnote A: It would be more correct to say the reason that is lovingor the love that is rational; for, though there is distinction, there isno dualism. ]

And, just as reason is present as a transmuting power in the sensationallife of the infancy of the individual and race, so is love presentamidst the confused and chaotic activity of the life that knows no lawother than its own changing emotions. Both make for order, and both growwith it. Both love and reason have travelled a long way in the historyof man. The patriot's passion for his country, the enthusiasm of pityand helpfulness towards all suffering which marks the man of God, are asfar removed from the physical attraction of sex for sex, and the mereliking of the eye and ear, as is the intellectual power of the sage fromthe vulpine cunning of the savage. "For, " as Emerson well said, "it is afire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a privatebosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another heart, glows andenlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, uponthe universal heart of all, and so lights up the world and all naturewith its generous flames. " Both love and reason alike pass through stageafter stage, always away from the particularity of selfishness andignorance, into larger and larger cycles of common truth and goodness, towards the full realization of knowledge and benevolence, which is theinheritance of emancipated man. In this transition, the sensuous play offeeling within man, and the sensitive responses to external stimuli, aremade more and more organic to ends which are universal, that is, tospiritual ends. Love, which in its earliest form, seems to be thenatural yearning of brute for brute, appearing and disappearing at thesuggestion of physical needs, passes into an idealized sentiment, intoan emotion of the soul, into a principle of moral activity whichmanifests itself in a permanent outflow of helpful deeds for man. Itrepresents, when thus sublimated, one side at least of the expansion ofthe self, which culminates when the world beats in the pulse of theindividual, and the joys and sorrows, the defeats and victories ofmankind are felt by him as his own. It is no longer dependent merely onthe incitement of youth, grace, beauty, whether of body or character; ittranscends all limitations of sex and age, and finds objects on which itcan spend itself in all that God has made, even in that which hasviolated its own law of life and become mean and pitiful. It becomes alove of fallen humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming theconscious and permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolutionof love has been written by the poets. Every phase through which thisever-deepening emotion has passed, every form which this primary powerhas taken in its growth, has received from them its own properexpression. They have made even the grosser instincts lyric with beauty;and, ascending with their theme, they have sung the pure passion of soulfor soul, its charm and its strength, its idealism and heroism, up tothe point at which, in Browning, it transcends the limits of finiteexistence, sheds all its earthly vesture, and becomes a spiritualprinciple of religious aspiration and self-surrender to God. 

Browning nowhere shows his native strength more clearly than in histreatment of love. He has touched this world-old theme--which almostevery poet has handled, and handled in his highest manner--with thatfreshness and insight, which is possible only to the inborn originalityof genius. Other poets have, in some ways, given to love a moreexquisite utterance, and rendered its sweetness, and tenderness, andcharm with a lighter grace. It may even be admitted that there are poetswhose verses have echoed more faithfully the fervour and intoxication ofpassion, and who have shown greater power of interpreting it in thelight of a mystic idealism. But, in one thing, Browning stands alone. Hehas given to love a moral significance, a place and power amongst thosesubstantial elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and thegreatness of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without examplein any other poet. And he has done this by means of that moral andreligious earnestness, which pervades all his poetry. The one object ofsupreme interest to him is the development of the soul, and hispenetrative insight revealed to him the power to love as the paramountfact in that development. To love, he repeatedly tells us, is the soleand supreme object of man's life; it is the one lesson which he has tolearn on earth; and, love once learnt, in what way matters little, "itleaves completion in the soul. " Love we dare not, and, indeed, cannotabsolutely miss. No man can be absolutely selfish and be man. 

 "Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole O' the grey, and, free again, be fire; of worth the same, Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is flame. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliii. ]

Love, once evoked, once admitted into the soul, "adds worth to worth, As wine enriches blood, and straightway sends it forth, Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity, That's battle without end. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. Liv. ]

This view of the significance of love grew on Browning as his knowledgeof man's nature and destiny became fuller and deeper, while, at the sametime, his trust in the intellect became less. Even in _Paracelsus_ hereveals love, not as a sentiment or intoxicating passion, as one mightexpect from a youthful poet, but as one of the great fundamental"faculties" of man. Love, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened, often-chequered trust, " though it be, still makes man

 "The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false. "

In that poem, love is definitely lifted by the poet to the level ofknowledge. Intellectual gain, apart from love, is folly and futility, worthless for the individual and worthless to the race. "Mind is nothingbut disease, " Paracelsus cries in the bitterness of his disappointment, "and natural health is ignorance"; and he asks of the mad poet who"loved too rashly, "

 "Are we not halves of one dissevered world, Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? Never! Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower, Love--until both are saved. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an understanding withhimself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims with his laststrength the truth he had missed throughout his great career, namely, the supreme worth of love. 

 "I saw Aprile--my Aprile there! And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear, I learned my own deep error; love's undoing Taught me the worth of love in man's estate, And what proportion love should hold with power In his right constitution; love preceding Power, and with much power, always much more love; Love still too straitened in his present means, And earnest for new power to set love free. "

As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth, wasindifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no good inmen and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not _true_knowledge, but folly and weakness. 

But, great as is the place given to love in _Paracelsus_, it is far lessthan that given to it in the poet's later works. In _Ferishtah'sFancies_ and _La Saisiaz_ it is no longer rivalled by knowledge; noreven in _Easter Day_, where the voice beside the poet proclaiming that

 "Life is done, Time ends, Eternity's begun, "

gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man. Theworld of sense--of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth, are given toman, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely sting with hungerfor something better. "Deficiency gapes every side, " till love is knownas the essence and worth of all things. 

 "Is this thy final choice? Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late! And all thou dost enumerate Of power and beauty in the world, The righteousness of love was curled Inextricably round about. Love lay within it and without, To clasp thee, --but in vain! Thy soul Still shrunk from Him who made the whole, Still set deliberate aside His love!--Now take love! Well betide Thy tardy conscience!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Easter Day. _]

In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems oflife in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer to thequestions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his preferenceof love to knowledge. In _La Saisiaz_ he states that man's love is God'stoo, a spark from His central fire; but man's knowledge is man's only. Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with sense. The truth we reachat best is only truth _for us_, relative, distorted. We are for everkept from the fact which is supposed to be given; our intellects playabout it; sense and even intellect itself are interposing media, whichwe must use, and yet, in using them, we only fool ourselves withsemblances. The poet has now grown so cautious that he will not declarehis own knowledge to be valid for any other man. David Hume couldscarcely be more suspicious of the human intellect; nor Berkeley moresurely persuaded of the purely subjective nature of its attainments. Infact, the latter relied on human knowledge in a way impossible toBrowning, for he regarded it as the language of spirit speaking tospirit. Out of his experience, Browning says, "There crowds conjecture manifold. But, as knowledge, this comes only, --things may be as I behold Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are; I myself am what I know not--ignorance which proves no bar To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest--surmise. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

Thought itself, for aught he knows, may be afflicted with a kind ofcolour-blindness; and he knows no appeal when one affirms "green asgrass, " and another contradicts him with "red as grass. " Under suchcircumstances, it is not strange that Browning should decline to speakexcept for himself, and that he will

 "Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong or weak, "

or that he will far less presume to pronounce for God, and pretend thatthe truth finds utterance from lips of clay--

 "Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of reach. "

 "Have I knowledge? Confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare! Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!

 * * * * *

 "And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul, which in bending upraises it too) The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete, As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Saul_, III. ]

But David finds in himself one faculty so supreme in worth that he keepsit in abeyance--

 "Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst E'en the Giver in one gift. --Behold, I could love if I durst! But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Saul_, III. ]

This faculty of love, so far from being tainted with finitude, likeknowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and deceptivepower given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has anotherineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself divine. Incontrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself dwindles intoinsignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise of power. Love, in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has all its worth initself, and gives to all other things what worth they have. God Himselfgains the "ineffable crown" by showing love and saving the weak. It isthe power divine, the central energy of God's being. 

Browning never forgets this moral or religious quality of love. So pureis this emotion to the poet, "so perfect in whiteness, that it will nottake pollution; but, ermine-like, is armed from dishonour by its ownsoft snow. " In the corruptest hearts, amidst the worst sensuality, loveis still a power divine, making for all goodness. Even when it iskindled into flame by an illicit touch, and wars against the life of thefamily, which is its own product, its worth is supreme. He who haslearned to love in any way, has "caught God's secret. " How he has caughtit, whom he loves, whether or not he is loved in return, all thesethings matter little. The paramount question on which hangs man's fateis, has he learned to love another, any other, Fifine or Elvire. "Shehas lost me, " said the unloved lover; "I have gained her. Her soul'smine. "

The supreme worth of love, the mere emotion itself, however called intoactivity, secures it against all taint. No one who understands Browningin the least, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand the sanctityof the family; rather he places it on the basis of its own principle, and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such love as he speaksof, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous its setting, cannever be confounded with lust--"hell's own blue tint. " It is furtherremoved from lust even than asceticism. It has not even a negativeattitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh to be "stuff fortransmuting, " and reduces it to the uses of the spirit. The love whichis sung by Browning is more pure and free, and is set in a higheraltitude than anything that can be reached by the way of negation. It isa consecration of the undivided self, so that "soul helps not fleshmore, than flesh helps soul. " It is not only a spiritual and divineemotion, but it also "shows a heart within blood-tinctured with a veinedhumanity. "

 "Be a God and hold me With a charm! Be a man and hold me With thine arm!

 "Teach me, only teach, Love! As I ought I will speak thy speech, Love! Think thy thought--

 "Meet, if thou require it, Both demands, Laying flesh and spirit In thy hands. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Woman's Last Word_. ]

True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back. It isa spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the veryessence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the endenriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individualbecomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee isswept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life. 

 "If two lives join, there is oft a scar They are one and one with a shadowy third; One near one is too far. 

 "A moment after, and hands unseen Were hanging the night around us fast; But we knew that a bar was broken between Life and life: we were mixed at last In spite of the mortal screen. "[B]

[Footnote B: _By the Fireside_. ]

The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself, themingling of his own deepest interests with those of others, always markslove; be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or patriot for hiscountry. It opens an outlet into the pure air of the world of objects, and enables man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous atmosphere ofhis narrow self. It is a streaming outwards of the inmost treasures ofthe spirit, a consecration of its best activities to the welfare ofothers. And when this is known to be the native quality and quintessenceof love, no one can regard it anywhere, or at any time, as out of place. "Prize-lawful or prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though itgrow, like the love of the hero of _Turf and Towers_, in slime. Lust, fleshly desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worstperversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction onlyin another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst purposes, wastes its object, and turns the current of life back inwards, into theslush and filth of selfish pleasure. The distinction between love andits perversion, which is impossible in the naive life of an animal, ought to be clear enough to all, and probably is. Nor should the sexualimpulse in human beings be confused with fleshly desire, and treated asif it were merely natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all livingthings, --"that strive, " as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in existing. "For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he is, istransfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act as a mereanimal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind him. 

He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always loveor lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the sage is_nothing but_ the purblind savagery of a Terra del Fuegian, as we haveto assert that love is _nothing but_ a sexual impulse. That impulserather, when its potency is set free, will show itself, at firstconfusedly, but with more and more clearness as it expands, to be theyearning of soul for soul. It puts us "in training for a love whichknows not sex, nor person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue andwisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom. " Theheight to which this passion lifts man, is just what makes possible thefall into a sensuality and excess of brutishness, in comparison withwhich animal life is a paradise of innocence. 

If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of casuistrythat are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and marriage will ceaseto trouble. For these questions generally presuppose the lowest possibleview of this passion. Browning shows us how to follow with serenesecurity the pure light of the emotion of love, amidst all the confusedlawlessness of lustful passion, and through all the intricacies of humancharacter. Love, he thinks, is never illicit, never unwise, except whenit is disloyal to itself; it never ruins, but always strives to enrichits object. Bacon quotes with approval a saying "That it is impossibleto love, and to be wise. " Browning asserts that it is impossible to loveand _not_ be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian ideawhich the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and that, even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back to itsorigin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came. 

So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the evil andturn old to new, even in the case of Léonce Miranda. At least Browning, in this poem, strives to show that, being true love, though the love ofan unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a power at war with thesordid elements of that sordid life. Love has always the same potency, flame is always flame, "no matter whence flame sprung, From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lv. ]

 "Let her but love you, All else you disregard! what else can be? You know how love is incompatible With falsehood--purifies, assimilates All other passions to itself. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Colombe's Birthday. _]

 "Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world And say, love can go unrequited here! You will have blessed him to his whole life's end-- Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back, All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

But, while love is always a power lifting a man upwards to the level ofits own origin from whatever depths of degradation, its greatest potencycan reveal itself only in characters intrinsically pure, such asPompilia and Caponsacchi. Like mercy and every other spiritual gift, itis mightiest in the mighty. In the good and great of the earth love isveritably seen to be God's own energy;

 "Who never is dishonoured in the spark He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Any Wife to Any Husband_, III. ]

It were almost an endless task to recount the ways in which Browningexhibits the moralizing power of love: how it is for him thequintessence of all goodness; the motive, and inspiring cause, of everyact in the world that is completely right; and how, on that account, itis the actual working in the man of the ideal of all perfection. Thisdoctrine of love is, in my opinion, the richest vein of pure ore inBrowning's poetry. 

But it remains to follow briefly our poet's treatment of love in anotherdirection--as a principle present, not only in God as creative andredeeming Power, and in man as the highest motive and energy of themoral life, but also in the outer world, in the "material" universe. Inthe view of the poet, the whole creation is nothing but love incarnate, a pulsation from the divine heart. Love is the source of all law and ofall beauty. "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night speakethknowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is notheard. " And our poet speaks as if he had caught the meaning of thelanguage, and believes that all things speak of love--the love of God. 

"I think, " says the heroine of the _Inn Album_, "Womanliness means only motherhood; All love begins and ends there, --roams enough, But, having run the circle, rests at home. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Inn Album_. ]

And Browning detects something of this motherhood everywhere. He findsit as

 "Some cause Such as is put into a tree, which turns Away from the north wind with what nest it holds. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Canon Caponsacchi_, 1374-1376. ]

The Pope--who, if any one, speaks for Browning--declares that

 "Brute and bird, reptile and the fly, Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant And flower o' the field, are all in a common pact To worthily defend the trust of trusts, Life from the Ever Living. "[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1076-1081. ]

"Because of motherhood, " said the minor pope in _Ivàn Ivànovitch_, "each male Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale: His strength owned weakness, wit--folly, and courage--fear, Beside the female proved males's mistress--only here The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire Who dares assault her whelp. "

The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled sin, " which scaresthe world and shames God. 

 "I hold that, failing human sense, The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Ivàn Ivànovitch_. ]

This instinct of love, which binds brute-parent to brute-offspring, is akind of spiritual law in the natural world: it, like all law, guaranteesthe continuity and unity of the world, and it is scarcely akin to merelyphysical attraction. No doubt its basis is physical; it has an organismof flesh and blood for its vehicle and instrument: but mathematicalphysics cannot explain it, nor can it be detected by chemical tests. Rather, with the poet, we are to regard brute affection as a kind ofrude outline of human love; as a law in nature, which, when understoodby man and adopted as his rule of conduct, becomes the essence andpotency of his moral life. 

Thus Browning regards love as an omnipresent good. There is nothing, hetells us in _Fifine_, which cannot reflect it; even moral putriditybecomes phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven transpierce earth'scoarsest covertures. "

 "There is no good of life but love--but love! What else looks good, is some shade flung from love, Love gilds it, gives it worth. "[B]

[Footnote B: _In a balcony_. ]

There is no fact which, if seen to the heart, will not prove itself tohave love for its purpose, and, therefore, for its substance. And it ison this account that everything finds its place in a kosmos and thatthere is

 "No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime And perfect. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_. Xxxi. ]

Every event in the history of the world and of man is explicable, as thebursting into new form of this elemental, all-pervading power. Thepermanence in change of nature, the unity in variety, the strength whichclothes itself in beauty, are all manifestations of love. Nature is notmerely natural; matter and life's minute beginnings, are more than theyseem. Paracelsus said that he knew and felt

 "What God is, what we are, What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy In finite ways--one everlasting bliss, From whom all being emanates, all power Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore, Yet whom existence in its lowest form Includes. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Paracelsus_. ]

The scheme of love does not begin with man, he is rather itsconsummation. 

 "Whose attributes had here and there Been scattered o'er the visible world before, Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant To be united in some wondrous whole, Imperfect qualities throughout creation, Suggesting some one creature yet to make, Some point where all those scattered rays should meet Convergent in the faculties of man. 

 * * * * *

 "Hints and previsions of which faculties, Are strewn confusedly everywhere about The inferior natures, and all lead up higher, All shape out divinely the superior race, The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, And man appears at last. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

Power, knowledge, love, all these are found in the world, in which

 "All tended to mankind, And, man produced, all has its end thus far: But, in completed man begins anew A tendency to God. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that wentbefore, "Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains Each back step in the circle. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. 189. ]

He gives voice to the mute significance of Nature, and lets in the lighton its blind groping. 

 "Man, once descried, imprints for ever His presence on all lifeless things. "

And how is this interpretation achieved? By penetrating behind force, power, mechanism, and even intelligence, thinks the poet, to a purposewhich is benevolent, a reason which is all embracing and rooted in love. The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from missing this last step. His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not satisfied, not becausehuman knowledge is essentially an illusion or mind disease, but becausehis knowledge did not reach the final truth of things, which is love. For love alone makes the heart wise, to know the secret of all being. This is the ultimate hypothesis in the light of which alone man cancatch a glimpse of the general direction and intent of the universalmovement in the world and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile, caught a glimpse of this elemental "love-force, " in which alone lies theclue to every problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of thehuman spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, butnothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It islove alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to theworld, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow, andmakes it

 "Only a scene Of degradation, ugliness and tears, The record of disgraces best forgotten, A sullen page in human chronicles Fit to erase. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

But in the light of love, man "sees a good in evil, and a hope in illsuccess, " and recognizes that mankind are

 "All with a touch of nobleness, despite Their error, upward tending all though weak; Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, But dream of him, and guess where he may be, And do their best to climb and get to him. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

"All this I knew not, " adds Paracelsus, "and I failed. Let men take thelesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to theirbreasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom, " and showthat the universe is a transparent manifestation of His beneficence. 

CHAPTER VII. 

BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION. 

 "Master, explain this incongruity! When I dared question, 'It is beautiful, But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth Lives Beauty. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _Shah Abbas_. ]

We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things asmanifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring allthe variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies of goodand evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to show thatall human thought is occupied with the same task: science, art, philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in theirdifferent ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing facts. Nay, we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of man, thepractical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to establish a_modus vivendi_ between his environment and himself. And such an attemptrests on the assumption that there is some ground common to both of thestruggling powers within and without, some principle that manifestsitself both in man and in nature. So that all men are philosophers tothe extent of postulating a unity, which is deeper than all differences;and all are alike trying to discover, in however limited or ignorant away, what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view, the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principlesof thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least, be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from thepractical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task whichhe is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purposewith which he enters upon it. 

Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitlyoptimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have aspecial right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be deniedthat their optimistic explanation is invaluable, _if it is true_--

 "So might we safely mock at what unnerves Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase That haply evil's strife with good shall cease Never on earth. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_. ]

Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and pessimists, as arule, have shown much more readiness than optimists to let evil have itsunimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer, that "Life is an awkwardbusiness, " they "determine to spend life in reflecting on it, " or atleast in moaning about it. The world's helpers have been men of anothermould; and the contrast between Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive ofa general truth:--"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of hisidealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which worksfor righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of self-tortureand mortification, and rushing into the political and social fray, proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the soldier, calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living withhis nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels ofself-realization--Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of asceticism, preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will, disparagingefforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and holding that eachhas enough to do in raising his own self from its dull engrossment inlower things to an absorption in that pure, passionless being which liesfar beyond all, even the so-called highest, pursuits of practicallife. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Schopenhauer_, by Prof. Wallace. ]

A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding, frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other hand, an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection andexperience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit thathas never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, itdiffers from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves manfrom the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by makingthe misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "_All_ isvanity. " The drowning man does not feel the discomfort of being wet. Butyet, if we reflect on the problem of evil, we shall find that there isno neutral ground, and shall ultimately be driven to choose betweenpessimism and its opposite. Nor, on the other hand, is the suppressionof the problem of evil possible, except at a great cost. It presentsitself anew in the mind of every thinking man; and some kind of solutionof it, or at least some definite way of meeting its difficulty, isinvolved in the attitude which every man assumes towards life and itstasks. 

It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for Browning'sjoy in life and his love of it, as there is for his predecessor's rageand sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there was; and he held hisview consistently to the end. We cannot, therefore, do justice to thepoet without dealing critically with the principle on which he has basedhis faith, and observing how far it is applicable to the facts of humanlife. As I have previously said, he strives hard to come into faircontact with the misery of man in all its sadness; and, after doing so, he claims, not as a matter of poetic sentiment, but as a matter ofstrict truth, that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is truethat he cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference toall the facts, any more than the scientific man can justify hishypothesis in every detail; but he holds it as a faith which reason canjustify and experience establish, although not in every isolatedphenomenon. The good may, he holds, be seen actually at work in theworld, and its process will be more fully known, as human life advancestowards its goal. 

 "Though Master keep aloof, Signs of His presence multiply from roof To basement of the building. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_. ]

Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm footing forhis faith in the present; although he acknowledges that the "profound ofignorance surges round his rockspit of self-knowledge. "

 "Enough that now, Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine, Shows me what is, permits me to divine What shall be. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently thinkswe have the key to all the mystery of being. 

Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is based uponlove and which professes to start from experience, or to be legitimatelyand rationally derived from it?

If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must beprepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. Thefirst of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a humanemotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty inthe clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the starsin the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order and law, may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and religion; butwhen we are asked to take it as a metaphysical explanation of facts, weare prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi, not to "levity, or toanything indecorous"--

 "Only--I think I apprehend the mood: There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk, The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth, The titter stifled in the hollow palm Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose, When I first told my tale; they meant, you know-- 'The sly one, all this we are bound believe! Well, he can say no other than what he says. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Canon Caponsacchi_, 14-20. ]

We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a piousopinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law, " like many anotherillusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But ifwe are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciencessuggest, --if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical energy, and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all the infinitemisery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and character fromwhich it arises, common-sense seems at once to take the side of thedoleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates that the state ofthe world, were it rightly understood, is completely satisfactory, reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry and religioninvolve such a postulate, they are taken to be ministering to theemotions at the expense of the intellect. 

Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy hisheart without answering the questions of his intellect. Nor is his viewwithout support--at least, as regards the substance of it. The presenceof an idealistic element in things is recognized even by ordinarythought; and no man's world is so poor that it would not be poorer stillfor him, if it were reduced by the abstract sciences of nature into amere manifestation of physical force. Such a world Richter compares toan empty eye-socket. 

The great result of speculation since the time of Kant is to teach us torecognize that objects are essentially related to mind, and that theprinciples which rule our thought enter, so to speak, into theconstitution of the things we know. A very slight acquaintance with thehistory even of psychology, especially in modern times, shows that factsare more and more retracted into thought. This science, which began witha sufficiently common-sense view, not only of the reality and solidityof the things of the outer world, but of their opposition to, orindependence of thought, is now thinning that world down into a mereshadow--a something which excites sensation. It shows that externalthings as we know them, and we are not concerned in any others, are, toa very great extent, the product of our thinking activities. No one willnow subscribe to the Lockian or Humean view, of images impressed byobjects on mind: the object which "impresses" has first to be made bymind, out of the results of nervous excitation. In a word, modernpsychology as well as modern metaphysics, is demonstrating more and morefully the dependence of the world, as it is known, on the nature andactivity of man's mind. Every explanation of the world is found to be, in this sense, idealistic; and in this respect, there is no differencewhatsoever between the interpretation given by science and that ofpoetry, or religion, or philosophy. If we say that a thing is a"substance, " or has "a cause"; if, with the physicist, we assert theprinciple of the transmutation of energy, or make use of the idea ofevolution with the biologist or geologist; nay, if we speak of time andspace with the mathematician, we use principles of unity derived fromself-consciousness, and interpret nature in terms of ourselves, just astruly as the poet or philosopher, who makes love, or reason, theconstitutive element in things. If the practical man of the worldcharges the poet and philosopher with living amidst phantoms, he can beanswered with a "_Tu quoque_. " "How easy, " said Emerson, "it is to showthe materialist that he also is a phantom walking and working amidphantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his dailyquestions to find his solid universe proving dim and impalpable beforehis sense. "

"Sense, " which seems to show directly that the world is a solid reality, not dependent in any way on thought, is found not to be reliable. Allscience is nothing but an appeal to thought from ordinary sensuousopinion. It is an attempt to find the reality of things by thinkingabout them; and this reality, when it is found, turns out to be a law. But laws are ideas; though, if they are true ideas, they represent notmerely thoughts in the mind, but also real principles, which manifestthemselves in the objects of the outer world, as well as in thethinker's mind. 

It is not possible in such a work as this, to give a carefully reasonedproof of this view of the relation of thought and things, or to repeatthe argument of Kant. I must be content with merely referring to it, asshowing that the principles in virtue of which we think, are theprinciples in virtue of which objects as we know them exist; and wecannot be concerned with any other objects. The laws which scientificinvestigation discovers are not only ideas that can be written in books, but also principles which explain the nature of things. In other words, the hypotheses of the natural sciences, or their categories, are pointsof view in the light of which the external world can be regarded asgoverned by uniform laws. And these constructive principles, which liftthe otherwise disconnected world into an intelligible system, arerevelations of the nature of intelligence, and only on that accountprinciples for explaining the world. 

 "To know, Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

In this sense, it may be said that all knowledge is anthropomorphic; andin this respect there is no difference between the physics, which speaksof energy as the essence of things, and the poetry, which speaks of loveas the ultimate principle of reality. Between such scientific andidealistic explanations there is not even the difference that the onebegins without and the other within, or that the one is objective andthe other subjective. The true distinction is that the principles uponwhich the latter proceed are less abstract than those of science. "Reason" and "love" are higher principles for the explanation of thenature of things than "substance" or "cause"; but both are forms of theunity of thought. And if the latter seem to have nothing to do with theself, it is only because they are inadequate to express its fullcharacter. On the other hand, the higher categories, or ideas of reason, seem to be merely anthropomorphic, and, therefore, ill-suited to explainnature, because the relation of nature to intelligence is habituallyneglected by ordinary thought, which has not pressed its problems farenough to know that such higher categories can alone satisfy the demandfor truth. 

But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the highercategories, or, in other words, it is learning to take a more and moreidealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it is along labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and it isonly at great intervals in the history of the human intellect, that wefind the need of a change of categories. But, as already hinted, thereis no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware of theconditions, under which alone its results may be held as valid. Atfirst, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and offered toexplain both it and man in physical and mathematical terms. But, in ourday, the man of science has become too cautious to make such rashextensions of the principles he uses. He is more inclined to limithimself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration asto the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart frommaterialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further, and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected, and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all butuniversally acknowledged. 

The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to whichwe may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science itself willnot support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to another court. Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its attitude is one ofdoubt whether or not any court, philosophical or other, can give anyvalid decision on the matter. Confining themselves to the region ofmaterial phenomena, scientific men generally leave to common ignorance, or to moral and theological tradition, all the interests and activitiesof man, other than those which are physical or physiological. And someof them are even aware, that if they could find the physical equation ofman, or, through their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in manthe sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligentlife within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of manand the world, would remain precisely where it was. The explanationwould still begin with mind and end there. The principles of thematerialistic explanation of the world would still be derived fromintelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and completedscience would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The charge ofanthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would prove toomuch. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it. And, asdirected against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it hasinadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the world, andis not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent of the other. 

On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now assailphilosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the world, somuch as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The best men ofscience, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind of dualism ofmatter and spirit, and to leave morality and religion, art andphilosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed. Mr. Huxley, forinstance, and some others, offer two philosophical solutions, oneproceeding from the material world and the other from the sensations andother "facts of consciousness. " They say that we may either explain manas a natural phenomenon, or the world as a mental one. 

But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these explanations istrue. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they are different. Andneither of them can be adopted without very serious consequences. Itwould require considerable hardihood to suggest that natural scienceshould be swept away in favour of psychology, which would be done if theone view held by Mr. Huxley were true. And, in my opinion, it requiresquite as much hardihood to suggest the adoption of a theory that makesmorality and religion illusory, which would be done were the other viewvalid. 

As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be held byany one who is interested _both_ in the success of natural science andin the spiritual development of mankind. We are constrained rather tosay that, if these rival lines of thought lead us to deny either theouter world of things, or the world of thought and morality, then theymust both be wrong. They are not "explanations" but false theories, ifthey lead to such conclusions as these. And, instead of holding them upto the world as the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep theminto the dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new pointof view. 

And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only byidealists, but by scientific men themselves, --did they only comprehendtheir own main tendency and method. The impulse towards unity, which isthe very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one direction by ahopeless dualism, just breaks out in another. Subjective idealism, thatis, the theory that things are nothing but phenomena of the individual'sconsciousness, that the world is really all inside the philosopher, isnow known by most people to end in self-contradiction; and materialismis also known to begin with it. And there are not many people sanguineenough to believe with Mr. Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if weadd two self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately, we shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which doesnot philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimitydenying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that isnot of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It isnecessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between thingsand thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is broughtabout may not be known; but, that there is the connection between realthings and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an ill-starredperversity which leads men to deny such a connection, merely becausethey have not found out how it is established. 

A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of ourtime--a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of development isbreaking down the division between mind and matter, as it is breakingdown all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy, and physics atone extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at the other, combinein asserting the idea of the universe as a unity which is alwaysevolving its content, and bringing its secret potencies to the light. Itis true that these sciences have not linked hands as yet. We cannot getfrom chemistry to biology without a leap, or from physiology topsychology without another. But no one will postulate a rift rightthrough being. The whole tendency of modern science implies the oppositeof such a conception. History is striving to trace continuity betweenthe civilized man and the savage. Psychology is making towards ajunction with physiology and general biology, biology with chemistry, and chemistry with physics. That there is an unbroken continuity inexistence is becoming a postulate of modern science, almost as truly asthe "universality of law" or "the uniformity of nature. " Nor is thepostulate held less firmly because the evidence for the continuity ofnature is not yet complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed intophysics; biology at present shows no sign of giving up itscharacteristic conception of life, and the former science is as yetquite unable to deal with that peculiar phenomenon. The facts ofconsciousness have not been resolved into nervous action, and, so far, mind has not been shown to be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, allthese sciences are beating against the limits which separate them, andnew suggestions of connection between natural life and its inorganicenvironment are continually discovered. The sciences are boring towardseach other, and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seemsreasonable to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken wayupwards may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages ofexistence to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life. 

Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical andreligious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the chasmbetween spirit and nature is viewed with no little apprehension. It issupposed that if evolution were established as a universal law, and theunity of being were proved, the mental and moral life of man would bedegraded into a complex manifestation of mere physical force. And weeven find religious men rejoicing at the failure of science to bridgethe gap between the inorganic and the organic, and between natural andself-conscious life; as if the validity of religion depended upon themaintenance of their separating boundaries. But no religion that is freefrom superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure ofknowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see howbreaks in the continuity of being can be established, when every livingplant confutes the absolute difference between the organic andinorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into theformer; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and matter, "when every human being is relating himself to the outer world in all histhoughts and actions. And religion is the very last form of thoughtwhich could profit from such a proof of absolute distinctions, were itpossible. In fact, as we have seen, religion, in so far as it demands aperfect and absolute being as the object of worship, is vitallyconcerned in maintaining the unity of the world. It must assume thatmatter, in its degree, reveals the same principle which, in a higherform, manifests itself in spirit. 

But closer investigation will show that the real ground for suchapprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, whichevolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. Theapprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity assertedby evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of existenceinto the lower. It is believed that, if the application of developmentto facts were successfully carried out, the organic would be shown to benothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life nothing but aphysiological process, and religion, morality, and art, nothing butproducts of the highly complex motion of highly complex aggregates ofphysical atoms. 

It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as tendingtowards such a materialistic conclusion. This is the view which manyscientific investigators have themselves taken of their work; and someof their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert Spencer, have, with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea of evolution inthis manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that science isgenerally far more successful in employing its constructive ideas, thanit is in rendering an account of them. In fact, it is not its businessto examine its categories: that task properly belongs to philosophy, andit is not a superfluous one. But, so long as the employment of thecategories in the special province of a particular science yields validresults, scientific explorers and those who attach, and rightly attach, so much value to their discoveries, are very unwilling to believe thatthese categories are not valid universally. The warning voice ofphilosophy is not heeded, when it charges natural science with applyingits conceptions to materials to which they are inadequate; and itsexamination of the categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, butalso a useless, activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise fromthe analysis of our working ideas? The world looked for causes, andfound them, when it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume, no one had shown what causality meant, and the explanation which heoffered is now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it isrejected by philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged inexposing the fallacies of the theory of association as held by Hume, science has gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishinga theory of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law ofcausality by tracing it into a deeper law of nature. 

There is some force in this argument, but it cuts both ways. For, evenif it be admitted that the category was successfully applied in thepast, it is also admitted that it was applied without being understood;and it cannot now be questioned that the philosophers were right inrejecting it as the final explanation of the relation of objects to eachother, and in pointing to other and higher connecting ideas. And thisconsideration should go some way towards convincing evolutionists that, though they may be able successfully to apply the idea of development toparticular facts, this does not guarantee the soundness of their view ofit as an instrument of thought, or of the nature of the final resultswhich it is destined to achieve. Hence, without any disparagement to thenew extension which science has received by the use of this new idea, itmay be maintained that the ordinary view of its tendency and mission iserroneous. 

"The prevailing method of explaining the world, " says Professor Caird, "may be described as an attempt to level 'downwards. ' The doctrine ofdevelopment, interpreted as that idea usually is interpreted, supportsthis view, as making it necessary to trace back higher and more complexto lower or simpler forms of being; for the most obvious way ofaccomplishing this task is to show analytically that there is reallynothing more in the former than in the latter. "[A] "Divorced frommatter, " asks Professor Tyndall, "where is life to be found? Whateverour _faith_ may say our _knowledge_ shows them to be indissolublyjoined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates themysterious _control of Mind by Matter_. Trace the line of life backwardsand see it approaching more and more to what we call the _purelyphysical condition_. "[B] And then, rising to the height of his subject, or even above it, he proclaims, "By an intellectual necessity I crossthe boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matterwhich we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding ourprofessed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered withopprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life. "[C] Alittle further on, speaking in the name of science, and on behalf of hisscientific fellow-workers (with what right is a little doubtful), headds--"We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology, the entire domain ofcosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe uponthe domain of science, must, _in so far as they do this, _ submit to itscontrol, and relinquish all thought of controlling it. " But if scienceis to control the knowable world, he generously leaves the remainder forreligion. He will not deprive it of a faith in "a Power absolutelyinscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our days as in thedays of Job can a man by searching find this Power out. " And, now thathe has left this empty sphere of the unknown to religion, he feelsjustified in adding, "There is, you will observe, no very rankmaterialism here. "

[Footnote A: _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, Vol. I. P. 34]

[Footnote B: _Address to the British Association_, 1874, p. 54. ]

[Footnote C: _Belfast Address_, 1874. ]

 "Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out of the way, With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing to sway. "[A]

[Footnote A: Clerk Maxwell: "_Notes of the President's Address, _"British Association, 1874. ]

Now these declarations of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhatambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking"illustrate the control of mind by matter, " and "that the line of lifetraced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition, " it is alittle difficult to avoid the conclusion that he regards science asdestined. 

 "To tread the world Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth Uniform mound, whereon to plant its flag. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

For the conclusion of the whole argument seems to be, that all _we knowas facts_ are mere forms of matter; although the stubborn refusal ofconsciousness to be resolved into natural force, and its power ofconstructing for itself a world of symbols, gives science no littletrouble, and forces it to acknowledge complete ignorance of the natureof the power from which all comes. 

 "So roll things to the level which you love, That you could stand at ease there and survey The universal Nothing undisgraced By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire I' the distance! "[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_. ]

Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of thegoal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposedtendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, andearliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition andghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is, inessence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in likemanner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has beentraced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the vengeance of asavage chief. A similar process in the same direction reduces the lovedivine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust; somewhat sublimated, it is true, in its highest forms, but not fundamentally changed. 

 "Philosophers deduce you chastity Or shame, from just the fact that at the first Whoso embraced a woman in the field, Threw club down and forewent his brains beside; So, stood a ready victim in the reach Of any brother-savage, club in hand. Hence saw the use of going out of sight In wood or cave to prosecute his loves. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Bishop Blouhram's Apology_. ]

And when the sacred things of life are treated in this manner--whenmoral conduct is showed to be evolved by a continuous process from"conduct in general, " the conduct of an "infusorium or a cephalopod, " oreven of wind-mills or water-wheels, it is not surprising if theauthority of the moral law seems to be undermined, and that "devoutsouls" are apprehensive of the results of science. "Does law so analyzedcoerce you much?" asks Browning. 

The derivation of spiritual from natural laws thus appears to be fatalto the former; and religious teachers naturally think that it isnecessary for their cause to snap the links of the chain of evolution, and, like Professor Drummond, to establish absolute gaps, not onlybetween the inorganic and the organic worlds, but also between theself-conscious life of man and the mysterious, spiritual life of Christ, or God. But it seems to me that, in their antagonism to evolution, religious teachers are showing the same incapacity to distinguishbetween their friends and their foes, which they previously manifestedin their acceptance of the Kantian doctrine of "things inthemselves, "--a doctrine which placed God and the soul beyond the powerof speculative reason either to prove or disprove. It is, however, already recognized that the attempt of Mansel and Hamilton to degradehuman reason for the behoof of faith was really a veiled agnosticism;and a little reflection must show that the idea of evolution, trulyinterpreted, in no wise threatens the degradation of man, or theoverthrow of his spiritual interests. On the contrary, this idea is, inall the history of thought, the first constructive hypothesis which isadequate to the uses of ethics and religion. By means of it, we may hopeto solve many of the problems arising from the nature of knowledge andmoral conduct, which the lower category of cause turned into pureenigmas. It seems, indeed, to contain the promise of establishing thescience of man, as intelligent, on a firm basis; on which we may raise asuperstructure, comparable in strength and superior in worth, to that ofthe science of nature. And, even if the moral science must, likephilosophy, always return to the beginning--must, that is, from thenecessity of its nature, and not from any complete failure--it willstill begin again at a higher level now that the idea of evolution is inthe field. 

It now remains to show in what way the idea of evolution leaves room forreligion and morality; or, in other words, to show how, so far fromdegrading man to the level of the brute condition, and running life downinto "purely physical conditions, " it contains the promise ofestablishing that idealistic view of the world, which is maintained byart and religion. 

In order to show this, it is necessary that the idea of evolution shouldbe used fearlessly, and applied to all facts that can in any way comeunder it. It must, in other words, be used as a category of thought, whose application is universal; so that, if it is valid at all as atheory, it is valid of all finite things. For the question we aredealing with is not the truth of the hypothesis of a particular science, but the truth of a hypothesis as to the relation of all objects in theworld, including man himself. We must not be deterred from thisuniversal application by the fact that we cannot, as yet, prove itstruth in every detail. No scientific hypothesis ever has exhausted itsdetails. I consider, therefore, that Mr. Tyndall had a complete right to"cross the boundary of the experimental evidence by an intellectualnecessity"; for the necessity comes from the assumption of a possibleexplanation by the aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against sucha procedure to insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolutecontinuity of matter and physical life, or that the dead begets theliving. The hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; itis only not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not, as yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these, the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time; andhis attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr. Tyndall didon the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis. 

But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr. Huxley, has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the developingprocess, and confined the sphere in which evolution is applicable, tonatural objects. Between objects and the subject, even when both subjectand object are man himself, there lies "an impassable gulf. "

Even to try "to comprehend the connection between thought and thing isabsurd, like the effort of a man trying to lift himself by his ownwaist-band. " Our states of self-consciousness are symbols only--symbolsof an outside entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know onlythese states; we only _infer_ "that anything answering to ourimpressions exists outside of ourselves. " And it is impossible tojustify even that inference; for, if we can only know states ofconsciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or thatthere is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this theory, ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly pointing outthat, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is, you will observe, no very rank materialism here, " Mr. Tyndall forgets that he hasdestroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced evolution into alaw of "an outside entity, " of which we can never know anything, and anyinference regarding which violates every law of thought. 

It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory, whichMr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else it isuseless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature which isthe phantom of the individual's mind. " I prefer the science of Mr. Tyndall (and of Mr. Huxley, too) to his philosophy; and he would haveescaped materialism more effectively, if he had remained faithful to histheory of evolution. It is a disloyalty, not only to science, but tothought, to cast away our categories when they seem to implyinconvenient consequences. They must be valid universally, if they arevalid at all. 

Mr. Tyndall contends that nature makes man, and he finds evidence in thefact that we eat and drink, "of the control of mind by matter. " Now, itseems to me, that _if_ nature makes man, then nature makes man'sthoughts also. His sensations, feelings, ideas, notions, being those ofa naturally-evolved agent, are revelations of the potency of the primalmatter, just as truly as are the buds, flowers, and fruits of a tree. Nodoubt, we cannot as yet "comprehend the connection" between nervousaction and sensation, any more than we can comprehend the connectionbetween inorganic and organic existence. But, if the absence of"experimental evidence" does not disprove the hypothesis in the onecase, it can not disprove it in the other. There are two crucial pointsin which the theory has not been established. 

But, in both cases alike, there is the same kind of evidence that theconnection exists; although in neither case can we, as yet, discoverwhat it is. Plants live by changing inorganic elements into organicstructure; and man is intelligent only in so far as he crosses over theboundary between subject and object, and knows the world without him. There is no "impassable gulf separating the subject and object"; ifthere were we could not know anything of either. There are not twoworlds--the one of thoughts, the other of things--which are absolutelyexclusive of each other, but one universe in which thought and realitymeet. Mr. Tyndall thinks that it is an inference (and an inference overan impassable gulf!) that anything answering to our impressions existsoutside ourselves. "The question of the external world is the greatbattleground of metaphysics, " he quotes approvingly from Mr. J. S. Mill. But the question of the external world is not whether that world exists;it is, how are we to account for our knowledge that it does exist. Theinference is not from thoughts to things, nor from things to thoughts, but from a partially known world to a systematic theory of that world. Philosophy is not engaged on the foolish enterprise of trying todiscover whether the world exists, or whether we know that it exists;its problem is how to account for our knowledge. It asks what must thenature of things be, seeing that they are known; and what is the natureof thought, seeing that it knows facts?

There is no hope whatsoever for ethics, or religion, or philosophy--nohope even for science--in a theory which would apply evolution all theway up from inorganic matter to life, but which would postulate anabsolute break at consciousness. The connection between thought andthings is there to begin with, whether we can account for it or not; ifit were not, then natural science would be impossible. It would bepalpably irrational even to try to find out the nature of things bythinking. The only science would be psychology, and even that would bethe science of "symbols of an unknown entity. " What symbols of anunknown can signify, or how an unknown can produce symbols of itselfacross an impassable gulf--Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Tyndall haveyet to inform us. 

It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the division betweenthought and matter, which is admitted by these writers, is often graspedat by their opponents, as a means of warding off the results which theydraw from the theory of evolution. When science breaks its sword, religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not at once evident thatif this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge would be a chimera; forthere would be no outer world at all, not even a phenomenal one, tosupply an object for it. We _must_ postulate the ultimate unity of allbeings with each other and with the mind that knows them, just becausewe are intellectual and moral beings; and to destroy this unity is to"kill reason itself, as it were, in the eye, " as Milton said. 

Now, evolution not only postulates unity, or the unbroken continuity ofall existence, but it also negates all differences, except those whichare expressions of that unity. It is not the mere assertion of asubstratum under qualities; but it implies that the substratumpenetrates into the qualities, and manifests itself in them. That whichdevelops--be it plant, child, or biological kingdom--is, at every stagefrom lowest to highest, a concrete unity of all its differences; and inthe whole history of its process its actual content is always the same. The environment of the plant evokes that content, but it adds nothing toit. No addition of anything absolutely new, no external aggregation, noinsertion of anything alien into a growing thing, is possible. What itis now, it was in the beginning; and what it will be, it is now. Granting the hypothesis of evolution, there can be no quarrel with theview that the crude beginnings of things, matter in its most nebulousstate, contains potentially all the rich variety of both natural andspiritual life. 

But this continuity of all existence may be interpreted in two verydifferent ways. It may lead us either to radically change our notions ofmind and its activities, or "to radically change our notions of matter. "We may take as the principle of explanation, either the beginning, orthe end of the process of development. We may say of the simple andcrass, "There is all that your rich universe really means"; or we maysay of the spiritual activities of man, "This is what your crudebeginning really was. " We may explain the complex by the simple, or thesimple by the complex. We may analyze the highest back into the lowest, or we may follow the lowest, by a process of synthesis, up to thehighest. 

And one of the most important of all questions for morality and religionis the question, which of these two methods is valid. If out of crassmatter is evolved all animal and spiritual life, does that prove life tobe nothing but matter; or does it not rather show that what we, in ourignorance, took to be mere matter was really something much greater? If"crass matter" contains all this promise and potency, by what right dowe still call it "crass"? It is manifestly impossible to treat thepotencies, assumed to lie in a thing that grows, as if they were of nosignificance; first, to assert that such potencies exist, in saying thatthe object develops; and then, to neglect them, and to regard the effectas constituted merely of its simplest elements. Either these potenciesare not in the object, or else the object has in it, and is, at thefirst, more than it appears to be. Either the object does not grow, orthe lowest stage of its being is no explanation of its true nature. 

If we wish to know what the forms of natural life mean, we look in vainto their primary state. We must watch the evolution and revelation ofthe secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the ascending cyclesof the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution, when it is notmuddled, is synthetic--not analytic; it explains the simplest in thelight of the complex, the beginning in the light of the end, and not_vice versa_. In a word, it follows the ways of nature, the footsteps offact, instead of inventing a wilful backward path of its own. And natureexplains by gradually expanding. If we hearken to nature, and not to thevoice of illusory preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the laststage, "Here is the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what itreally was; for the power which lay dormant has pushed itself intolight, through bud and flower and leaf and fruit. " The reality of agrowing thing is its highest form of being. The last explains the first, but not the first the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yetactual, but mere potency; and we could never know even the potency, except in the light of its own actualization. 

From this correction of the abstract view of development momentousconsequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, anorganic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency intoactuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation even ofthe lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on principleswhich are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level up and notlevel down": we must not only deny that matter can explain spirit, butwe must say that even matter itself cannot be fully understood, exceptas an element in a spiritual world. "[A]

[Footnote A: Professor Caird, _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, p. 35. ]

That the idea of evolution, even when applied in this consistent way, has difficulties of its own, it is scarcely necessary to say. But thereis nothing in it which imperils the ethical and religious interests ofhumanity, or tends to reduce man into a natural phenomenon. Instead ofdegrading man, it lifts nature into a manifestation of spirit. If itwere established, if every link of the endless chain were discovered andthe continuity of existence were irrefragably proved, science would notoverthrow idealism, but it would rather vindicate it. It would justify_in detail_ the attempt of poetry and religion and philosophy, tointerpret all being as the "transparent vesture" of reason, or love, orwhatever other power in the world is regarded as highest. 

I have now arrived at the conclusion that was sought. I have tried toshow, not only that the attempt to interpret nature in terms of man isnot a superstitious anthropomorphism, but that such an interpretation isimplied in all rational thought. In other words, self-consciousness isthe key to all the problems of nature. Science, in its progress, isgradually substituting one category for the other, and every one ofthese categories is at once a law of thought and a law of things asknown. Each category, successively adopted, lifts nature more to thelevel of man; and the last category of modern thought, namely, development, constrains us so to modify our views of nature, as toregard it as finally explicable only in the terms of spirit. Thus, themovement of science is towards idealism. Instead of lowering man, itelevates nature into a potency of that which is highest and best in man. It represents the life of man, in the language of philosophy, as thereturn of the highest to itself; or in the language of our poet, and ofreligion, as a manifestation of infinite love. The explanation of naturefrom the principle of love, if it errs, errs "because it is notanthropomorphic enough, " not because it is too anthropomorphic; it isnot too high and concrete a principle, but too low and abstract. 

It now remains to show that the poet, in employing the idea ofevolution, was aware of its upward direction. I have already quoted afew passages which indicate that he had detected the false use of it. Ishall now quote a few others in which he shows a consciousness of itstrue meaning:

 "'Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact Made plain as pike-staff?' modern Science asks. 'That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump Once on a time; he kept an after course Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast, Till he attained to be an ape at last, Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock In aught the natural pride. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

"Not at all, " the poet interrupts the man of science: "Friend, banishfear!"

 "I like the thought He should have lodged me once I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement, The mansion and the palace; made me learn The feel o' the first, before I found myself Loftier i' the last. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

This way upward from the lowest stage through every other to thehighest, that is, the way of development, so far from lowering us to thebrute level, is the only way for us to attain to the true highest, namely, the all-complete. 

 "But grant me time, give me the management And manufacture of a model me, Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw, -- Why, there's no social grade, the sordidest, My embryo potentate should brink and scape. King, all the better he was cobbler once, He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes Life to who sweeps the doorway. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

But then, unfortunately, we have no time to make our kings in this way, "You cut probation short, And, being half-instructed, on the stage You shuffle through your part as best you can. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

God, however, "takes time. " He makes man pass his apprenticeship in allthe forms of being. Nor does the poet

 "Refuse to follow farther yet I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower, Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

It is, indeed, only on the supposition of having been thus evolved frominanimate being that he is able to account

 "For many a thrill Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers Called Nature: animate, inanimate, In parts or in the whole, there's something there Man-like that somehow meets the man in me. "[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_. ]

These passages make it clear that the poet recognized that the idea ofdevelopment "levels up, " and that he makes an intelligent, and not aperverted and abstract use of this instrument of thought. He sees eachhigher stage carrying within it the lower, the present storing up thepast; he recognizes that the process is a self-enriching one. He knowsit to be no degradation of the higher that it has been in the lower; forhe distinguishes between that life, which is continuous amidst thefleeting forms, and the temporary tenements, which it makes use ofduring the process of ascending. 

 "From first to last of lodging, I was I, And not at all the place that harboured me. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

When nature is thus looked upon from the point of view of its finalattainment, in the light of the self-consciousness into which itultimately breaks, a new dignity is added to every preceding phase. Thelowest ceases to be lowest, except in the sense that its promise is notfulfilled and its potency not actualized; for, throughout the wholeprocess, the activity streams from the highest. It is that which isabout to be which guides the growing thing and gives it unity. The finalcause is the efficient cause; the distant purpose is the ever-presentenergy; the last is always first. 

Nor does the poet shrink from calling this highest, this last which isalso first, by its highest name, --God. 

 "He dwells in all, From, life's minute beginnings, up at last To man--the consummation of this scheme Of being, the completion of this sphere Of life. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

"All tended to mankind, " he said, after reviewing the whole process ofnature in _Paracelsus_, "And, man produced, all has its end thus far: But in completed man begins anew A tendency to God. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

There is nowhere a break in the continuity. God is at the beginning, Hisrapturous presence is seen in all the processes of nature, His power andknowledge and love work in the mind of man, and all history is Hisrevelation of Himself. 

The gap which yawns for ordinary thought between animate and inanimate, between nature and spirit, between man and God, does not baffle thepoet. At the stage of human life, which is "the grand result" ofnature's blind process, "A supplementary reflux of light, Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains Each back step in the circle. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind. 

 "Man, once descried, imprints for ever His presence on all lifeless things. "[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_. ]

The self-consciousness of man is the point where "all the scattered raysmeet"; and "the dim fragments, " the otherwise meaningless manifold, thedispersed activities of nature, are lifted into a kosmos by the activityof intelligence. In its light, the forces of nature are found to be, notblind nor purposeless, but "hints and previsions"

 "Strewn confusedly everywhere about The inferior natures, and all lead up higher, All shape out dimly the superior race, The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, And man appears at last. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

In this way, and in strict accordance with the principle of evolution, the poet turns back at each higher stage to re-illumine in a broaderlight what went before, --just as we know the seedling after it is grown;just as, with every advance in life, we interpret the past anew, andturn the mixed ore of action into pure metal by the reflection whichdraws the false from the true. 

 "Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. ]

As youth attains its meaning in age, so does the unconscious process ofnature come to its meaning in man And old age, "Still within this life Though lifted o'er its strife, "

is able to

 "Discern, compare, pronounce at last, This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain";[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

so man is able to penetrate beneath the apparently chaotic play ofphenomena, and find in them law, and beauty, and goodness. The lawswhich he finds by thought are not his inventions, but his discoveries. The harmonies are in the organ, if the artist only knows how to elicitthem. Nay, the connection is still more intimate. It is in the thoughtof man that silent nature finds its voice; it blooms into "meaning, "significance, thought, in him, as the plant shows its beauty in theflower. Nature is making towards humanity, and in humanity it finds_itself_. 

 "Striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Emerson_. ]

The geologist, physicist, chemist, by discovering the laws of nature, donot bind unconnected phenomena; but they refute the hasty conclusion ofsensuous thought, that the phenomena ever were unconnected. Men ofscience do not introduce order into chance and chaos, but show thatthere never was chance or chaos. The poet does not make the worldbeautiful, but finds the beauty that is dwelling there. Without him, indeed, the beauty would not be, any more than the life of the tree isbeautiful until it has evolved its potencies into the outward form. Nevertheless, he is the expression of what was before, and the beautywas there in potency, awaiting its expression. "Only let his thoughts beof equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture, " said Emerson. 

 "The winds Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh, Never a senseless gust now man is born. The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts, A secret they assemble to discuss When the sun drops behind their trunks. 

 * * * * *

 "The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour, Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn Beneath a warm moon like a happy face. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

Such is the transmuting power of imagination, that there is "nothing butdoth suffer change into something rich and strange"; and yet theimagination, when loyal to itself, only sees more deeply into the truthof things, and gets a closer and fuller hold of facts. 

But, although the human mind thus heals the breach between nature andspirit, and discovers the latter in the former, still it is not in thisway that Browning finally establishes his idealism. For him, theprinciple working in all things is not reason, but love. It is from lovethat all being first flowed; into it all returns through man; and in all"the wide compass which is fetched, " through the infinite variety offorms of being, love is the permanent element and the true essence. Nature is on its way back to God, gathering treasure as it goes. Thestatic view is not true to facts; it is development that for the poetexplains the nature of things; and development is the evolution of love. Love is for Browning the highest, richest conception man can form. It isour idea of that which is perfect; we cannot even imagine anythingbetter. And the idea of evolution necessarily explains the world as thereturn of the highest to itself. The universe is homeward bound. 

Now, whether love is the highest principle or not, I shall not inquireat present. My task in this chapter has been to try to show that theidea of evolution drives us onward towards some highest conception, andthen uses that conception as a principle to explain all things. If manis veritably higher as a physical organism than the bird or reptile, then biology, if it proceeds according to the principles of evolution, _must_ seek the meaning of the latter in the former, and make the wholekingdom of life a process towards man. "Man is no upstart in thecreation. His limbs are only a more exquisite organization--say ratherthe finish--of the rudimental forms that have already been sweeping thesea and creeping in the mud. " And the same way of thought applies to manas a spiritual agent. If spirit be higher than matter, and if love bespirit at its best, then the principle of evolution leaves no option tothe scientific thinker, but to regard all things as potentially spirit, and all the phenomena of the world as manifestations of love. Evolutionnecessarily combines all the objects to which it is applied into aunity. It knits all the infinite forms of natural life into an organismof organisms, so that it is a universal life which really lives in allanimate beings. "Each animal or vegetable form remembers the nextinferior and predicts the next higher. There is one animal, one plant, one matter, and one force. " In its still wider application by poetry andphilosophy, the idea of evolution gathers all being into oneself-centred totality, and makes all finite existence a movement within, and a movement of, that final perfection which, although last in orderof time, is first in order of potency, --the _prius_ of all things, theactive energy _in_ all things, and the _reality_ of all things. It isthe doctrine of the immanence of God; and it reveals "the effort of God, of the supreme intellect, in the extreme frontier of His universe. "

In pronouncing, as Browning frequently does, that "after last comesfirst" and "what God once blessed cannot prove accursed"; in theboldness of the faith whereby he makes all the inferior grades of beinginto embodiments of the supreme good; in resolving the evils of humanlife, the sorrow, strife, and sin of man into means of man's promotion, he is only applying, in a thorough manner, the principle on which allmodern speculation rests. His conclusions may shock common-sense; andthey may seem to stultify not only our observation of facts, but thetestimony of our moral consciousness. But I do not know of any principleof speculation which, when elevated into a universal principle ofthought, will not do the same; and this is why the greatest poets andphilosophers seem to be touched with a divine madness. Still, if this bemadness, there is a method in it. We cannot escape from its logic, except by denying the idea of evolution--the hypothesis by means ofwhich modern thought aims, and in the main successfully aims, atreducing the variety of existence, and the chaos of ordinary experience, into an order-ruled world and a kosmos of articulated knowledge. 

The new idea of evolution differs from that of universal causation, towhich even the ignorance of our own day has learnt to submit, in thismainly--it does not leave things on the level on which it finds them. Both cause and evolution assert the unity of being, which, indeed, everyone must assume--even sceptics and pessimists; but developmentrepresents that unity as self-enriching; so that its true nature isrevealed, only in the highest form of existence which man can conceive. The attempt of poets and philosophers to establish a universal synthesisby means of evolution, differs from the work which is done by men ofscience, only in the extent of its range and the breadth of its results. It is not "idealism, " but the scepticism which, in our day, conceals itsreal nature under the name of dualism or agnosticism, that is at warwith the inner spirit of science. "Not only, " we may say of Browning asit was said of Emerson by Professor Tyndall, "is his religious senseentirely undaunted by the discoveries of science; but all suchdiscoveries he comprehends and assimilates. By him scientificconceptions are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmerhues of an ideal world. " And this he does without any distortion of thetruth. For natural science, to one who understands its main tendency, does not militate against philosophy, art, and religion; nor threaten tooverturn a metaphysic whose principle is truth, or beauty, or goodness. Rather, it is gradually eliminating the discord of fragmentaryexistence, and making the harmony of the world more and more audible tomankind. It is progressively proving that the unity, of which we are allobscurely conscious from the first, actually holds in the whole regionof its survey. The idea of evolution is reconciling science with art andreligion, in an idealistic conception of the universe. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 

 "Let him, therefore, who would arrive at knowledge of nature, train his moral sense, let him act and conceive in accordance with the noble essence of his soul; and, as if of herself, nature will become open to him. Moral action is that great and only experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Novalis_. ]

In the last chapter, I tried to set forth some considerations thatjustify the attempt to interpret the world by a spiritual principle. Theconception of development, which modern science and philosophy assume asa starting-point for their investigation, was shown to imply that thelowest forms of existence can be explained, only as stages in theself-realization of that which is highest. This idea "levels upwards, "and points to self-consciousness as the ultimate truth of all things. Inother words, it involves that all interpretation of the world isanthropomorphic, in the sense that what constitutes thought constitutesthings, and, therefore, that the key to nature is man. 

In propounding this theory of love, and establishing an idealism, Browning is in agreement with the latest achievement of modern thought. For, if the principle of evolution be granted, love is a far moreadequate hypothesis for the explanation of the nature of things, thanany purely physical principle. Nay, science itself, in so far as itpresupposes evolution, tends towards an idealism of this type. Whetherlove be the best expression for that highest principle, which isconceived as the truth of being, and whether Browning's treatment of itis consistent and valid, I do not as yet inquire. Before attempting thattask, it must be seen to what extent, and in what way, he applies thehypothesis of universal love to the particular facts of life. For thepresent, I take it as admitted that the hypothesis is legitimate, as anhypothesis; it remains to ask, with what success, if any, we may hope, by its means, to solve the contradictions of life, and to gather itsconflicting phenomena into the unity of an intelligible system. Thistask cannot be accomplished within our limits, except in a very partialmanner. I can attempt to meet only a few of the more evident andpressing difficulties that present themselves, and I can do that only ina very general way. 

The first of these difficulties, or, rather, the main difficulty fromwhich all others spring, is that the hypothesis of universal love isincompatible with the existence of any kind of evil, whether natural ormoral. Of this, Browning was well aware. He knew that he had broughtupon himself the hard task of showing that pain, weakness, ignorance, failure, doubt, death, misery, and vice, in all their complex forms, canfind their legitimate place in a scheme of love. And there is nothingmore admirable in his attitude, or more inspiring in his teaching, thanthe manly frankness with which he endeavours to confront the manifoldmiseries of human life, and to constrain them to yield, as theirultimate meaning and reality, some spark of good. 

But, as we have seen, there is a portion of this task in the dischargeof which Browning is drawn beyond the strict limits of art. Neither themagnificent boldness of his religious faith, nor the penetration of hisartistic insight, although they enabled him to deal successfully withthe worst samples of human evil, as in _The Ring and the Book_, coulddissipate the gloom which reflection gathers around the general problem. Art cannot answer the questions of philosophy. The difficulties thatcritical reason raises reason alone can lay. Nevertheless, the poet wasforced by his reflective impulse, to meet that problem in the form inwhich it presents itself in the region of metaphysics. He was consciousof the presuppositions within which his art worked, and he sought tojustify them. Into this region we must now follow him, so as to examinehis theory of life, not merely as it is implied in the concretecreations of his art, but as it is expressed in those later poems, inwhich he attempts to deal directly with the speculative difficultiesthat crowd around the conception of evil. 

To the critic of a philosophy, there is hardly more than one task ofsupreme importance. It is that of determining the precise point fromwhich the theory he examines takes its departure; for, when the centralconception is clearly grasped, it will be generally found that it rulesall the rest. The superstructure of philosophic edifices is usually puttogether in a sufficiently solid manner--it is the foundation that givesway. Hence Hegel, who, whatever may be thought of his own theory, wascertainly the most profound critic of philosophy since Aristotle, generally concentrates his attack on the preliminary hypothesis. Hebrings down the erroneous system by removing its foundation-stone. Hiscriticism of Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling may almost be said tobe gathered into a single sentence. 

Browning has made no secret of his central conception. It is the idea ofan immanent or "immundate" love. And that love, we have shown, isconceived by him as the supreme moral motive, the ultimate essence andend of all self-conscious activity, the veritable nature of both man andGod. 

 "Denn das Leben ist die Liebe, Und des Lebens Leben Geist. "

His philosophy of human life rests on the idea that it is therealization of a moral purpose, which is a loving purpose. To him thereis no supreme good, except good character; and the foundation of thatcharacter by man and in man is the ultimate purpose, and, therefore, thetrue meaning of all existence. 

 "I search but cannot see What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its own For ever, by some mode whereby shall be made known The gain of every life. Death reads the title clear-- What each soul for itself conquered from out things here: Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lv. ]

In this passage, Browning gives expression to an idea which continuallyreappears in his pages--that human life, in its essence, is movement tomoral goodness through opposition. His fundamental conception of thehuman spirit is that it is a process, and not a fixed fact. "Man, " hesays, "was made to grow not stop. "

 "Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns Because he lives, which is to be a man, Set to instruct himself by his past self. "[B]

[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

 "By such confession straight he falls Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast, Made to know that he can know and not more: Lower than God who knows all and can all, Higher than beasts which know and can so far As each beast's limit, perfect to an end, Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more; While man knows partly but conceives beside, Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, And in this striving, this converting air Into a solid he may grasp and use, Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's and not the beasts': God is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

It were easy to multiply passages which show that his ultimatedeliverance regarding man is, not that he is, nor that he is not, butthat he is ever becoming. Man is ever at the point of contradictionbetween the actual and ideal, and moving from the latter to the former. Strife constitutes him. He is a war of elements; "hurled from change tochange unceasingly. " But rest is death; for it is the cessation of thespiritual activity, whose essence is acquirement, not mere possession, whether in knowledge or in goodness. 

 "Man must pass from old to new, From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

Were the movement to stop, and the contradiction between the actual andideal reconciled, man would leave man's estate, and pass under "angel'slaw. "

 "Indulging every instinct of the soul There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

But as long as he is man, he has

 "Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become. "

In _Paracelsus_, _Fifine at the Fair_, _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, and many of his other poems, Browning deals with the problem of humanlife from the point of view of development. And it is this point ofview, consistently held, which enables him to throw a new light on thewhole subject of ethics. For, if man be veritably a being in process ofevolution, if he be a permanent that always changes from earliestchildhood to old age, if he be a living thing, a potency in process ofactualization, then no fixed distinctions made with reference to him canbe true. If, for instance, it be asked whether man is rational orirrational, free or bound, good or evil, God or brute, the true answer, if he is veritably a being moving from ignorance to knowledge, fromwickedness to virtue, from bondage to freedom, is, that he is at onceneither of these alternatives and both. All hard terms of division, whenapplied to a subject which grows, are untrue. If the life of man is aself-enriching process, if he is _becoming_ good, and rational, andfree, then at no point in the movement is it possible to pass fixed anddefinite judgments upon him. He must be estimated by his direction andmomentum, by the whence and whither of his life. There is a sense inwhich man is from the first and always good, rational and free; for itis only by the exercise of reason and freedom that he exists as man. Butthere is also a sense in which he is none of these; for he is at thefirst only a potency not yet actualized. He is not rational, butbecoming rational; not good, but becoming good; not free, but aspiringtowards freedom. It is his prayer that "in His light, he may see lighttruly, and in His service find perfect freedom. "

In this frank assumption of the point of view of development. Browningsuggests the question whether the endless debate regarding freedom, andnecessity, and other moral terms, may not spring from the fact, thatboth of the opposing schools of ethics are fundamentally unfaithful tothe subject of their inquiry. They are treating a developing realityfrom an abstract point of view, and taking for granted, --what cannot betrue of man, if he grows in intellectual power and moral goodness--thathe is _either_ good or evil, _either_ rational or irrational, _either_free or bond, at every moment in the process. They are treating man froma static, instead of from a kinetic point of view, and forgetting thatit is his business to acquire the moral and intellectual freedom, whichhe has potentially from the first--

 "Some fitter way express Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed Is past, gives way before Life's best and last, The all-including Future!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Gerard de Lairesse_. ]

But, whether or not the new point of view renders some of the olddisputations of ethics meaningless, it is certain that Browning viewedmoral life as a growth through conflict. 

 "What were life Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife Through the ambiguous Present to the goal Of some all-reconciling Future?"[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

To become, to develop, to actualize by reaction against the natural andmoral environment, is the meaning both of the self and of the world itworks upon. "We are here to learn the good of peace through strife, oflove through hate, and reach knowledge by ignorance. "

Now, since the conception of development is a self-contradictory one, or, in other words, since it necessarily implies the conflict of theideal and actual in all life, and in every instant of its history, itremains for us to determine more fully what are the warring elements inhuman nature. What is the nature of this life of man, which, like alllife, is self-evolving; and by conflict with what does the evolutiontake place? What is the ideal which condemns the actual, and yetrealizes itself by means of it; and what is the actual which warsagainst the ideal, and yet contains it in potency, and reaches towardsit? That human life is conceived by Browning as a moral life, and not amore refined and complex form of the natural life of plants andanimals--a view which finds its exponents in Herbert Spencer, and otherso-called evolutionists--it is scarcely necessary to assert. It is alife which determines itself, and determines itself according to an ideaof goodness. That idea, moreover, because it is a _moral ideal_, must beregarded as the conception of perfect and absolute goodness. Through themoral end, man is ideally identified with God, who, indeed, isnecessarily conceived as man's moral ideal regarded as already andeternally real. "God" and the "moral ideal" are, in truth, expressionsof the same idea; they convey the conception of perfect goodness fromdifferent standpoints. And perfect goodness is, to Browning, limitlesslove. Pleasure, wisdom, power, and even the beauty which art discoversand reveals, together with every other inner quality and outer state ofbeing, have only relative worth. "There is nothing either in the worldor out of it which is unconditionally good, except a good will, " saidKant; and a good will, according to Browning, is a will that willslovingly. From love all other goodness is derived. There is earnestmeaning, and not mere sentiment, in the poet's assertion that

 "There is no good of life but love--but love! What else looks good, is some shade flung from love. Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by me, Never you cheat yourself one instant! Love, Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest!"[A]

[Footnote A: _In a Balcony_. ]

"Let man's life be true, " he adds, "and love's the truth of mine. " Toattain this truth, that is, to constitute love into the inmost law ofhis being, and permanent source of all his activities, is the task ofman. And Browning defines that love as

 "Yearning to dispense, Each one its own amount of gain thro' its own mode Of practising with life. "

There is no need of illustrating further the doctrine, so evident inBrowning, that "love" is the ideal which in man's life makes throughconflict for its own fulfilment. From what has been already said, it isabundantly plain that love is to him a divine element, which is at warwith all that is lower in man and around him, and which by reactionagainst circumstance converts its own mere promise into fruition andfact. Through love man's nature reaches down to the permanent essence, amid the fleeting phenomena of the world, and is at one with what isfirst and last. As loving he ranks with God. No words are too strong torepresent the intimacy of the relation. For, however limited in rangeand tainted with alien qualities human love may be, it is still "apin-point rock of His boundless continent. " It is not a semblance of thedivine nature, an analogon, or verisimilitude, but the love of Godhimself in man: so that man is in this sense an incarnation of thedivine. The Godhood in him constitutes him, so that he cannot becomehimself, or attain his own ideal or true nature, except by becomingperfect as God is perfect. 

But the emphasis thus laid on the divine worth and dignity of human loveis balanced by the stress which the poet places on the frailty andfinitude of every other human attribute. Having elevated the ideal, hedegrades the actual. Knowledge and the intellectual energy whichproduces it; art and the love of beauty from which it springs: everypower and every gift, physical and spiritual, other than love, has in itthe fatal flaw of being merely human. All these are so tainted withcreatureship, so limited and conditioned, that it is hardly too much tosay that they are, at their best, deceptive endowments. Thus, the lifeof man regarded as a whole is, in its last essence, a combination ofutterly disparate elements. The distinction of the old moralists betweendivinity and dust; the absolute dualism of the old ascetics betweenflesh and spirit, sense and reason, find their accurate parallel inBrowning's teachings. But he is himself no ascetic, and the line ofdistinction he draws does not, like theirs, pass between the flesh andthe spirit. It rather cleaves man's spiritual nature into two portions, which are absolutely different from each other. A chasm divides the headfrom the heart, the intellect from the emotions, the moral and practicalfrom the perceptive and reflective faculties. And it is this absolutecleavage that gives to Browning's teaching, both on ethics and religion, one of its most peculiar characteristics. By keeping it constantly insight, we may hope to render intelligible to ourselves the solution heoffers of the problem of evil, and of other fundamental difficulties ofthe life of man. For, while Browning's optimism has its original sourcein his conception of the unity of God and man, through the Godlikequality of love--even "the poorest love that was ever offered"--he findshimself unable to maintain it, except at the expense of degrading man'sknowledge. Thus, his optimism and faith in God is finally based uponignorance. If, on the side of love, he insists, almost in the spirit ofa Spinozist, on God's communication of His own substance to man; on theside of knowledge he may be called an agnostic, in spite of strayexpressions which break through his deliberate theory. While "love gainsGod at first leap, "

 "Knowledge means Ever-renewed assurance by defeat That victory is somehow still to reach. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_. ]

A radical flaw runs through our knowing faculty. Human knowledge is notonly incomplete--no one can be so foolish as to deny that--but it is, asregarded by Browning, essentially inadequate to the nature of fact, andwe must "distrust it, even when it seems demonstrable. " No professedagnostic can condemn the human intellect more utterly than he does. Hepushes the limitedness of human knowledge into a disqualification of itto reach truth at all; and makes the conditions according to which weknow, or seem to know, into a deceiving necessity, which makes us knowwrongly. 

 "To know of, think about, -- Is all man's sum of faculty effects When exercised on earth's least atom, Son! What was, what is, what may such atom be? No answer!"[B]

[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe_. ]

Thought plays around facts, but never reaches them. Mind intervenesbetween itself and its objects, and throws its own shadow upon them; norcan it penetrate through that shadow, but deals with it as if it werereality, though it knows all the time that it is not. 

This theory of knowledge, or rather of nescience or no-knowledge, hegives in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies, The Parleyings_, and_Asolando_--in all his later and more reflective poems, in fact. Itmust, I think, be held to be his deliberate and final view--and all themore so, because, by a peculiar process, he gets from it his defence ofhis ethical and religious faith. 

In the first of these poems, Browning, while discussing the problem ofimmortality in a purely speculative spirit, and without stipulating, "Provided answer suits my hopes, not fears, " gives a tolerably fullaccount of that which must be regarded as the principles of his theoryof knowledge. Its importance to his ethical doctrine justifies asomewhat exhaustive examination of it. 

He finds himself to be "a midway point, between a cause before and aneffect behind--both blanks. " Within that narrow space, of the selfhemmed in by two unknowns, all experience is crammed. Out of thatexperience crowds all that he knows, and all that he misknows. Thereissues from experience--

 "Conjecture manifold, But, as knowledge, this comes only--things may be as I behold, Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are; I myself am what I know not--ignorance which proves no bar To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest--surmise. If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what pain, -- Mere surmise: my own experience--that is knowledge once again. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

Experience, then, within which he (and every one else) acknowledges thatall his knowledge is confined, yields him as certain facts--theconsciousness that he is, but not what he is: the consciousness that heis pleased or pained by things about him, whose real nature is entirelyhidden from him: and, as he tells us just before, the assurance that Godis the thing the self perceives outside itself, "A force Actual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course, Unaffected by its end. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

But, even this knowledge, limited as it is to the bare existence ofunknown entities, has the further defect of being merely subjective. The"experience" from which he draws his conclusions, is his own in anexclusive sense. His "thinking thing" has, apparently, no elements incommon with the "thinking things" of other selves. He ignores the factthat there may be general laws of thought, according to which his mindmust act in order to be a mind. Intelligence seems to have no nature, and may be anything. All questions regarding "those apparent othermortals" are consequently unanswerable to the poet. "Knowledge stands onmy experience"; and this "my" is totally unrelated to all other Mes. 

 "All outside its narrow hem, Free surmise may sport and welcome! Pleasures, pains affect mankind Just as they affect myself? Why, here's my neighbour colour-blind, Eyes like mine to all appearance: 'green as grass' do I affirm? 'Red as grass' he contradicts me: which employs the proper term?"[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

If there were only they two on earth as tenants, there would be no wayof deciding between them; for, according to his argument, the truth isapparently decided by majority of opinions. Each individual, equippedwith his own particular kind of senses and reason, gets his ownparticular experience, and draws his own particular conclusions from it. If it be asked whether these conclusions are true or not, the onlyanswer is that the question is absurd; for, under such conditions, therecannot be either truth or error. Every one's opinion is its owncriterion. Each man is the measure of all things; "His own world forevery mortal, " as the poet puts it. 

 "To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine, Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

The first result of this subjective view of knowledge is clearly enoughseen by the poet. He is well aware that his convictions regarding thehigh matters of human destiny are valid only for himself. 

 "Only for myself I speak, Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and weak. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

Experience, as he interprets it, that is, present consciousness, "thismoment's me and mine, " is too narrow a basis for any universal orobjective conclusion. So far as his own inner experience of pain andpleasure goes, "All--for myself--seems ordered wise and well Inside it, --what reigns outside, who can tell?"[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_. ]

But as to the actual world, he can have no opinion, nor, from the goodand evil that apparently play around him, can he deduce either

 "Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse In each good or evil issue. "[B]

[Footnote B: _La Saisiaz_. ]

The moral government of the world is a subject, regarding which we aredoomed to absolute ignorance. A theory that it is ruled by the "princeof the power of the air" has just as much, and just as little, validityas the more ordinary view held by religious people. Who needs be told

 "The space Which yields thee knowledge--do its bounds embrace Well-willing and wise-working, each at height? Enough: beyond thee lies the infinite-- Back to thy circumscription!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Francis Furini_. ]

And our ignorance of God, and the world, and ourselves is matched by asimilar ignorance regarding moral matters. 

 "Ignorance overwraps his moral sense, Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps, So much and no more than lets through perhaps The murmured knowledge--' Ignorance exists. '"[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_. ]

We cannot be certain even of the distinction and conflict of good andevil in the world. They, too, and the apparent choice between them towhich man is continually constrained, may be mere illusions--phenomenaof the individual consciousness. What remains, then? Nothing but to"wait. "

 "Take the joys and bear the sorrows--neither with extreme concern! Living here means nescience simply: 'tis next life that helps to learn. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

It is hardly necessary to enter upon any detailed criticism of such atheory of knowledge as this, which is proffered by the poet. It is wellknown by all those who are in some degree acquainted with the history ofphilosophy--and it will be easily seen by all who have any criticalacumen--that it leads directly into absolute scepticism. And absolutescepticism is easily shown to be self-contradictory. For a theory ofnescience, in condemning all knowledge and the faculty of knowledge, condemns itself. If nothing is true, or if nothing is known, then thistheory itself is not true, or its truth cannot be known. And if thistheory is true, then nothing is true; for this theory, like all others, is the product of a defective intelligence. In whatsoever way the matteris put, there is left no standing-ground for the human critic whocondemns human thought. And he cannot well pretend to a footing in asphere above man's, or below it. There is thus one presupposition whichevery one must make, if he is to propound any doctrine whatsoever, evenif that doctrine be that no doctrine can be valid; it is thepresupposition that knowledge is possible, and that truth can be known. And this presupposition fills, for modern philosophy, the place of the_Cogito ergo sum_ of Descartes. It is the starting-point and criterionof all knowledge. 

It is, at first sight, a somewhat difficult task to account for thefact, that so keen an intellect as the poet's did not perceive theconclusion to which his theory of knowledge so directly and necessarilyleads. It is probable, however, that he never critically examined it, but simply accepted it as equivalent to the common doctrine of therelativity of knowledge, which, in some form or other, all the schoolsof philosophy adopt. But the main reason will be found to lie in thefact that knowledge was not, to Browning, its own criterion or end. Theprimary fact of his philosophy is that human life is a moral process. His interest in the evolution of character was his deepest interest, ashe informs us; he was an ethical teacher rather than a metaphysician. Heis ever willing to asperse man's intelligence. But that man is a moralagent he will in no wise doubt. This is his

 "Solid standing-place amid The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid Back to the ledge they break against in foam. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_. ]

His practical maxim was

 "Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust As wholly love allied to ignorance! There lies thy truth and safety. "[B]

[Footnote B: _A Pillar of Sebzevar_. ]

All phenomena must, in some way or other, be reconciled by the poet withthe fundamental and indubitable fact of the progressive moral life ofman. For the fundamental presupposition which a man makes, isnecessarily his criterion of knowledge, and it determines the truth orillusoriness of all other opinions whatsoever. 

Now, Browning held, not only that no certain knowledge is attainable byman, but also that such certainty is incompatible with moral life. Absolute knowledge would, he contends, lift man above the need and thepossibility of making the moral choice, which is our supreme business onearth. Man can be good or evil, only on condition of being in absoluteuncertainty regarding the true meaning of the facts of nature and thephenomena of life. 

This somewhat strange doctrine finds the most explicit and fullexpression in _La Saisiaz_. "Fancy, " amongst the concessions it demandsfrom "Reason, " claims that man should know--not merely surmise orfear--that every action done in this life awaits its proper andnecessary meed in the next. 

 "I also will that man become aware Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life depends. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

But Reason refuses the concession, upon the ground that such sureknowledge would be destructive of the very distinction between right andwrong, which the demand implies. The "promulgation of this decree, " byFancy, "makes both good and evil to cease. " Prior to it "earth was man'sprobation-place"; but under this decree man is no longer free; forcertain knowledge makes action necessary. 

 "Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 'Such effects succeed Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly deed Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked line On his making point meet point or with or else without incline, ' Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_, 195. ]

If we presuppose that "man, addressed this mode, be sound and sane" (andwe must stipulate sanity, if his actions are to be morally judged atall)--then a law which binds punishment and reward to action in anecessary manner, and is known so to bind them, would "obtain prompt andabsolute obedience. " There are some "edicts, now styled God's ownnature's, " "which to hear means to obey. " All the laws relating to thepreservation of life are of this character. And, if the law--"Would'stthou live again, be just"--were in all ways as stringent as the otherlaw--

 "Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath! For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in death"--[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

then no one would disobey it, nor could. "It is the liberty of doingevil that gives the doing good a grace. " And that liberty would be takenaway by complete assurance, that effects follow actions in the moralworld with the necessity seen in the natural sphere. Since, therefore, man is made to grow, and earth is the place wherein he is to passprobation and prove his powers, there must remain a certain doubt as tothe issues of his actions; conviction must not be so strong as to carrywith it man's whole nature. "The best I both see and praise, the worst Ifollow, " is the adage rife in man's mouth regarding his moral conduct. But, spite of his seeing and praising, "he disbelieves In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head receives. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

He has a dim consciousness of ways whereby he may elude the consequencesof his wickedness, and of the possibility of making amends to law. 

 "And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin', A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin', Some luckless hour will send him linkin' To your black pit; But, faith, he'll turn a corner jinkin', And cheat you yet. "

The more orthodox and less generous individual is prone to agree, asregards himself, with Burns; but, he sees, most probably, that such anescape is impossible to others. He has secret solacement in a latentbelief that he himself is an exception. There will be a special methodof dealing with him. He is a "chosen sample"; and "God will think twicebefore He damns a man of his quality. " It is just because there is suchdoubt as to the universality and necessity of the law which connectsactions and consequences in the moral sphere, that man's deeds have anethical character; while, to disperse doubt and ignorance by theassurance of complete knowledge, would take the good from goodness andthe ill from evil. 

In this ingenious manner, the poet turns the imperfect intellect anddelusive knowledge of man to a moral use. Ordinarily, the intellectualimpotence of man is regarded as carrying with it moral incapacity aswell, and the delusiveness of knowledge is one of the strongestarguments for pessimism. To persons pledged to the support of no theory, and to those who have the _naïveté_, so hard to maintain side by sidewith strong doctrinal convictions, it seems amongst the worst of evilsthat man should be endowed with fallacious faculties, and cursed with afutile desire for true knowledge which is so strong, that it cannot bequenched even in those who believe that truth can never be attained. Itis the very best men of the world who cry

 "Oh, this false for real, This emptiness which feigns solidity, -- Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black, -- When shall we rest upon the thing itself, Not on its semblance? Soul--too weak, forsooth, To cope with fact--wants fiction everywhere! Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. ]

The poet himself was burdened in no small degree with this vain desirefor knowing the truth; and he recognized, too, that he was placed in aworld which seems both real and beautiful, and so well worth knowing. Yet, it is this very failure of knowledge--a failure which, be itremembered, is complete and absolute, because, as he thinks, all factsmust turn into phantoms by mere contact with our "relativeintelligences, "--which he constitutes into the basis of his optimisticfaith. 

So high is the dignity and worth of the moral life to Browning, that nosacrifice is too great to secure it. And, indeed, if it were onceclearly recognized that there is no good thing but goodness, nothing ofsupreme worth, except the realization of a loving will, then doubt, ignorance, and every other form of apparent evil would be fullyjustified--provided they were conditions whereby this highest good isattained. And, to Browning, ignorance was one of the conditions. Andconsequently, the dread pause in the music which agnosticism brings, isonly "silence implying sound"; and the vain cry for truth, arising fromthe heart of the earth's best men, is only a discord moving towardsresolution into a more rapturous harmony. 

I do not stay here to inquire whether sure knowledge would really havethis disastrous effect of destroying morality, or whether its failuredoes not rather imply the impossibility of a moral life. I return to thequestion asked at the beginning of this chapter, and which it is nowpossible to answer. That question was: How does Browning reconcile hishypothesis of universal love with the natural and moral evils existingin the world?

His answer is quite explicit. The poet solves the problem by castingdoubt upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He reduces them intophenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the human intellect uponunknown and unknowable realities. 

 "Thus much at least is clearly understood-- Of power does Man possess no particle: Of knowledge--just so much as shows that still It ends in ignorance on every side. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_. ]

He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness, "My soul, and my soul's home, This body ";

but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning. " And heheeds little, for in either case they

 "Teach What good is and what evil, --just the same, Be feigning or be fact the teacher. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and light inlife, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the world, thatconstitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of moralgymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes moralmuscle. And the vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the leastabated by the consciousness that all he deals with are phantoms. 

 "I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught, Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim, If--(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)-- If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place, And life, time--with all their chances, changes, --just probation-space, Mine, for me. "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once penetrateinto its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably either goodor evil. There is the need of playing something perilously like a trickon the human intellect if man is to strive and grow. 

 "Here and there a touch Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things-- That all about, external to myself, Was meant to be suspected, --not revealed Demonstrably a cheat--but half seen through. "[B]

[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe. _]

To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as lockedtogether in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would ruleunchecked along the line. " But this would be the greatest of disasters;for, as moral agents, we cannot do without

 "the constant shade Cast on life's shine, --the tremor that intrudes When firmest seems my faith in white. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

The intellectual insight that would penetrate through the vari-colour ofevents into the actual presence of the incandescent white of love, whichglows, as hope tells us, in all things, would stultify itself, and loseits knowledge even of the good. 

 "Think! Could I see plain, be somehow certified All was illusion--evil far and wide Was good disguised, --why, out with one huge wipe Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype: As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good Needs evil: how were pity understood Unless by pain? "[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_. ]

Good and evil are relative to each other, and each is known only throughits contrary. 

 "For me (Patience, beseech you!) Knowledge can but be Of good by knowledge of good's opposite-- Evil. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

The extinction of one of the terms would be the extinction of the other. And, in a similar manner, clear knowledge that evil is illusion and thatall things have their place in an infinite divine order would paralyzeall moral effort, as well as stultify itself. 

 "Make evident that pain Permissibly masks pleasure--you abstain From out-stretch of the finger-tip that saves A drowning fly. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

Certainty on either side, either that evil is evil for evermore, irredeemable and absolute, a drench of utter dark not illuminable bywhite; or that it is but mere show and semblance, which the good takesupon itself, would alike be ruinous to man. For both alternatives wouldrender all striving folly. The right attitude for man is that ofignorance, complete uncertainty, the equipoise of conflictingalternatives. He must take his stand on the contradiction. Hope he mayhave that all things work together for good. It is right that he shouldnourish the faith that the antagonism of evil with good in the world isonly an illusion; but that faith must stop short of the completeconviction that knowledge would bring. When, therefore, the hypothesisof universal love is confronted with the evils of life, and we ask howit can be maintained in the face of the manifold miseries everywhereapparent, the poet answers, "You do not know, and cannot know, whetherthey are evils or not. Your knowledge remains at the surface of things. You cannot fit them into their true place, or pronounce upon their truepurpose and character; for you see only a small arc of the completecircle of being. Wait till you see more, and, in the meantime, hope!"

 "Why faith--but to lift the load, To leaven the lump, where lies Mind prostrate through knowledge owed To the loveless Power it tries To withstand, how vain!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_. ]

And, if we reply in turn, that this necessary ignorance leaves as littleroom for his scheme of love as it does for its opposite, he againanswers: "Not so! I appeal from the intellect, which is detected asincompetent, to the higher court of the moral consciousness. And there Ifind the ignorance to be justified: for it is the instrument of a higherpurpose, a means whereby what is best is gained, namely, _Love_. "

 "My curls were crowned In youth with knowledge, --off, alas, crown slipped Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day, Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last --Knowledge, the golden?--lacquered ignorance! As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain: Lacquer we learn by: . . . The prize is in the process: knowledge means Ever-renewed assurance by defeat That victory is somehow still to reach, But love is victory, the prize itself: Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust In trust's mere act. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_. ]

Now, in order to complete our examination of this theory, we must followthe poet in his attempt to escape from the testimony of the intellect tothat of the heart. In order to make the most of the latter, we find thatBrowning, especially in his last work, tends to withdraw his accusationof utter incompetence on the part of the intellect. He only tends to doso, it is true. He is tolerably consistent in asserting that we know ourown emotions and the phenomena of our own consciousness; but he is notconsistent in his account of our knowledge, or ignorance, of externalthings. On the whole, he asserts that we know nothing of them. But in_Asolando_ he seems to imply that the evidence of a loveless power inthe world, permitting evil, is irresistible. [A] To say the least, thetestimony of the intellect, such as it is, is more clear and convincingwith regard to evil than it is with regard to good. Within the sphere ofphenomena, to which the intellect is confined, there seems to be, instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by a power indifferent tothe triumph of evil over good, and either "loveless" or unintelligent. 

[Footnote A: _See passage just quoted. _]

 "Life, from birth to death, Means--either looking back on harm escaped, Or looking forward to that harm's return With tenfold power of harming. "[B]

[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe. _]

And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of faults andomissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in reactionagainst which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is there, then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the side ofthe intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to remove theills of life, "Stop change, avert decay, Fix life fast, banish death, "[C]

[Footnote C: _Reverie_--_Asolando_. ]

has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whoselimitlessness he recognizes everywhere around him, merely maintains theworld in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand whengood is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing. "

 "'No sign, '--groaned he, -- No stirring of God's finger to denote He wills that right should have supremacy On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote But one poor instance when He interposed Promptly and surely and beyond mistake Between oppression and its victim, closed Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake From our long dream that justice bears no sword, Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville. _]

But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer vouchsafedto man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal

 "What heals all harm, Nay, hinders the harm at first, Saves earth. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Reverie--Asolando. _]

And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy, if"God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency. "

 "How easy it seems, --to sense Like man's--if somehow met Power with its match--immense Love, limitless, unbeset By hindrance on every side!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power, " we recognize, "finds nought too hard, Fulfilling itself all ways, Unchecked, unchanged; while barred, Baffled, what good began Ends evil on every side. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Reverie--Asolando_. ]

Thus, the conclusion to which knowledge inevitably leads us is that merepower rules. 

 "No more than the passive clay Disputes the potter's act, Could the whelmed mind disobey Knowledge, the cataract. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

But if the intellect is thus overwhelmed, so as to be almost passive tothe pessimistic conclusion borne in upon it by "resistless fact, " theheart of man is made of another mould. It revolts against the conclusionof the intellect, and climbs

 "Through turbidity all between, From the known to the unknown here, Heaven's 'Shall be, ' from earth's 'Has been. '"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the possibility, or even the certainty, that "power is love. " At present there is nosubstantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart; and man has nobetter anchorage for his optimism than faith. But the closer view willcome, when even our life on earth will be seen to have within it theworking of love, no less manifest than that of power. 

 "When see? When there dawns a day, If not on the homely earth, Then, yonder, worlds away, Where the strange and new have birth, And Power comes full in play. "[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_. ]

Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently cogentand valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to "faith, "or "hope, " a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing "resistless"testimony of knowledge?

Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely confined, there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as yet examined. For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil, so plain andconstant is man's recognition of it as evil, and his desire to annul it. If man's mind is made to acknowledge evil, his moral nature is made soas to revolt against it. 

 "Man's heart is _made_ to judge Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh Our birth-right--bad and good deserve alike No pain, to human apprehension. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_. ]

Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but that

 "In the eye of God Pain may have purpose and be justified. "

But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or not, "Man's sense avails to only see, in pain, A hateful chance no man but would avert Or, failing, needs must pity. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but is, spite of his consciousness of ignorance and powerlessness, roused intoconstant revolt against it. 

 "True, he makes nothing, understands no whit: Had the initiator-spasm seen fit Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse And much the better were the universe. What does Man see or feel or apprehend Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend, Omissions to supply, --one wide disease Of things that are, which Man at once would ease Had will but power and knowledge?"[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_. ]

But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction from hisinability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must take will fordeed, " as Browning tells us. David is not at all distressed by theconsciousness of his weakness. 

 "Why is it I dare Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair? This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Saul_. ]

The fact that "his wishes fall through, " that he cannot, althoughwilling, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life bystarving his own, " does not prevent him from regarding his "service asperfect. " The will was there, although it lacked power to effect itself. The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed; and it isnowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning and Kantteach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it can bear nooutward fruit, being debarred by outward impediment, is still a completeand highest good. 

 "But Love is victory, the prize itself: Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust In trust's mere act. In love success is sure, Attainment--no delusion, whatso'er The prize be: apprehended as a prize, A prize it is. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_. ]

Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty andhis dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though Godneglect the world

 "Man's part Is plain--to send love forth, --astray, perhaps: No matter, he has done his part. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Sun_. ]

Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinksincontrovertible--the fact that man, every man, necessarily regardsevil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were itonly possible--is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which ishighest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish theoptimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had utterly abandoned. 

The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that theredwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence thepessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as wrong_seems_ wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world, must excepthimself. In his very charge against God of having made man in His anger, there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies theoutrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illuminewith joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of the good. 

 "Were earth and all it holds illusions mere, Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and fear, "If this life's conception new life fail to realize-- Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell, one huge Reflex of the devil's doings--God's work by no subterfuge, "[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_. ]

still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward. Alone, in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still notwithout God, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would becrowned as God, as the poet often argues, were there no higher loveelsewhere. 

 "If he believes Might can exist with neither will nor love, In God's case--what he names now Nature's Law-- While in himself he recognizes love No less than might and will, "[B]

[Footnote B: _Death in the Desert_. ]

man takes, and rightly takes, the title of being "First, last, and bestof things. "

 "Since if man prove the sole existent thing Where these combine, whatever their degree, However weak the might or will or love, So they be found there, put in evidence-- He is as surely higher in the scale Than any might with neither love nor will, As life, apparent in the poorest midge, Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self, Given to the nobler midge for resting-place! Thus, man proves best and highest--God, in fine. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be nodifficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated withweakness, as infinitely above all natural power. Divinity will be knownto consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and miraculous, but in moral or spiritual perfection. If God were indifferent to theevil of the world, acquiesced in it without reason, and let it ripeninto all manner of wretchedness, then man, in condemning the world, though without power to remove the least of its miseries, would behigher than God. But we have still to account for the possibility ofman's assuming an attitude implied in the consciousness that, while heis without power, God is without pity, and in the despair which springsfrom his hate of evil. How comes it that human nature rises above itsorigin, and is able--nay, obliged--to condemn the evil which Godpermits? Is man finite in power, a mere implement of a mocking will sofar as knowledge goes, the plaything of remorseless forces, and yetauthor and first source of something in himself which invests him with adignity that God Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which, by its very nature, must bear witness against the Power, although itcannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil, "Man's own work, his birth of heart and brain, His native grace, no alien gift at all?"

We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma. Either the pityand love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are man's owncreation; or else God, who made man's heart to love, has given to mansomething higher than He owns Himself. But both of these alternativesare impossible. 

 "Here's the touch that breaks the bubble. "

The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definitionpowerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable ofchanging the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns, andtherefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a lovelessworld abandoned to blind power, the noble might of love. 

 "Will of man create? No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans Produced them also from its finger-tips. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. ]

All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his finiteintellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere. 

 "Back goes creation to its source, source prime And ultimate, the single and the sole. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

The argument ends by bringing us back

 "To the starting-point, -- Man's impotency, God's omnipotence, These stop my answer. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. ]

I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form ofthe old argument, "_Ex contingentia mundi_. " But I may point out inpassing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative source isaccomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the categories of thethought which Browning has aspersed. And it is a little difficult toshow why, if we are constrained to doubt our thought, when by the aid ofcausality it establishes a connection between finite and finite, weshould regard it as worthy of trust when it connects the finite and theinfinite. In fact, it is all too evident that the poet assumes or deniesthe possibility of knowledge, according as it helps or hinders hisethical doctrine. 

But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and regardman's love as a divine gift--which it may well be although the poet'sargument is invalid--then a new light is thrown upon the being who gaveman this power to love. The "necessity, " "the mere power, " which alonecould be discerned by observation of the irresistible movement of theworld's events, acquires a new character. Prior to this discovery oflove in man as the work of God--

 "Head praises, but heart refrains From loving's acknowledgment. Whole losses outweigh half-gains: Earth's good is with evil blent: Good struggles but evil reigns. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_. ]

But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in fact, that God is love, for man's love is God's love in man. The source of thepity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the world which exciteit, is the same. The power which called man into being, itself rises upin man against the wrongs in the world. The voice of the moralconsciousness, approving the good, condemning evil, and striving toannul it, is the voice of God, and has, therefore, supreme authority. Wedo wrong, therefore, in thinking that it is the weakness of man which ismatched against the might of evil in the world, and that we are fightinga losing battle. It is an incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the factsof life which puts God as irresistible Power in the outer world, andforgets that the same irresistible Power works, under the higher form oflove, in the human heart. 

 "Is not God now i' the world His power first made? Is not His love at issue still with sin, Visibly when a wrong is done on earth? Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?"[B]

[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

In this way, therefore, the poet argues back from the moralconsciousness of man to the goodness of God. And he finds the ultimateproof of this goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism and despair, that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste in the worldand the endless miseries of humanity. The source of this despair, namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the Godhood in man. There is no way of accounting for the fact that "Man hates what is andloves what should be, " except by "blending the quality of man with thequality of God. " And "the quality of God" is the fundamental fact inman's history. Love is the last reality the poet always reaches. Beneaththe pessimism is love: without love of the good there were norecognition of evil, no condemnation of it, and no despair. 

But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil, eventhough it should prove in the end to be merely apparent. 

 "Wherefore should any evil hap to man-- From ache of flesh to agony of soul-- Since God's All-mercy mates All-potency? Nay, why permits He evil to Himself-- Man's sin, accounted such? Suppose a world Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant-- Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed-- Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?"[A]

[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_. ]

The poet finds an answer to this difficulty in the very nature of moralgoodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressiverealization of an infinitely high ideal. The demand for a world purgedof all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a spherewhere

 "Time brings No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be To-morrow: advance or retreat need we At our stand-still through eternity?"[A]

[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_. ]

What were there to "bless or curse, in such a uniform universe, "

 "Where weak and strong, The wise and the foolish, right and wrong, Are merged alike in a neutral Best. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

There is a better way of life, thinks Browning, than such a state ofstagnation. 

 "Why should I speak? You divine the test. When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast A voice said, So would'st thou strive, not rest, "Burn and not smoulder, win by worth, Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth, Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. ]

The discontent of man, the consciousness of sin, evil, pain, is a symbolof promotion. The peace of the state of nature has been broken for him;and, although the first consequence be

 "Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek, -- Diseased in the body, sick in soul, Pinched poverty, satiate wealth, --your whole Array of despairs, "[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_. ]

still, without them, the best is impossible. They are the conditions ofthe moral life, which is essentially progressive. They are theconsequences of the fact that man has been "startled up"

 "by an Infinite Discovered above and below me--height And depth alike to attract my flight, "Repel my descent: by hate taught love. Oh, gain were indeed to see above Supremacy ever--to move, remove, "Not reach--aspire yet never attain To the object aimed at. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_. ]

He who places rest above effort, Rephan above the earth, places anatural good above a moral good, stagnation above progress. The demandfor the absolute extinction of evil betrays ignorance of the nature ofthe highest good. For right and wrong are relative. "Type needantitype. " The fact that goodness is best, and that goodness is not astagnant state but a progress, a gradual realization, though nevercomplete, of an infinite ideal, of the perfection of God by a finitebeing, necessarily implies the consciousness of sin and evil. As a moralagent man must set what should be above what is. If he is to aspire andattain, the actual present must seem to him inadequate, imperfect, wrong, a state to be abolished in favour of a better. And therefore itfollows that

 "Though wrong were right Could we but know--still wrong must needs seem wrong To do right's service, prove men weak or strong, Choosers of evil or good. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Francis Furini_. ]

The apparent existence of evil is the condition of goodness. And yet itmust only be apparent. For if evil be regarded as veritably evil, itmust remain so for all that man can do; he cannot annihilate any factnor change its nature, and all effort would, therefore, be futile. And, on the other hand, if evil were known as unreal, then there were no needof moral effort, no quarrel with the present and therefore noaspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's highest andbest, --namely, a moral life which is a progress--would thus beimpossible, and his existence would be bereft of all meaning andpurpose. And if the highest is impossible then all is wrong, "the goalbeing a ruin, so is all the rest. "

The hypothesis of the moral life as progressive is essential toBrowning. 

But if this hypothesis be granted, then all difficulties disappear. Theconception of the endless acquirement of goodness at once postulates theconsciousness of evil, and the consciousness of it as existing in orderto be overcome. Hence the consciousness of it as illusion comes nearestto the truth. And such a conception is essentially implied by the ideaof morality. To speculative reason, however, it is impossible, as thepoet believes, that evil should thus be at the same time regarded asboth real and unreal. Knowledge leads to despair on every side; for, whether it takes the evil in the world as seeming or actual, itstultifies effort, and proves that moral progress, which is best of allthings, is impossible. But the moral consciousness derives its vitalityfrom this contradiction. It is the meeting-point and conflict of actualand ideal; and its testimony is indisputable, however inconsistent itmay be with that of knowledge. Acknowledging absolute ignorance of theouter world, the poet has still a retreat within himself, safe from alldoubt. He has in his own inner experience irrefragable proof

 "How things outside, fact or feigning, teach What good is and what evil--just the same, Be feigning or be fact the teacher. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_. ]

The consciousness of being taught goodness by interaction with theoutside unknown is sufficient; it is "a point of vantage" whence he willnot be moved by any contradictions that the intellect may conjure upagainst it. And this process of learning goodness, this gradualrealization by man of an ideal infinitely high and absolute in worth, throws back a light which illumines all the pain and strife and despair, and shows them all to be steps in the endless "love-way. " Theconsciousness of evil is thus at once the effect and the condition ofgoodness. The unrealized, though ever-realizing good, which bringsdespair, is the best fact in man's history; and it should rightly bring, not despair, but endless joy. 

CHAPTER IX. 

A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

 "Der Mensch, da er Geist ist, darf und soll sich selbst des höchsten würdig achten, von der Grösse und Macht seines Geistes kann er nicht gross genug denken; und mit diesem Glauben wird nichts so spröde und hart seyn, das sich ihm nicht eröffnete. Das zuerst verborgene und verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine Kraft, die dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten könnte: es muss sich vor ihm aufthun, und seinen Reichthum und seine Tiefen ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Hegel's Inaugural Address at Heidelberg_. ]

Before entering upon a criticism of Browning's theory, as represented inthe last chapter, it may be well to give a brief summary of it. 

The most interesting feature of Browning's proof of his optimistic faithis his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness. To showtheoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view, bothimpossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the humanintellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or ofpronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It isundesirable, because a theoretical proof of the evanescence of evilwould itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best thing inthe world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow better, andthe world exists in order to help him. But moral growth is possible onlythrough conflict against evil, or what seems to be evil; hence, todisprove the existence of evil would be to take away the possibility oflearning goodness, to stultify all human effort, and to deprive theworld of its meaning. 

But, if an optimistic doctrine cannot be reached by way of speculativethought, if the intellect of man cannot see the good in things evil, hismoral consciousness guarantees that all is for the best, and that "thegood is all in all. " For, in distinguishing between good and evil, themoral consciousness sets up an ideal over against the actual. Itconceives of a scheme of goodness which is not realized in the world, and it condemns the world as it is. Man, as moral being, is soconstituted that he cannot but regard the evil in the world as somethingto be annulled. If he had only the power, there would be no pain, nosorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death. Is man, then, better than thePower which made the world and let woe gain entrance into it? No!answers the poet; for man himself is part of that world and the productof that Power. The Power that made the world also made the moralconsciousness which condemns the world; if it is the source of the evilin the world, it is also the source of that love in man, which, byself-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If the external world is merely anexpression of a remorseless Power, whence comes the love which is theprinciple of the moral life in man? The same Power brings the antidoteas well as the bane. And, further, the bane exists for the sake of theantidote, the wrong for the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world ismeans to a higher good, and the only means possible; for it calls intoactivity the divine element in man, and thereby contributes to itsrealization in his character. It gives the necessary opportunity for theexercise of love. 

Hence, evil cannot be regarded as ultimately real. It is real only as astage in growth, as means to an end; and the means necessarily perishes, or is absorbed in, the attainment of the end. It has no significanceexcept by reference to that end. From this point of view, evil is theresistance which makes progress possible, the negative which givesmeaning to the positive, the darkness that makes day beautiful. Thismust not, however, be taken to mean that evil is nothing. It isresistance; it is negative; it does oppose the good; although itsopposition is finally overcome. If it did not, if evil were unreal, there would be no possibility of calling forth the moral potency of man, and the moral life would be a figment. But these two conditions of themoral life--on the one hand, that the evil of the world must be capableof being overcome and is there for the purpose of being overcome, andthat it is unreal except as a means to the good; and, on the other hand, that evil must be actually opposed to the good, if the good is to haveany meaning, --cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each other. Itis manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same time, regardevil as both real and unreal. It must assert the one and deny the other;or else we must regard its testimony as altogether untrustworthy. Butthe first alternative is destructive of the moral consciousness. Morallife is alike impossible whether we deny or assert the real existence ofevil. The latter alternative stultifies knowledge, and leaves all thedeeper concerns of life--the existence of good and evil, the reality ofthe distinction between them, the existence of God, the moral governanceof the world, the destiny of man--in a state of absolute uncertainty. Wemust reject the testimony either of the heart or of the head. 

Browning, as we have seen, unhesitatingly adopts the latter alternative. He remains loyal to the deliverances of his moral consciousness andaccepts as equally valid, beliefs which the intellect finds to beself-contradictory: holding that knowledge on such matters isimpossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only because our thoughtsare self-contradictory in themselves, but because the failure of aspeculative solution of these problems is necessary to morality. Clear, convincing, demonstrative knowledge would destroy morality; and the factthat the power to attain such knowledge has been withheld from us is tobe regarded rather as an indication of the beneficence of God, who hasnot held even ignorance to be too great a price for man to pay forgoodness. 

Knowledge is not the fit atmosphere for morality. It is faith and notreason, hope and trust but not certainty, that lend vigour to the goodlife. We may believe, and rejoice in the belief, that the absolute goodis fulfilling itself in all things, and that even the miseries of lifeare really its refracted rays--the light that gains in splendour bybeing broken. But we must not, and, indeed, cannot ascend from faith toknowledge. The heart may trust, and must trust, if it faithfully listensto its own natural voice; but reason must not demonstrate. Ignorance onthe side of intellect, faith on the side of the emotions; distrust ofknowledge, absolute confidence in love; such is the condition of man'shighest welfare: it is only thus that the purpose of his life, and ofthe world which is his instrument, can be achieved. 

No final estimate of the value of this theory of morals and religion canbe made, without examining its philosophical presuppositions. Nor issuch an examination in any way unfair; for it is obvious that Browningexplicitly offers us a philosophical doctrine. He appeals to argumentand not to artistic intuition; he offers a definite theory to which heclaims attention, not on account of any poetic beauty that may liewithin it, but on the ground that it is a true exposition of the moralnature of man. Kant's _Metaphysic of Ethics_ is not more metaphysical inintention than the poet's later utterances on the problems of morality. In _La Saisiaz_, in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, in the _Parleyings_, and, though less explicitly, in _Asolando_, _Fifine at the Fair_, and _RedCotton Nightcap Country_, Browning definitely states, and endeavours todemonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory of the relation of knowledgeto morality, and a theory of the nature of evil; and he discusses thearguments for the immortality of the soul. In these poems his artisticinstinct avails him, not as in his earlier ones, for the discovery oftruth by way of intuition, but for the adornment of doctrines alreadyderived from a metaphysical repository. His art is no longer free, nolonger its own end, but coerced into an alien service. It has becomeillustrative and argumentative, and in being made to subservespeculative purposes, it has ceased to be creative. Browning hasappealed to philosophy, and philosophy must try his cause. 

Such, then, is Browning's theory; and I need make no further apology fordiscussing at some length the validity of the division which it involvesbetween the intellectual and the moral life of man. Is it possible tocombine the weakness of man's intelligence with the strength of hismoral and religious life, and to find in the former the condition of thelatter? Does human knowledge fail, as the poet considers it to fail? Isthe intelligence of man absolutely incapable of arriving at knowledge ofthings as they are? If it does, if man cannot know the truth, can heattain goodness? These are the questions that must now be answered. 

It is one of the characteristics of recent thought that it distrusts itsown activity: the ancient philosophical "Scepticism" has been revivedand strengthened. Side by side with the sense of the triumphant progressof natural science, there is a conviction, shared even by scientificinvestigators themselves, as well as by religious teachers and by manystudents of philosophy, that our knowledge has only limited and relativevalue, and that it always stops short of the true nature of things. Thereason of this general conviction lies in the fact that thought hasbecome aware of its own activity; men realize more clearly than they didin former times that the apparent constitution of things dependsdirectly on the character of the intelligence which apprehends them. 

This relativity of things to thought has, not unnaturally, suggested theidea that the objects of our knowledge are different from objects asthey are. "That the real nature of things is very different from what wemake of them, that thought and thing are divorced, that there is afundamental antithesis between them, " is, as Hegel said, "the hinge onwhich modern philosophy turns. " Educated opinion in our day has lost itsnaive trust in itself. "The natural belief of man, it is true, evergives the lie" to the doctrine that we do not know things. "In commonlife, " adds Hegel, "we reflect without particularly noting that this isthe process of arriving at the truth, and we think without hesitationand in the firm belief that thought coincides with things. "[A] But, assoon as attention is directed to the process of thinking, and to the wayin which the process affects our consciousness of the object, it is atonce concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things arenot given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense andour intelligence, through which they pass. The doctrine of therelativity of knowledge is thus very generally regarded as equivalent tothe doctrine that there is no true knowledge whatsoever. We know onlyphenomena, or appearances; and it is these, and not veritable facts, that we systematize into sciences. "We can arrange the appearances--theshadows of our cave--and that, for the practical purposes of the cave, is all that we require. "[B] Not even "earth's least atom" can ever beknown to us as it really is; it is for us, at the best, [Footnote A: Wallace's _Translation of Hegel's Logic_, p. 36. ]

[Footnote B: Caird's _Comte_. ]

 "An atom with some certain properties Known about, thought of as occasion needs. "[C]

[Footnote C: _A Bean-Stripe_. ]

In this general distrust of knowledge, however, there are, as might beexpected, many different degrees. Its origin in modern times was, nodoubt, the doctrine of Kant. "This divorce of thing and thought, " saysHegel, "is mainly the work of the critical philosophy and runs counterto the conviction of all previous ages. " And the completeness of thedivorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to the degree in which thecritical philosophy has been understood; for Kant's writings, like thoseof all great thinkers, are capable of many interpretations, varying indepth with the intelligence of the interpreters. 

The most common and general form of this view of the limitation of thehuman intelligence is that which places the objects of religious faithbeyond the reach of human knowledge. We find traces of it in much of thepopular theology of our day. The great facts of religion are oftenspoken of as lying in an extra-natural sphere, beyond experience, intowhich men cannot enter by the native right of reason. It is assertedthat the finite cannot know the infinite, that the nature of God isunknowable--except by means of a supernatural interference, which givesto men a new power of spiritual discernment, and "reveals" to themthings which are "above reason, " although not contrary to it. Thetheologian often shields certain of his doctrines from criticism, on theground, as he contends, that there are facts which we must believe, butwhich it would be presumptuous for us to pretend to understand or todemonstrate. They are the proper objects of "faith. "

But this view of the weakness of the intelligence when applied tosupersensuous facts, is held along with an undisturbed conviction of thevalidity of our knowledge of ordinary objects. It is believed, in aword, that there are two kinds of realities, --natural and supernatural;and that the former is knowable and the latter not. 

It requires, however, no great degree of intellectual acumen to discoverthat this denial of the validity of our knowledge of these mattersinvolves its denial in all its applications. The ordinary knowledge ofnatural objects, which we begin by regarding as valid, or, rather, whosevalidity is taken for granted without being questioned, depends upon ourideas of these supersensible objects. In other words, those fundamentaldifficulties which pious opinion discovers in the region of theology, and which, as is thought, fling the human intellect back upon itselfinto a consciousness of frailty and finitude, are found to lurk beneathour ordinary knowledge. Whenever, for instance, we endeavour to know anyobject, we find that we are led back along the line of its conditions tothat which unconditionally determines it. For we cannot find the reasonfor a particular object in a particular object. We are driven backendlessly from one to another along the chain of causes; and we canneither discover the first link nor do without it. The first link mustbe a cause of itself, and experience yields none such. Such a causewould be the unconditioned, and the unconditioned we cannot know. Thefinal result of thinking is thus to lead us to an unknown; and, inconsequence, all our seeming knowledge is seen to have no intelligiblebasis, and, therefore, to be merely hypothetical. If we cannot know God, we cannot know anything. 

This view is held by the Positivists, and the most popular Englishexponent of it is, perhaps, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Its characteristic isits repudition of both theology and metaphysics as pseudo-sciences, andits high esteem for science. That esteem is not disturbed by theconfession that "noumenal causes, "--that is, the actual reality ofthings, --are unknown; for we can still lay claim to valid knowledge ofthe laws of phenomena. Having acknowledged that natural things as knownare merely phenomena, positivism treats them in all respects as if theywere realities; and it rejoices in the triumphant progress of thenatural sciences as if it were a veritable growth of knowledge. It doesnot take to heart the phenomenal nature of known objects. But, havingpaid its formal compliments to the doctrine of the relativity of allknowledge, it neglects it altogether. 

Those who understand Kant better carry his scepticism further, and theycomplete the divorce between man's knowledge and reality. The process ofknowing, they hold, instead of leading us towards facts, as it was solong supposed to do, takes us away from them: _i. E. _, if either"towards" or "away from" can have any meaning when applied to two realmswhich are absolutely severed from one another. Knowledge is alwaysconcerned with the relations between things; with their likeness, orunlikeness, their laws, or connections; but these are universals, andthings are individuals. Science knows the laws of things, but not thethings; it reveals how one object affects another, how it is connectedwith it; but what are the things themselves, which are connected, itdoes not know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodlesscategories, " and not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explainingfacts, but they must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is thesphere of man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are inanother sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguishmore clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the scienceof knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal thereal nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals, but not things or particular existences. "When existence is in questionit is the individual, not the universal, that is real; and the realindividual is not a composite of species and accidents, but isindividual to the inmost fibre of its being. " Each object keeps its ownreal being to itself. Its inmost secret, its reality, is something thatcannot appear in knowledge. We can only know its manifestations; butthese manifestations are not its reality, nor connected with it. Thesebelong to the sphere of knowledge, they are parts in a system ofabstract thoughts; they do not exist in that system, or no-system, ofindividual realities, each of which, in its veritable being, is itselfonly, and connected with nought beside. 

Now, this view of the absolute impossibility of knowing any reality, onaccount of the fundamental difference between things and our thoughtsabout things, contains a better promise of a true view both of realityand of knowledge, than any of the previously mentioned half-heartedtheories. It forces us explicitly either to regard every effort to knowas futile, or else to regard it as futile _on this theory of it_. Inother words, we must either give up knowledge or else give up theaccount of knowledge advanced by these philosophers. Hitherto, however, every philosophy that has set itself against the possibility of theknowledge of reality has had to give way. It has failed to shake thefaith of mankind in its own intellectual endowment, or to arrest, evenfor a moment, the attempt by thinking to know things as they are. Theview held by Berkeley, that knowledge is merely subjective, because theessence of things consists in their being perceived by the individual, and that they are nothing but his ideas, was refuted by Kant, when heshowed that the very illusion of seeming knowledge was impossible onthat theory. And this later view, which represents knowledge as merelysubjective, on the ground that it is the product of the activity of thethought of mankind, working according to universal laws, is capable ofbeing refuted in the same manner. The only difference between theBerkeleian and this modern speculative theory is that, on the formerview, each individual constructed his own subjective entities orillusions; while, on the latter, all men, by reason of the universalityof the laws of thought governing their minds, create the same illusion, the same subjective scheme of ideas. Instead of each having his ownprivate unreality, as the product of his perceiving activity, they haveall the same, or at least a similar, phantom-world of ideas, as theresult of their thinking. But, in both cases alike, the reality of theworld without is out of reach, and knowledge is a purely subjectiveapprehension of a world within. Thoughts are quite different fromthings, and no effort of human reason can reveal any community betweenthem. 

Now, there are certain difficulties which, so far as I know, those whohold this view have scarcely attempted to meet. The first of these liesin the obvious fact, that all men at all times consider that this veryprocess of thinking, which the theory condemns as futile, is the onlyway we have of finding out what the reality of things is. Why do wereflect and think, except in order to pass beyond the illusions ofsensuous appearances to the knowledge of things as they are? Nay, why dothese philosophers themselves reflect, when reflection, instead ofleading to truth, which is knowledge of reality, leads only to ideas, which, being universal, cannot represent the realities that are said tobe "individual. "

The second is, that the knowledge of "the laws" of things gives to uspractical command over them; although, according to this view, laws arenot things, nor any part of the reality of things, nor even truerepresentations of things. Our authority over things seems to grow _paripassu_ with our knowledge. The natural sciences seem to prove by theirpractical efficiency, that they are not building up a world ofapparitions, like the real world; but gradually getting inside nature, learning more and more to wield her powers, and to make them theinstruments of the purposes of man, and the means of his welfare. Tocommon-sense, --which frequently "divines" truths that it cannot prove, and, like ballast in a ship, has often given steadiness to humanprogress although it is only a dead weight, --the assertion that manknows nothing is as incredible as that he knows all things. If it isreplied, that the "things" which we seem to dominate by the means ofknowledge are themselves only phenomena, the question arises, what thenare the real things to which they are opposed? What right has anyphilosophy to say that there is any reality which no one can in anysense know? The knowledge that such reality is, is surely a relationbetween that reality and consciousness, and, if so, the assertion of anunknowable reality is self-contradictory. For the conception of it isthe conception of something that is, and at the same time is not, out ofrelation to consciousness. 

To say what kind of thing reality is, is a still more remarkable feat, if reality is unknowable. Reality, being beyond knowledge, why is itcalled particular or individual, rather than universal? How is it knownthat the true being of things is different from ideas? Surely both ofthe terms must be regarded as known to some extent, if they are calledlike or unlike, contrasted or compared, opposed or identified. 

But, lastly, this theory has to account for the fact that it constituteswhat is not only unreal, but impossible, into the criterion of what isactual. If knowledge of reality is altogether different from humanknowledge, how does it come to be its criterion? That knowledge isinadequate or imperfect can be known, only by contrasting it with itsown proper ideal, whatever that may be. A criticism by reference to aforeign or irrelevant criterion, or the condemnation of a theory asimperfect because it does not realize an impossible end, isunreasonable. All true criticism of an object implies a reference to amore perfect state of itself. 

We must, then, regard the knowledge of objects as they are, which isopposed to human knowledge, as, only a completer and fuller form of thatknowledge; or else we must cease to contrast it with our humanknowledge, as valid with invalid, true with phenomenal. Either knowledgeof reality is complete knowledge, or else it is a chimera. And, ineither case, the sharp distinction between the real and the phenomenalvanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of consciousness, or different from ideas, but a reality related to consciousness, or, inother words, a knowable reality. "The distinction of objects intophenomena and noumena, _i. E. _, into things that for us exist, and thingsthat for us do not exist, is an Irish bull in philosophy, " said Heine. To speak of reality as unknowable, or to speak of anything asunknowable, is to utter a direct self-contradiction; it is to negate inthe predicate what is asserted in the subject. It is a still morestrange perversion to erect this knowable emptiness into a criterion ofknowledge, and to call the latter phenomenal by reference to it. 

These difficulties are so fundamental and so obvious, that the theory ofthe phenomenal nature of human knowledge, which, being interpreted, means that we know nothing, could scarcely maintain its hold, were itnot confused with another fact of human experience, that is apparentlyinconsistent with the doctrine that man can know the truth. Side by sidewith the faith of ordinary consciousness, that in order to know anythingwe must think, or, in other words, that knowledge shows us what thingsreally are, there is a conviction, strengthened by constant experience, that we never know things fully. Every investigation into the nature ofan object soon brings us to an enigma, a something more we do not know. Failing to know this something more, we generally consider that we havefallen short of reaching the reality of the object. We recognize, as ithas been expressed, that we have been brought to a stand, and wetherefore conclude that we are also brought to the end. We arrive atwhat we do not know, and we pronounce that unknown to be unknowable;that is, we regard it as something different in nature from what we doknow. So far as I can see, the attitude of ordinary thought in regard tothis matter might be fairly represented by saying, that it always beginsby considering objects as capable of being known in their reality, or asthey are, and that experience always proves the attempt to know them asthey are to be a failure. The effort is continued although failure isthe result, and even although that failure be exaggerated anduniversalized into that despair of knowledge which we have described. Weare thus confronted with what seems to be a contradiction; a trust anddistrust in knowledge. It can only be solved by doing full justice toboth of the conflicting elements; and then, if possible, by showing thatthey are elements, and not the complete, concrete fact, except when heldtogether. 

From one point of view, it is undeniable that in every object ofperception, we come upon problems that we cannot solve. Science at itsbest, and even when dealing with the simplest of things, is forced tostop short of its final secret. Even when it has discovered its law, there is still apparently something over and above which science cannotgrasp, and which seems to give to the object its reality. All thenatural sciences concentrated on a bit of iron ore fail to exhaust thetruth in it: there is always a "beyond" in it, something still morefundamental which is not yet understood. And that something beyond, thatinner essence, that point in which the laws meet and which the sciencesfail to lift into knowledge, is regarded as just the reality of thething. Thus the reality is supposed, at the close of everyinvestigation, to lie outside of knowledge; and conversely, all that wedo know, seeing that it lacks this last element, seems to be onlyapparent knowledge, or knowledge of phenomena. 

In this way the process of knowing seems always to stop short at thecritical moment, when the truth is just about to be reached. And thosewho dwell on this aspect alone are apt to conclude that man's intellectis touched with a kind of impotence, which makes it useless when it getsnear the reality. It is like a weapon that snaps at the hilt just whenthe battle is hottest. For we seem to be able to know everything but thereality, and yet apart from the real essence all knowledge seems to bemerely apparent. Physical science penetrates through the outerappearances of things to their laws, analyzes them into forms of energy, calculates their action and predicts their effects with certainty. Itspractical power over the forces of nature is so great that it seems tohave got inside her secrets. And yet science will itself acknowledgethat in every simplest object there is an unknown. Its triumphant courseof explaining seems to be always arrested at the threshold of reality. It has no theory, scarcely an hypothesis, of the actual nature ofthings, or of what that is in each object, which constitutes it a realexistence. Natural science, with a scarcely concealed sneer, hands overto the metaphysician all questions as to the real being of things; anditself makes the more modest pretension of showing how things behave, not what they are; what effects follow the original noumenal causes, butnot the veritable nature of these causes. Nor can the metaphysician, inhis turn, do more than suggest a hypothesis as to the nature of theultimate reality in things. He cannot detect or demonstrate it in anyparticular fact. In a word, every minutest object in the world bafflesthe combined powers of all forms of human thought, and holds back itsessence or true being from them. And as long as this true being, orreality is not known, the knowledge which we seem to have cannot be heldas ultimately true, but is demonstrably a makeshift. 

Having made this confession, there seems to be no alternative but topostulate an utter discrepancy between human thought and real existence, or between human knowledge and truth, which is the correspondence ofthing and thought. For, at no point is knowledge found to be in touchwith real being; it is everywhere demonstrably conditioned and relative, and inadequate to express the true reality of its objects. What remains, then, except to regard human knowledge as completely untrustworthy, asmerely of phenomena? If we cannot know _any_ reality, does not knowledgecompletely fail?

Now, in dealing with the moral life of man, we saw that the method ofhard alternatives is invalid. The moral life, being progressive, wasshown to be the meeting--point of the ideal and the actual; and theideal of perfect goodness was regarded as manifesting itself in actionswhich, nevertheless, were never adequate to express it. The good whenachieved was ever condemned as unworthy, and the ideal when attainedever pressed for more adequate expression in a better character. Theideal was present as potency, as realizing itself, but it was nevercompletely realized. The absolute good was never reached in the bestaction, and never completely missed in the worst. 

The same conflict of real and unreal was shown to be essential to everynatural life. As long as anything grows it neither completely attains, nor completely falls away from its ideal. The growing acorn is not anoak tree, and yet it is not a mere acorn. The child is not the man; andyet the man is in the child, and only needs to be evolved by interactionwith circumstances. The process of growth is one wherein the ideal isalways present, as a reconstructive power gradually changing its wholevehicle, or organism, into a more perfect expression of itself. Theideal is reached in the end, just because it is present in thebeginning; and there is no end as long as growth continues. 

Now, it is evident that knowledge, whether it be that of the individualman or of the human race, is a thing that grows. The process by means ofwhich natural science makes progress, or by which the consciousness ofthe child expands and deepens into the consciousness of the man, is bestmade intelligible from the point of view of evolution. It is like anorganic process, in which each new acquirement finds its place in an oldorder, each new fact is brought under the permanent principles ofexperience, and absorbed into an intellectual life, which itself, inturn, grows richer and fuller with every new acquisition. No knowledgeworthy of the name is an aggregation of facts. Wisdom comes by growth. 

Hence, the assertion that knowledge never attains reality, does notimply that it always misses it. In morals we do not say that a man isentirely evil, although he never, even in his best actions, attains thetrue good. And if the process of knowing is one that presses onwardtowards an ideal, that ideal is never completely missed even in thepoorest knowledge. If it grows, the method of fixed alternatives must beinapplicable to it. The ideal, whatever it may be, must be considered asactive in the present, guiding the whole movement, and graduallymanifesting itself in each of the passing forms, which are used up asthe raw material of new acquirement; and yet no passing form completelyexpresses the ideal. 

Nor is it difficult to say what that ideal of knowledge is, although wecannot define it in any adequate manner. We know that the end ofmorality is the _summum bonum_, although we cannot, as long as we areprogressive, define its whole content, or find it fully realized in anyaction. Every failure brings new truth, every higher grade of moralcharacter reveals some new height of goodness to be scaled; the moralideal acquires definiteness and content as humanity moves upwards. Andyet the ideal is not entirely unknown even at the first; even to themost ignorant, it presents itself as a criterion which enables him todistinguish between right and wrong, evil and goodness, and which guideshis practical life. The same truth holds with regard to knowledge. Itsgrowth receives its impulse from, and is directed and determined by, what is conceived as the real world of facts. This truth, namely, thatthe ideal knowledge is knowledge of reality, the most subjectivephilosopher cannot but acknowledge. It is implied in his condemnation ofknowledge as merely phenomenal, that there is possible a knowledge ofreal being. That thought and reality can be brought together, or rather, that they are always together, is presupposed in all knowledge and inall experience. The effort to know is the effort to _explain_ therelation of thought and reality, not to create it. The ideal of perfectknowledge is present from the first; it generates the effort, directsit, distinguishes between truth and error. And that which man ever aimsat, whether in the ordinary activities of daily thought, or through thepatient labour of scientific investigation, or in the reflectiveself-torture of philosophic thought, is to know the world as it is. Nofailure damps the ardour of this endeavour. Relativists, phenomenalists, agnostics, sceptics, Kantians or Neo-Kantians--all the crowd of thinkerswho cry down the human intellect, and draw a charmed circle aroundreality so as to make it unapproachable to the mind of man--ply thisuseless labour. They are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of senseand the outer husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-pointof knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into anintellectual possession the powers that play within and around them; or, in other words, to make these powers express themselves in theirthoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony, latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some waycontent to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy theirthirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the presence of theideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of reality andthought, which seeks for explicit and complete manifestation inknowledge. The reality is present in them as thinking activity, workingtowards complete revelation of itself by means of knowledge. And itspresence is real, although the process is never complete. 

In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of thetruths implied in the pursuit of an ideal--that a growing thing not onlyalways fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The distinctionbetween truth and error in knowledge is present at every stage in theeffort to attain truth, as the distinction between right and wrong ispresent in every phase of the moral life. It is the source of theintellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be drawn except byreference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our actual knowledge;as it is the absolute good, which condemns the present character. Theideal may be indefinite, and its content confused and poor; but it isalways sufficient for its purpose, always better than the actualachievement. And, in this sense, reality, the truth, the veritable beingof things, is always reached by the poorest knowledge. As there is nostarved and distorted sapling which is not the embodiment of theprinciple of natural life, so the meanest character is the product of anideal of goodness, and the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind isan expression of the reality of things. Without it there would not beeven the semblance of knowledge, not even error and untruth. 

Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought and realthings, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no point thesphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare human intellectmuch more power than it has. They regard mind as creating its phenomenalknowledge, or the apparent world. For, having separated mind fromreality, it is evident that they cannot avail themselves of any doctrineof sensations or impressions as a medium between them, or postulate anyother form of connection or means of communication. Connection of anykind must, in the end, imply some community of nature, and must put theunity of thought and being--here denied--beneath their difference. Hence, the world of phenomena which we know, and which as known, doesnot seem to consist of realities, must be the product of the unaidedhuman mind. The intellect, isolated from all real being, hasmanufactured the apparent universe, in all its endless wealth. It is acreative intellect, although it can only create illusions. It evolvesall its products from itself. 

But thought, set to revolve upon its own axis in an empty region, canproduce nothing, not even illusions. And, indeed, those who deny that itis possible for thought and reality to meet in a unity, have, notwithstanding, to bring over "something" to the aid of thought. Theremust be some effluence from the world of reality, some manifestations ofthe thing (though they are not the reality of the thing, nor any part ofthe reality, nor connected with the reality!) to assist the mind andsupply it with data. The "phenomenal world" is a hybrid, generated bythought and "something"--which yet is not reality; for the real world isa world of things in themselves, altogether beyond thought. By bringingin these data, it is virtually admitted that the human mind reaches downinto itself in vain for a world, even for a phenomenal one. 

Thought apart from things is quite empty, just as things apart fromthought are blind. Such thought and such reality are mere abstractions, hypostasized by false metaphysics; they are elements of truth rentasunder, and destroyed in the rending. The dependence of theintelligence of man upon reality is direct and complete. The foolishestdream, that ever played out its panorama beneath a night-cap, camethrough the gates of the senses from the actual world. Man is limited tohis material in all that he knows, just as he is ruled by the laws ofthought. He cannot go one step beyond it. To transcend "experience" isimpossible. We have no wings to sustain us in an empty region, and noneed of any. It is as impossible for man to create new ideas, as it isfor him to create new atoms. Our thought is essentially connected withreality. There is no _mauvais pas_ from thought to things. We do notneed to leap out of ourselves in order to get into the world. We are init from the first, both as physical and moral agents, and as thinkingbeings. Our thoughts are expressions of the real nature of things, sofar as they go. They may be and are imperfect; they may be and areconfused and inadequate, and express only the superficial aspects andnot "the inmost fibres"; still, they are what they are, in virtue of"the reality, " which finds itself interpreted in them. Severed from thatreality, they would be nothing. 

Thus, the distinction between thought and reality is a distinctionwithin a deeper unity. And that unity must not be regarded as somethingadditional to both, or as a third something. It _is_ their unity. It isboth reality and thought: it is existing thought, or reality knowingitself and existing through its knowledge of self; it isself-consciousness. The distinguished elements have no existence ormeaning except in their unity. Like the actual and ideal, they havesignificance and being, only in their reference to each other. 

There is one more difficulty connected with this matter which I musttouch upon, although the discussion may already be regarded as prolix. It is acknowledged by every one that the knowledge of the individual, and his apparent world of realities, grow _pari passu_. Beyond hissphere of knowledge there is no reality _for him_, not even apparentreality. But, on the other hand, the real world of existing thingsexists all the same whether he knows it or not. It did not begin to bewith any knowledge he may have of it, it does not cease to be with hisextinction, and it is not in any way affected by his valid, or invalid, reconstruction of it in thought. The world which depends on his thoughtis his world, and not the world of really existing things. And this istrue alike of every individual. The world is independent of all humanminds. It existed before them, and will, very possibly, exist afterthem. Can we not, therefore, conclude that the real world is independentof thought, and that it exists without relation to it?

A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the answer tothis difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in knowledge) themoral ideal, or the objective law of goodness, grows in richness andfulness of content with the individual who apprehends it. _His_ moralworld is the counterpart of _his_ moral growth as a character. Goodness_for him_ directly depends upon his recognition of it. Animals, presumably, have no moral ideal, because they have not the power toconstitute it. In morals, as in knowledge, the mind of man constructsits own world. And yet, in both alike, the world of truth or of goodnessexists all the same whether the individual knows it or not. He does notcall the moral law into being, but finds it without, and then realizesit in his own life. The moral law does not vanish and reappear with itsrecognition by mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes ofits life, but a good in itself that is eternal. 

Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness beanything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality ormotive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation toself-consciousness is essential. With the extinction ofself-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished. 

The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or unrealityof things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals have neitherillusions nor truths--unless they are self-conscious. The reality, whichman sets over against his own inadequate knowledge, is posited by him;and it has no meaning whatsoever except in this contrast. And toendeavour to conceive a reality which no one knows, is to assert arelative term without its correlative, which is absurd; it is to positan ideal which is opposed to nothing actual. 

In this view, so commonly held in our day, that knowledge is subjectiveand reality unknowable, we have another example of the falseness andinconsistency of abstract thinking. If this error be committed, there isno fundamental gain in saying with Kant, that things are relative to thethought of all, instead of asserting, with Berkeley or Browning, thatthey are relative to the thought of each. The final result is the same. Things as known, are reduced into mere creations of thought; things asthey are, are regarded as not thoughts, and as partaking in no way ofthe nature of thought. And yet "reality" is virtually assumed to begiven at the beginning of knowledge; for the sensations are supposed tobe emanations from it, or roused in consciousness by it. Thesesensations, it is said, man does not make, but receives, and receivesfrom the concealed reality. They flow from it, and are themanifestations of its activity. Then, in the next moment, reality isregarded as not given in any way, but as something to be discovered bythe effort of thought; for we always strive to know things, and notphantoms. Lastly, the knowledge thus acquired being regarded asimperfect, and experience showing to us continually that every objecthas more in it than we know, the reality is pronounced to be unknowable, and all knowledge is regarded as failure, as acquaintance with merephantoms. Thus, in thought, as in morality, the ideal is present at thebeginning, it is an effort after explicit realization, and its processis never complete. 

Now, all these aspects of the ideal of knowledge, that is, of reality, are held by the unsophisticated intelligence of man; and abstractphilosophy is not capable of finally getting rid of any one of them. It, too, holds them _alternately_. Its denial of the possibility of knowingreality is refuted by its own starting-point; for it begins with a givensomething, regarded as real, and its very effort to know is an attemptto know that reality by thinking. But it forgets these facts, when it isdiscovered that knowledge at the best is incomplete. It is thus tossedfrom assertion to denial, and from denial to assertion; from oneabstract or one-sided view of reality, to the other. 

When these different aspects of truth are grasped together from thepoint of view of evolution, there seems to be a way of escaping thedifficulties to which they give rise. For the ideal must be present atthe beginning, and cannot be present in its fulness till the process iscomplete. What is here required is to lift our theory of man's knowledgeto the level of our theory of his moral life, and to treat it frankly asthe process whereby reality manifests itself in the mind of man. In thatway, we shall avoid the absurdities of both of the abstract schools ofphilosophy, to both of which alike the native intelligence of man givesthe lie. We shall say neither that man knows nothing, nor that he knowsall; we shall regard his knowledge, neither as purely phenomenal and outof all contact with reality, nor as an actual identification with thereal being of things in all their complex variety. For, in morality, wedo not say either that the individual is absolutely evil, because hisactions never realize the supreme ideal of goodness; nor, that he is atthe last term of development, and "taking the place of God, " because helives as "ever in his great Taskmaster's eye. " Just as every moralaction, however good, leaves something still to be desiderated, something that may become a stepping-stone for new movement towards theideal which it has failed to actualize; so all our knowledge of anobject leaves something over that we have not apprehended, which istruer and more real than anything we know, and which in all futureeffort we strive to master. And, just as the very effort, to be goodderives its impulse and direction from the ideal of goodness which ispresent, and striving for realization; so the effort to know derives itsimpulse and direction from the reality which is present, and strivingfor complete realization in the thought of man. We know realityconfusedly from the first; and it is because we have attained so muchknowledge, that we strive for greater clearness and fulness. It is byplanting his foot on the world that man travels. It is by opposing hispower to the given reality that his knowledge grows. 

When once we recognize that reality is the ideal of knowledge, we areable to acknowledge all the truth that is in the doctrine of thephenomenalists, without falling into their errors and contradictions. Wemay go as far as the poet in confessing intellectual impotence, androundly call the knowledge of man "lacquered ignorance. " "Earth's leastatom" does veritably remain an enigma. Man is actually flung back intohis circumscribed sphere by every fact; and he will continue to be soflung to the end of time. He will never know reality, nor be able tohold up in his hand the very heart of the simplest thing in the world. For the world is an organic totality, and its simplest thing will not beseen, through and through, till everything is known, till every fact andevent is related to every other under principles which are universal:just as goodness cannot be fully achieved in any act, till the agent isin all ways lifted to the level of absolute goodness. Physics cannotreveal the forces which keep a stone in its place on the earth, till ithas traced the forces that maintain the starry systems in their course. No fact can be thoroughly known, _i. E. _, known in its reality, till thelight of the universe has been focussed upon it: and, on the other hand, to know any subject through and through would be to explain all being. The highest law and the essence of the simple fact, the universal andthe particular, can only be known together, in and through one another. "Reality" in "the least atom" will be known, only when knowledge hascompleted its work, and the universe has become a transparent sphere, penetrated in every direction by the shafts of intelligence. 

But this is only half the truth. If knowledge is never complete, it isalways _completing_; if reality is never known, it is ever _beingknown_; if the ideal is never actual, it is always _being actualized_. The complete failure of knowledge is as impossible as its completesuccess. It is at no time severed from reality; it is never its mereadumbration, nor are its contents mere phenomena. On the contrary, it isreality partially revealed, the ideal incompletely actualized. Our veryerrors are the working of reality within us, and apart from it theywould be impossible. The process towards truth by man is the process oftruth _in_ man; the movement of knowledge towards reality is the movementof reality into knowledge. A purely subjective consciousness which knows, such as the poet tried to describe, is a self-contradiction: it would bea consciousness at once related, and not related, to the actual world. But man has no need to relate himself to the world. He is alreadyrelated, and his task is to understand that relation, or, in other words, to make both its terms intelligible. Man has no need to go out fromhimself to facts; his relation to facts is prior to his distinction fromthem. The truth is that he cannot entirely lift himself away from them, nor suspend his thoughts in the void. In his inmost being he iscreation's voice, and in his knowledge he confusedly murmurs its deepthoughts. 

Browning was aware of this truth in its application to man's moralnature. In speaking of the principle of love, he was not tempted toapply fixed alternatives. On the contrary, he detected in the "poorestlove that was ever offered" the veritable presence of that which isperfect and complete, though never completely actualized. His interestin the moral development of man, and his penetrative moral insight, acting upon, and guided by the truths of the Christian religion, warnedhim, on this side, against the absolute separation of the ideal andactual, the divine and human. Human love, however poor in quality andlimited in range, was to him God's love in man. It was a wave breakingin the individual of that First Love, which is ever flowing back throughthe life of humanity to its primal source. To him all moral endeavour isthe process of this Primal Love; and every man, as he consciouslyidentifies himself with it, may use the language of Scripture, and say, "It is not I that live, but Christ lives in me. "

But, on the side of knowledge, he was neither so deeply interested, norhad he so good a guide to lean upon. Ignorant, according to allappearances, of the philosophy which has made the Christian maxim, "Dieto live, "--which primarily is only a principle of morality--the basis ofits theory of knowledge, he exaggerated the failure of science to reachthe whole truth as to any particular object, into a qualitativediscrepancy between knowledge and truth. Because knowledge is nevercomplete, it is always mere lacquered ignorance; and man's apparentintellectual victories are only conquests in a land of unrealities, ormere phenomena. He occupies in regard to knowledge, a position strictlyanalogous to that of Carlyle, in regard to morality; his intellectualpessimism is the counterpart of the moral pessimism of his predecessor, and it springs from the same error. He forgot that the ideal without isalso the power within, which makes for its own manifestation in the mindof man. 

He opposed the intellect to the world, as Carlyle opposed the weaknessof man to the law of duty; and he neglected the fact that the world wasthere for him, only because he knew it, just as Carlyle neglected thefact that the duty was without, only because it was recognized within. He strained the difference between the ideal and actual into an absolutedistinction; and, as Carlyle condemned man to strive for a goodnesswhich he could never achieve, so Browning condemns him to pursue a truthwhich he can never attain. In both, the failure is regarded as absolute. "There is no good in us, " has for its counterpart "There is no truth inus. " Both the moralist and the poet dwell on the _negative_ relation ofthe ideal and actual, and forget that the negative has no meaning, except as the expression of a deeper affirmative. Carlyle had to learnthat we know our moral imperfection, only because we are conscious of abetter within us; and Browning had to learn that we are aware of ourignorance, only because we have the consciousness of fuller truth withwhich we contrast our knowledge. Browning, indeed, knew that theconsciousness of evil was itself evidence of the presence of good, thatperfection means death, and progress is life, on the side of morals; buthe has missed the corresponding truth on the side of knowledge. If heacknowledges that the highest revealed itself to man, on the practicalside, as love; he does not see that it has also manifested itself toman, on the theoretical side, as reason. The self-communication of theInfinite is incomplete love is a quality of God, intelligence a qualityof man; hence, on one side, there is no limit to achievement, but on theother there is impotence. Human nature is absolutely divided againstitself; and the division, as we have already seen, is not between fleshand spirit, but between a love which is God's own and perfect, and anintelligence which is merely man's and altogether weak and deceptive. 

This is what makes Browning think it impossible to re-establish faith inGod, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it is possiblefor him to appeal to the moral consciousness, we shall inquire in thenext chapter. 

CHAPTER X. 

THE HEART AND THE HEAD. --LOVE AND REASON. 

 "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter. "[A]

[Footnote A: Milton's _Areopagitica_. ]

It has been shown that Browning appeals, in defence of his optimisticfaith, from the intellect to the heart. His theory rests on three mainassumptions:--namely (1) that knowledge of the true nature of things isimpossible to man, and that, therefore, it is necessary to find otherand better evidence than the intellect can give for the victory of goodover evil; (2) that the failure of knowledge is a necessary condition ofthe moral life, inasmuch as certain knowledge would render all moraleffort either futile or needless; (3) that after the failure ofknowledge there still remains possible a faith of the heart, which canfurnish a sufficient objective basis to morality and religion. The firstof these assumptions I endeavoured to deal with in the last chapter. Inow turn to the remaining two. 

Demonstrative, or certain, or absolute knowledge of the actual nature ofthings would, Browning asserts, destroy the very possibility of a morallife. [A] For such knowledge would show either that evil is evil, or thatevil is good; and, in both cases alike, the benevolent activity of lovewould be futile. In the first case, it would be thwarted and arrested bydespair; for, if evil be evil, it must remain evil for aught that mancan do. Man cannot effect a change in the nature of things, nor create agood in a world dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effectof moral love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, thenall things are perfect and complete, and there is no need ofinterference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in apermanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and, whetherevil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist to man, inorder that he may devote himself to the service of good. [B]

[Footnote A: See Chapter VIII. , p. 255. ]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_. ]

Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in which heuses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy refutation. It takesus beyond the bounds of all possible human experience, into an imaginaryregion, as to which all assertions are equally valueless. It isimpossible to conceive how the conduct of a being who is moral would beaffected by absolute knowledge; or, indeed, to conceive the existence ofsuch a being. For morality, as the poet insists, is a process in whichan ideal is gradually realized through conflict with the actual--anactual which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of theprogress. But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence wewould have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whomperfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being soconstituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements, theinteraction of which in a single character it would be impossible tomake intelligible. 

But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in Browning'sargument, which indicates that he had not distinguished between twoforms of optimism which are essentially different from eachother, --namely, the pantheistic and the Christian. 

To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's mask, that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of anincomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action andstultify love. For love--which necessarily implies need in itsobject--is the principle of all right action. In this he argues justly, for the moral life is essentially a conflict and progress; and, in aworld in which "white ruled unchecked along the line, " there would beneither the need of conflict nor the possibility of progress. And, onthe other hand, if the good were merely a phantom, and evil the reality, the same destruction of moral activity would follow. "White may nottriumph, " in this absolute manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once andevermore, white's faintest trace. " There must be "the constant shadecast on life's shine. "

All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates againstthe conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any proof thatwe need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order to be moral. For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be knowledge of astate of things in which morality would be really impossible; that is, it would be knowledge of a world in which all was evil or all was good. On the other hand, valid knowledge of a world in which good and evil arein conflict, and in which the former is realized through victory overthe latter, would not destroy morality. What is inconsistent with themoral life is the conception of a world where there is no movement fromevil to good, no evolution of character, but merely the stand-still lifeof "Rephan. " But absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issuewith sin in the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness exceptthrough conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the poet sofrequently insists, is a process which converts all actual attainmentinto a dead self, from which we can rise to higher things--a self, therefore, which is relatively evil--would, and does, inspire morality. It is the deification of evil not negated or overcome, of evil as it isin itself and apart from all process, which destroys morality. And thesame is equally true of a pantheistic optimism, which asserts that allthings _are_ good. But it is not true of a Christian optimism, whichasserts that all things are _working together for_ good. For suchoptimism implies that the process of negating or overcoming evil isessential to the attainment of goodness; it does not imply that evil, asevil, is ever good. Evil is unreal, only in the sense that it cannotwithstand the power which is set against it. It is not _mere_ semblance, a mere negation or absence of being; it is opposed to the good, and itsopposition can be overcome, only by the moral effort which it callsforth. An optimistic faith of this kind can find room for morality; and, indeed, it furnishes it with the religious basis it needs. Browning, however, has confused these two forms of optimism; and, therefore, hehas been driven to condemn knowledge, because he knew no alternative butthat of either making evil eternally real, or making it absolutelyunreal. A third alternative, however, is supplied by the conception ofmoral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which good can beattained--a knowledge that amounts to conviction--is the spring of allmoral effort; whereas an attitude of permanent doubt as to thedistinction between good and evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt mustbe solved before man can act at all, or choose one end rather thananother. All action implies belief, and the ardour and vigour of moralaction can only come from a belief which is whole-hearted. 

The further assertion, which the poet makes in _La Saisiaz_, and repeatselsewhere, that sure knowledge of the consequences that follow good andevil actions would necessarily lead to the choice of good and theavoidance of evil, and destroy morality by destroying liberty of choice, raises the whole question of the relation of knowledge and conduct, andcannot be adequately discussed here. It may be said, however, that itrests upon a confusion between two forms of necessity: namely, naturaland spiritual necessity. In asserting that knowledge of the consequencesof evil would determine human action in a necessary way, the poetvirtually treats man as if he were a natural being. But the assumptionthat man is responsible and liable to punishment, involves that he iscapable of withstanding all such determination. And knowledge does notand cannot lead to such necessary determination. Reason brings freedom;for reason constitutes the ends of action. 

It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a convincingknowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that they shall beable to make themselves its devoted instruments. Their desire is that"the good" shall supplant in them all motives that conflict against it, and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all their actions. Suchcomplete devotion to the good is expressed, for instance, in the wordsof the Hebrew Psalmist: "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage forever; for they are the rejoicing of my heart. I have inclined mine heartto perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end. I hate vain thoughts, but Thy law do I love. " "Nevertheless I live, " said the Christianapostle, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I nowlive in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God. " In these wordsthere is expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which theindividual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives onlyto actualize it in his character. The natural self is represented asdead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed as complete. Thisfull obedience to the ideal is the service of a necessity; but thenecessity is within, and the service is, therefore, perfect freedom. Theauthority of the law is absolute, but the law is self-imposed. The wholeman is convinced of its goodness. He has acquired something even fullerthan a mere intellectual demonstration of it; for his knowledge hasripened into wisdom, possessed his sympathies, and become a dispositionof his heart. And the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so farfrom rendering morality impossible, is its very perfection. To bringabout such a knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, aswill engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim ofall moral education. Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it isprogressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the ascentfrom the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power of anecessity which is moral. And this latter necessity can come onlythrough fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that rules theworld, and is also the inner principle of man's nature. 

There remains now the third element in Browning's view, --namely, thatthe faith in the good, implied in morality and religion, can be firmlyestablished, after knowledge has turned out deceptive, upon theindividual's consciousness of the power of love within himself. In otherwords, I must now try to estimate the value of Browning's appeal fromthe intellect to the heart. 

Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more thatBrowning's condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is notpartial or hesitating. On the contrary, he confines it definitely to theindividual's consciousness of his own inner states. 

 "Myself I solely recognize. They, too, may recognize themselves, not me, For aught I know or care. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. See also _La Saisiaz_. ]

Nor does Browning endeavour to correct this limited testimony of theintellect as to its own states, by bringing in the miraculous aid ofrevelation, or by postulating an unerring moral faculty. He does notassume an intuitive power of knowing right from wrong; but he maintainsthat ignorance enwraps man's moral sense. [B]

[Footnote B: See Chapter VIII. ]

And, not only are we unable to know the rule of right and wrong indetails, but we cannot know whether there _is_ right or wrong. At timesthe poet seems inclined to say that evil is a phenomenon conjured up bythe frail intelligence of man. 

 "Man's fancy makes the fault! Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside His finite God's infinitude, --earth's vault He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide, Since Man may claim a right to understand What passes understanding. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_. ]

God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At times, indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a clue tothe nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed in thissurpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when philosophizing, hewithdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is

 "Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby, This--nigh upon revealment as it seemed A minute since--defies thy longing looks, Withdrawn into the unknowable once more. "[B]

[Footnote B: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_. ]

Thus--to sum up Browning's view of knowledge--we are ignorant of theworld; we do not know even whether it is good, or evil, or only theirsemblance, that is presented to us in human life; and we know nothing ofGod, except that He is the cause of love in man. What greater depth ofagnosticism is possible?

When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and religiousconsciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was invented, revolts against it. 

Nevertheless, the distinction made by Browning between the intellectualand emotional elements of human life is very common in religiousthought. It is not often, indeed, that either the worth of love, or theweakness of knowledge receives such emphatic expression as that which isgiven to them by the poet; but the same general idea of their relationis often expressed, and still more often implied. Browning differs fromour ordinary teachers mainly in the boldness of his affirmatives andnegatives. They, too, regard the intellect as merely human, and theemotion of love as divine. They, too, shrink from identifying the reasonof man with the reason of God; even though they may recognize thatmorality and religion must postulate some kind of unity between God andman. They, too, conceive that human knowledge differs _in nature_ fromthat of God, while they maintain that human goodness is the same innature with that of God, though different in degree and fulness. Thereare two _kinds_ of knowledge, but there is only one kind of justice, ormercy, or loving-kindness. Man must be content with a semblance of aknowledge of truth; but a semblance of goodness, would be intolerable. God really reveals Himself to man in morality and religion, and Hecommunicates to man nothing less than "the divine love. " But there is nosuch close connection on the side of reason. The religious life of manis a divine principle, the indwelling of God in him; but there is afinal and fatal defect in man's knowledge. The divine love'smanifestation of itself is ever incomplete, it is true, even in the bestof men; but there is no defect in its nature. 

As a consequence of this doctrine, few religious opinions are morecommon at the present day, than that it is necessary to appeal, on allthe high concerns of man's moral and religious life, from the intellectto the heart. Where we cannot know, we may still feel; and the religiousman may have, in his own feeling of the divine, a more intimateconviction of the reality of that in which he trusts, than could beproduced by any intellectual process. 

 "Enough to say, 'I feel Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love The love its cause behind, --I can and do. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _A Piller at Sebzevar_. ]

Reason, in trying to scale the heights of truth, falls-back, impotentand broken, into doubt and despair; not by that way can we come to thatwhich is best and highest. 

 "I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye; Nor thro' the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun. "[B]

[Footnote B: _In Memoriam_. ]

But there is another way to find God and to conquer doubt. 

 "If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, I heard a voice 'believe no more, ' And heard an ever-breaking-shore That tumbled in the Godless deep;

 "A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _In Memoriam_. ]

What, then, I have now to ask, is the meaning and value of this appealto emotion? Can love, or emotion in any of its forms, reveal truths toman which his intellect cannot discover? If so, how? If not, how shallwe account for the general conviction of good men that it can? We have, in a word, either to justify the appeal to the heart, by explaining howthe heart may utter truths that are hidden from reason; or else toaccount for the illusion, by which religious emotion seems to revealsuch truths. 

The first requirement is shown to be unreasonable by the very terms inwhich it is made. The intuitive insight of faith, the immediateconviction of the heart, cannot render, and must not try to render, anyaccount of itself. Proof is a process; but there is no process in thisdirect conviction of truth. Its assertion is just the denial of process;it is a repudiation of all connections; in such a faith of feeling thereare no cob-web lines relating fact to fact, which doubt could break. Feeling is the immediate unity of the subject and object. I am pained, because I cannot rid myself of an element which is already within me; Iam lifted into the emotion of pleasure, or happiness, or bliss, by theconsciousness that I am already at one with an object that fulfils mylongings and satisfies my needs. Hence, there seems to be ground forsaying that, in this instance, the witness cannot lie; for it cannot gobefore the fact, as it is itself the effect of the fact. If the emotionis pleasurable it is the consciousness of the unity within; if it ispainful, of the disunity. In feeling, I am absolutely with myself; andthere seems, therefore, to be no need of attempting to justify, by meansof reason, a faith in God which manifests itself in emotion. The emotionitself is its own sufficient witness, a direct result of the intimateunion of man with the object of devotion. Nay, we may go further, andsay that the demand is an unjust one, which betrays ignorance of thetrue nature of moral intuition and religious feeling. 

I am not concerned to deny the truth that lies in the view here stated;and no advocate of the dignity of human reason, or of the worth of humanknowledge, is called upon to deny it. There is a sense in which theconviction of "faith" or "feeling" is more intimate and strong than anyprocess of proof. But this does not in any wise justify the contentionof those who maintain that we can feel what we do not in any sense know, or that the heart can testify to that of which the intellect isabsolutely silent. 

 "So let us say--not 'Since we know, we love, ' But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_. ]

In these two lines there are combined the truth I would acknowledge, andthe error I would confute. Love is, in one way, sufficient knowledge;or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that completest knowledge, inwhich subject and object interpenetrate. For, where love is, all foreignelements have been eliminated. There is not "one and one with a shadowythird"; but the object is brought within the self as constituting partof its very life. This is involved in all the great forms of humanthought--in science and art, no less than in morality and religion. Itis the truth that we love, and only that, which is altogether ours. Bymeans of love the poet is

 "Made one with Nature. There is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";

and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to reveal herinmost secrets. "Man, " said Fichte, "can will nothing but what he loves;his love is the sole and at the same time the infallible spring of hisvolition, and of all his life's striving and movement. " It is only whenwe have identified ourselves with an ideal, and made its realization ourown interest, that we strive to attain it. Love is revelation inknowledge, inspiration in art, motive in morality, and the fulness ofreligious joy. 

But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is agrave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at least, the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements extinguishesboth. We cannot know that in which we have no interest. The very effortto comprehend an object rests on interest, or the feeling of ourselvesin it; so that knowledge, as well as morality, may be said to begin inlove. We cannot know except we love; but, on the other hand, we cannotlove that which we do not in some degree know. Wherever the frontiers ofknowledge may be it is certain that there is nothing beyond them whichcan either arouse feeling, or be a steadying centre for it. Emotion islike a climbing plant. It clings to the tree of knowledge, adding beautyto its strength. But, without knowledge, it is impossible for man. Thereis no feeling which is not also incipient knowledge; for feeling is onlythe subjective side of knowledge--that face of the known fact which isturned inwards. 

If, therefore, the poet's agnosticism were taken literally, and, in hisphilosophical poems he obviously means it to be taken literally, itwould lead to a denial of the very principles of religion and morality, which it was meant to support. His appeal to love would then, strictlyspeaking, be an appeal to the love of nothing known, or knowable; andsuch love is impossible. For love, if it is to be distinguished from theorganic, impulse of beast towards beast, must have an object. A mereinstinctive activity of benevolence in man, by means of which helightened the sorrows of his brethren, if not informed with knowledge, would have no more moral worth than the grateful warmth of the sun. Suchlove as this there may be in the animal creation. If the bird is notrational, we may say that it builds its nest and lines it for its brood, pines for its partner and loves it, at the bidding of the returningspring, in much the same way as the meadows burst into flower. Withoutknowledge, the whole process is merely a natural one; or, if it be more, it is so only in so far as the life of emotion can be regarded as aforetaste of the life of thought. But such a natural process is notpossible to man. Every activity in him is relative to hisself-consciousness, and takes a new character from that relation. Hislove at the best and worst is the love of something that he knows, andin which he seeks to find himself made rich with new sufficiency. Thuslove can not "ally" itself with ignorance. It is, indeed, an impulsepressing for the closer communion of the lover with the object of hislove. 

 "Like two meteors of expanding flame, Those spheres instinct with it become the same, Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still Burning, yet ever inconsumable; In one another's substance finding food. "[A]

[Footnote A: Shelley's _Epipsychidion_. ]

But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within theblind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love wouldbe impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a darkroom shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle ofintrospection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have nointerest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step ingoodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek andfind a larger self in others. Morality, even in its lowest form, impliesknowledge, and knowledge of something better than "those _apparent_other mortals. " With the first dawn of the moral life comes theconsciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break withthe natural is not possible except to him who has known a better anddesired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert ideasinto actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place withinthe sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If knowledgebreaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey. The moral lawthat must be apprehended, and whose authority must be recognized by man, either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive phantom, if man isdoomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To extinguish truth is toextinguish goodness. 

In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man bymeans of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied. Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however ecstatic, ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot be, religious--unless they can know. The love of God implies knowledge. "Iknow Him whom I have believed" is the language of religion. For what isreligion but a conscious identification of the self with One who isknown to fulfil its needs and satisfy its aspirations? Agnosticism isthus directly destructive of it. We cannot, indeed, prove God as theconclusion of a syllogism, for He is the primary hypothesis of allproof. But, nevertheless, we cannot reach Him without knowledge. Emotionreveals no object, but is consequent upon the revelation of it; feelingyields no truth, but is the witness of the worth of a truth for theindividual. If man were shut up to mere feeling, even the awe of thedevout agnostic would be impossible. For the Unknowable cannot generateany emotion. It appears to do so, only because the Unknowable of theagnostic is not altogether unknown to him; but is a vast, abysmal"Something, " that has occupied with its shadowy presence the field ofhis imagination. It is paganism stricken with the plague, and philosophyafflicted with blindness, that build altars to an unknown God. Thehighest and the strongest faith, the deepest trust and the most loving, come with the fullest knowledge. Indeed, the distinction between the aweof the agnostic, which is the lowest form of religion, and that highestform in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fullerknowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latterimplies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of knowledge;and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human spirit cannotgrow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral ends is possible, only through the deepening and widening of man's knowledge of the natureof the world. Those who know God best, render unto Him the purestservice. 

So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult toaccount for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of itsdeliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings ofBrowning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary religiousopinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we shall discoverthat it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose authority is setabove that of reason, but rather the emotion which is the result ofknowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the doubts anddifficulties, which reason levels against "the faith, " is really anappeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The conviction ofthe heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of the understanding, is not _mere_ feeling; but, rather, the complex experience of the pastlife, that manifests itself in feeling. When an individual, clinging tohis moral or religious faith, says, "I have felt it, " he opposes to thedoubt, not his feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth ofits experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved, but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at theirbest moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretendsthat "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice" hasany authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in suchcases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the "feelings"of the good man were dissociated from his character, and stripped bareof all the significance they obtain therefrom, their worthlessness wouldbecome apparent. The profound error of condemning knowledge in order tohonour feeling, is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is alreadyinformed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like allother forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility fromthe adventitious help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns. 

That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals againstknowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that healways calls it "love. " For love in man is never ignorant. It knows itsobject, and is a conscious identification of the self with it. And toBrowning, the object of love, when love is at its best--of that love bymeans of which he refutes intellectual pessimism--is mankind. The revoltof the heart against all evil is a desire for the good of all men. Inother words, his refuge against the assailing doubts which spring fromthe intellect, is in the moral consciousness. But that consciousness isno mere emotion; it is a consciousness which knows the highest good, andmoves in sympathy with it. It is our maturest wisdom; for it is themanifestation of the presence and activity of the ideal, the fullestknowledge and the surest. Compared with this, the emotion linked toignorance, of which the poet speaks in his philosophic theory, is a verypoor thing. It is poorer than the lowest human love. 

Now, if this higher interpretation of the term "heart" be accepted, itis easily seen why its authority should seem higher than that of reason;and particularly, if it be remembered that, while the heart is thuswidened to take in all direct consciousness of the ideal, "the reason"is reduced to the power of reflection, or mental analysis. "The heart, "in this sense, is the intensest unity of the complex experiences of awhole life, while "the reason" is taken merely as a faculty whichinvents arguments, and provides grounds and evidences; it is what iscalled, in the language of German philosophy, the "understanding. " Now, in this sense, the understanding has, at best, only a borrowedauthority. It is the faculty of rules rather than of principles. It isever dogmatic, assertive, repellent, hard; and it always advances itsforces in single line. Its logic never convinced any one of truth orerror, unless, beneath the arguments which it advanced, there lay somedeeper principle of concord. Thus, the opposition between "faith andreason, " rightly interpreted, is that between a concrete experience, instinct with life and conviction, and a mechanical arrangement ofabstract arguments. The quarrel of the heart is not with reason, butwith reasons. "Evidences of Christianity?" said Coleridge; "I am wearyof the word. " It is this weariness of evidence, of the endless arguments_pro_ and _con_, which has caused so many to distrust reason andknowledge, and which has sometimes driven believers to the dangerousexpedient of making their faith dogmatic and absolute. Nor have theopponents of "the faith" been slow to seize the opportunity thus offeredthem. "From the moment that a religion solicits the aid of philosophy, its ruin is inevitable, " said Heine. "In the attempt at defence, itprates itself into destruction. Religion, like every absolutism, mustnot seek to justify itself. Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silentforce. Yea, Aeschylus permits not personified power to utter a singleword. It must remain mute. The moment that a religion ventures to printa catechism supported by arguments, the moment that a politicalabsolutism publishes an official newspaper, both are near their end. Buttherein consists our triumph: we have brought our adversaries to speech, and they must reckon with us. "[A] But, we may answer, religion is _not_an absolutism; and, therefore, it is _not_ near its end when it venturesto justify itself. On the contrary, no spiritual power, be it moral orreligious, can maintain its authority, if it assumes a despoticattitude; for the human spirit inevitably moves towards freedom, andthat movement is the deepest necessity of its nature, which it cannotescape. "Religion, on the ground of its sanctity, and law, on the groundof its majesty, often resist the sifting of their claims. But in sodoing, they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that their claimsare ill-founded. They can command the unfeigned homage of man, only whenthey have shown themselves able to stand the test of free inquiry. "

[Footnote A: _Religion and Philosophy in Germany_. ]

And if it is an error to suppose, with Browning, that the primary truthsof the moral and religious consciousness belong to a region which ishigher than knowledge, and can, from that side, be neither assailed nordefended; it is also an error to suppose that reason is essentiallyantagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion are preciselythe richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the most secure whichis most completely illumined by reason. Religion at its best is not adogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical and destructivefaculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion on which it isexercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and clamour ofdisputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we have seen, bothreason and religion rest. 

The "faith" to which religious spirits appeal against all the attacks ofdoubt, "the love" of Browning, is really implicit reason; it is"abbreviated" or concentrated knowledge; it is the manifold experiencesof life focussed into an intense unity. And, on the other hand, the"reason" which they condemn is what Carlyle calls the logic-choppingfaculty. In taking the side of faith when troubled with difficultieswhich they cannot lay, they are really defending the cause of reasonagainst that of the understanding. For it is quite true that theunderstanding, that is, the reason as reflective or critical, can neverbring about either a moral or religious life. It cannot create areligion, any more than physiology can produce men. The reflection whichbrings doubt is always secondary; it can only exercise itself on a givenmaterial. As Hegel frequently pointed out, it is not the function ofmoral philosophy to create or to institute a morality or religion, butto understand them. The facts must first be given; they must be actualexperiences of the human spirit. Moral philosophy and theology differfrom the moral or religious life, in the same way as geology differsfrom the earth, or astronomy from the heavenly bodies. The latter arefacts; the former are theories about the facts. Religion is an attitudeof the human spirit towards the highest; morality is the realization ofcharacter; and these are not to be confused with their reflectiveinterpretations. Much of the difficulty in these matters comes from thelack of a clear distinction between _beliefs_ and _creeds_. 

Further, not only are the utterances of the heart prior to thedeliverances of the intellect in this sense, but it may also be admittedthat the latter can never do full justice to the contents of the former. So rich is character in content and so complex is spiritual life, thatwe can never, by means of reflection, lift into clear consciousness allthe elements that enter into it. Into the organism of our experience, which is our faith, there is continually absorbed the subtle influencesof our complex natural and social environment. We grow by means of them, as the plant grows by feeding on the soil and the sunshine and dew. Itis as impossible for us to set forth, one by one, the truths and errorswhich we have thus worked into our mental and moral life, as it is tokeep a reckoning of the physical atoms with which the natural lifebuilds up the body. Hence, every attempt to justify these truths seemsinadequate; and the defence which the understanding sets up for thefaith, always seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed hisdeepest convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral lawaffected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated afeeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the religiousecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the channels of speech, but floods the soul with overmastering power, possessing all itsfaculties. In this respect, it will always remain true that the greatestfacts of human experience reach beyond all knowledge. Nay, we may addfurther, that in this respect the simplest of these facts passes allunderstanding. Still, as we have already seen, it is reason thatconstitutes them; that which is presented to reason for explanation, inknowledge and morality and religion, is itself the product of reason. Reason is the power which, by interaction with our environment, hasgenerated the whole of our experience. And, just as natural scienceinterprets the phenomena given to it by ordinary opinion, _i. E. _, interprets and purifies a lower form of knowledge by converting it intoa higher; so the task of reason when it is exercised upon morality andreligion, is simply to evolve, and amplify the meaning of its ownproducts. The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophyand the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason toreason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to thedeveloped fulness of life and structure. In this matter, as in allothers wherein the human spirit is concerned, that which is first bynature is last in genesis--[Greek: nika d' ho prôtos kai teleutaiosdramôn. ] The whole history of the moral and religious experience ofmankind is comprised in the statement, that the implicit reason which wecall "faith" is ever developing towards full consciousness of itself;and that, at its first beginning, and throughout the whole ascendingprocess of this development, the highest is present in it as aself-manifesting power. 

But this process from the almost instinctive intuitions of the hearttowards the morality and religion of freedom, being a process ofevolution, necessarily involves conflict. There are men, it is true, theunity of whose moral and religious faith is never completely broken bydoubt; just as there are men who are not forced by the contradictions inthe first interpretation of the world by ordinary experience to attemptto re-interpret it by means of science and philosophy. 

Throughout their lives they may say like Pompilia--

 "I know the right place by foot's feel, I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1886-1887. ]

Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy, besidethat of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its miserieslooked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a little child'sgarden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little garden; and thereto nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that inlooking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern nowolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, andrain-screen. " There is a similar way of being good, with a goodnesswhich, though limited, is pure and perfect in nature. Nay, we may evenadmit that such lives are frequently the most complete and beautiful, just as the fairest flowers grow, not on the tallest trees, but on thefragile plants at their foot. Nevertheless, even in the case of thosepersons who have never broken from the traditional faith of the past, orfelt it to be inadequate, that faith has been silently reconstructed ina new synthesis of knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance;but every individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn hisspiritual environment into personal experience. "A man may be a hereticin the truth, " said Milton, "and if he believe things only because hispastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing otherreason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomeshis heresy. " It is truth to another but tradition to him; it is a creedand not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need of thisconflict--

 "Is it not this ignoble confidence, Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps, Makes the old heroism impossible?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1848-1850. ]

asks the Pope. The stream of truth when it ceases to flow onward, becomes a malarious swamp. Movement is the law of life; and knowledge ofthe principles of morality and religion, as of all other principles, must, in order to grow, be felt from time to time as inadequate anduntrue. There are men and ages whose mission is--

 "to shake This torpor of assurance from our creed, Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring That formidable danger back, we drove Long ago to the distance and the dark. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid. _, 1853-1856. ]

Such a spirit of criticism seems to many to exercise a merelydestructive power, and those who have not felt the inadequacy of theinherited faith defend themselves against it, as the enemy of theirlives. But no logic, or assailing doubt, could have power against thetestimony of "the heart, " unless it was rooted in deeper and truerprinciples than those which it attacked. Nothing can overpower truthexcept a larger truth; and, in such a conflict, the truth in the oldview will ultimately take the side of the new, and find its subordinateposition within it. It has happened, not infrequently, as in the case ofthe Encyclopædists, that the explicit truths of reason were moreabstract, that is, less true, than the implicit "faith" which theyassailed. The central truths of religion have often proved themselves topossess some stubborn, though semi-articulate power, which couldultimately overcome or subordinate the more partial and explicit truthsof abstract science. It is this that gives plausibility to the idea, that the testimony of the heart is more reliable than that of theintellect. But, in this case also, it was really reason that triumphed. It was the truth which proved itself to be immortal, and not any mereemotion. The insurrection of the intellect against the heart is quelled, only when the untruth, or abstract character, of the principle of theassailants has been made manifest, and when the old faith has yielded upits unjust gains, and proved its vitality and strength by absorbing thetruth that gave vigour to the attack. Just as in morality it is theideal, or the unity of the whole moral life, that breaks up intodifferences, so also here it is the implicit faith which, as it grows, breaks forth into doubts. In both cases alike, the negative movementwhich induces despair, is only a phase of a positive process--theprocess of reason towards a fuller, a more articulate and complex, realization of itself. 

Hence it follows that the value and strength of a faith correspondsaccurately to the doubts it has overcome. Those who never went forth tobattle cannot come home heroes. It is only when the earthquake has triedthe towers, and destroyed the sense of security, that

 "Man stands out again, pale, resolute, Prepared to die, --that is, alive at last. As we broke up that old faith of the world, Have we, next age, to break up this the new-- Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report-- Whence need to bravely disbelieve report Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1862-1868. ]

"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thriveby exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. "

It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which Browningfell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith, hestigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not fail, except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not at anytime attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral life is inany of its activities[B] a complete embodiment of the absolute good. Itis not given to man, who is essentially progressive, to reach theultimate term of development. For there is no ultimate term: life neverstands still. But, for the same reason, there is no ultimate failure. The whole history of man is a history of growth. If, however, knowledgedid fail, then morality too must fail; and the appeal which the poetmakes from the intellect to the heart, would be an appeal to mereemotion. Finally, even if we take a generous view of the poet's meaning, and put out of consideration the theory he expresses when he isdeliberately philosophizing, there is still no appeal from the reason toan alien and higher authority. The appeal to "the heart" is, at best, only an appeal from the understanding to the reason, from a consciouslogic to the more concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflectionhas failed to comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is anappeal from truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma. 

[Footnote B: See Chapter IX. , p. 291. ]

And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether "the heartbe wiser than the head, " or not, whether the faith which is assailed bericher or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic which is directedagainst it, an appeal to the heart cannot any longer restore the unityof the broken life. Once reflection has set in, there is no way ofturning away its destructive might, except by deeper reflection. Theimplicit faith of the heart must become the explicit faith of reason. "There is no final and satisfactory issue from such an endless internaldebate and conflict, until the 'heart' has learnt to speak the languageof the head--_i. E. _, until the permanent principles, which underlay andgave strength to faith, have been brought into the light of distinctconsciousness. "[A]

[Footnote A: Caird's _Comte_. ]

I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in orderto comprehend human character, "I needs must blend the quality of man With quality of God, and so assist Mere human sight to understand my Life. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_. ]

But it was a profound error, which contained in it the destruction ofmorality and religion, as well as of knowledge, to make "the quality ofGod" a love that excludes reason, and the quality of man an intellectincapable of knowing truth. Such in-congruous elements could never becombined into the unity of a character. A love that was mere emotioncould not yield a motive for morality, or a principle of religion. Aphilosophy of life which is based on agnosticism is an explicitself-contradiction, which can help no one. We must appeal from Browningthe philosopher to Browning the poet. 

CHAPTER XI. 

CONCLUSION. 

 "Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, Above and through his art--for it gives way; That arm is wrongly put--and there again-- A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, He means right--that, a child may understand. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_. ]

I have tried to show that Browning's theory of life, in so far as it isexpressed in his philosophical poems, rests on agnosticism; and thatsuch a theory is inconsistent with the moral and religious interests ofman. The idea that truth is unattainable was represented by Browning asa bulwark of the faith, but it proved on examination to be treacherous. His optimism was found to have no better foundation than personalconviction, which any one was free to deny, and which the poet could inno wise prove. The evidence of the heart, to which he appealed, was theevidence of an emotion severed from intelligence, and, therefore, without any content whatsoever. "The faith, " which he professed, was notthe faith that anticipates and invites proof, but a faith which isincapable of proof. In casting doubt upon the validity of knowledge, hedegraded the whole spiritual nature of man; for a love that is ignorantof its object is a blind impulse, and a moral consciousness that doesnot know the law is an impossible phantom--a self-contradiction. 

But, although Browning's explicitly philosophical theory of life fails, there appears in his earlier poems, where his poetical freedom was notyet trammelled, nor his moral enthusiasm restrained by the stubborndifficulties of reflective thought, a far truer and richer view. In thisperiod of pure poetry, his conception of man was less abstract than inhis later works, and his inspiration was more direct and full. Thepoet's dialectical ingenuity increased with the growth of his reflectivetendencies; but his relation to the great principles of spiritual lifeseemed to become less intimate, and his expression of them more halting. What we find in his earlier works are vigorous ethical convictions, aglowing optimistic faith, achieving their fitting expression inimpassioned poetry; what we find in his later works are arguments, which, however richly adorned with poetic metaphors, have lost thecompleteness and energy of life. His poetic fancies are like chapletswhich crown the dead. Lovers of the poet, who seek in his poems forinspiring expressions of their hope and faith, will always do well inturning from his militant metaphysics to his art. 

In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was farricher than the theory which professed to explain it. The task oflifting his moral convictions into the clear light of consciousphilosophy was beyond his power. The theory of the failure of knowledge, which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the current doctrineof the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with his generous beliefin the moral progress of man; and it maimed the expression of thatbelief. The result of his work as a philosopher is a confession ofcomplete ignorance and the helpless asseveration of a purely dogmaticfaith. 

The fundamental error of the poet's philosophy lies, I believe, in thatseverance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which findsexpression in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies_, _The Parleyings_, and_Asolando_. Such an absolute division is not to be found in_Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _A Death in theDesert_, or in _The Ring and the Book_; nor even in _Fifine at theFair_. In these works we are not perplexed by the strange combination ofa nature whose principle is love, and which is capable of infiniteprogress, with an intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance. Rather, the spirit of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations;and, therefore, as progressive on all sides of its activity. Thewidening of his knowledge, which is brought about by increasingexperience, is parallel with the deepening and purifying of his morallife. In all Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of_Paracelsus_, love is conceived as having a place and function ofsupreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine origin anddestiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as merely human, and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In _Easter-Day_ it isdefinitely contrasted with love, and shown to be incapable of satisfyingthe deepest wants of man. It is, at the best, only a means to the higherpurposes of moral activity, and, except in the _Grammarian's Funeral_, it is nowhere regarded as in itself a worthy end. 

 "'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise. And thence I conclude that the real God-function Is to furnish a motive and injunction For practising what we know already. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_. ]

Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than byknowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may say thatin them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not as in anysense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives are rationalmotives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even constituted byhis intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as by instinct andimpulse. 

 "Why live, Except for love--how love, unless they know?"[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1327-1328. ]

asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in spite ofknowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the latter asillusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only fails to receivesupport from the defective intelligence, but maintains its own integrityonly by repudiating the testimony of the reason. In the distinctionbetween knowledge as means and love as end, it is easy, indeed, todetect a tendency to degrade the former into a mere temporary expedient, whereby moral ends may be served. The poet speaks of "such knowledge asis possible to man. " The attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic, and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly ofits utter inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of thePope---which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the poet's ownmaturest utterance on the great moral and religious questions raised bythe tragedy of Pompilia's death--we find this view vividly expressed:--

 "O Thou--as represented here to me In such conception as my soul allows, -- Under Thy measureless, my atom width!-- Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass Wherein are gathered all the scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1308-1315. ]

God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity solely by Himself, " while, "by the little mind of man, He is reduced to littleness that suits man'sfaculty. " In these words, and others that might be quoted, the poetshows that he is profoundly impressed with the distinction between humanknowledge, and that knowledge which is adequate to the whole nature andextent of being. And in _Christmas-Eve_ he repudiates with a touch ofscorn, the absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogetherhuman reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic fornot making

 "The important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one with the Creator. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_. ]

Nowhere in Browning, unless we except _Paracelsus_, is there any sign ofan inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same spirit as he dealswith man's love--namely, as a direct emanation from the inmost nature ofGod, a divine element that completes and crowns man's life on earth. Onthe contrary, he shows a persistent tendency to treat love as a powerhigher in nature than reason, and to give to it a supreme place in theformation of character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows instrength. The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, andknowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution fromprinciples, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlierworks. Still, in the latter, these principles are only latent, and arefar from holding undisputed sway. Browning was, at first, restrainedfrom exclusive devotion to abstract views, by the suggestions which theartistic spirit receives through its immediate contact with the facts oflife. That contact it is very difficult for philosophy to maintain as itpursues its effort after universal truth. Philosophy is obliged toanalyze in order to define, and, in that process, it is apt to losesomething of that completeness of representation, which belongs to art. For art is always engaged in presenting the universal in the form of aparticular object of beauty. Its product is a "known unknown, " but theunknown is the unexhausted reality of a fact of intuition. Nor cananalysis ever exhaust it; theory can never catch up art, or explain allthat is in it. On similar grounds, it may be shown that it is impossiblefor reason to lay bare all the elements that enter into its firstcomplex product, which we call faith. In religion, as in art, man isaware of more than he knows; his articulate logic cannot do justice toall the truths of the "heart. " "The supplementary reflux of light" ofphilosophy cannot "illustrate all the inferior grades" of knowledge. Manwill never completely understand himself. 

 "I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed, Uncomprehended by our narrow thought, But somehow felt and known in every shift And change in the spirit, --nay, in every pore Of the body, even, )--what God is, what we are, What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy In infinite ways--one everlasting bliss, From whom all being emanates, all power Proceeds. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_. ]

I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions ofBrowning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the elementsof his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a truerphilosophy of life than anything which the poet himself achieved. Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to press thepassionate utterances of his religious rapture into the service ofmetaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of emotion as theexpression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless, rather than set forth anew defence of the faith, which his agnosticism left exposed to theassaults of doubt and denial, it is better to make Browning correct hisown errors, and to appeal from the metaphysician to the poet, from thesobriety of the logical understanding to the inspiration of poetry. 

I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective element inthe poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is in need ofrevision; and what he asserts of human love, should be applied point bypoint to human reason. As man is ideally united with the absolute on theside of moral emotion (if the phrase may be pardoned), so he is ideallyunited with the absolute on the side of the intellect. As there is nodifference of _nature_ between God's goodness and man's goodness, sothere is no difference of nature between God's truth and man's truth. There are not two kinds of righteousness or mercy; there are not twokinds of truth. Human nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet, " as thepoet implies that it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element, ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate, of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot belinked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the lovewould be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality andreligion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at warwith his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a beingendowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading humanknowledge, the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of theChristian faith which he professed--that God can and does manifesthimself in man. 

On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God, ofman's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral side, an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor can wedo so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational activityin knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is neither first, nor last; he is not the original author of his love, any more than ofhis reason; he is not the divine principle of the whole to which hebelongs, although he is potentially in harmony with it. Both sides ofhis being are equally touched with imperfection--his love, no less thanhis reason. Perfect love would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom, perfect love. But absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever_on the way_ to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the powerof the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict andacquirement. 

 "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey Placid and perfect with my art: the worse. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_. ]

Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings thanthis, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although heoccasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort. 

 "When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene, -- When our faith in the same has stood the test-- Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labour are surely done, There remaineth a rest for the people of God, And I have had troubles enough, for one. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_. ]

It is the sense of endless onward movement, the outlook towards animmortal course, "the life after life in unlimited series, " which is soinspiring in his early poetry. He conceives that we are here, on thislower earth, just to learn one form, the elementary lesson and alphabetof goodness, namely, "the uses of the flesh": in other lives, otherachievements. The separation of the soul from its instrument has verylittle significance to the poet; for it does not arrest the course ofmoral development. 

 "No work begun shall ever pause for death. "

The spirit pursues its lone way, on other "adventures brave and new, "but ever towards a good which is complete. 

 "Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn, much to forget Ere the time be come for taking you. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Evelyn Hope_. ]

Still the time will come when the awakened need shall be satisfied; forthe need was created in order to be satisfied. 

 "Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear Hungry for music, and direct thine eye To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument, Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?"[B]

[Footnote B: _Two Camels_. ]

The movement onward is thus a movement in knowledge, as well as in everyother form of good. The lover of Evelyn Hope, looking back inimagination on the course he has travelled on earth and after, exclaims--

 "I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Evelyn Hope_. ]

In these earlier poems, there is not, as in the later ones, a maimed, orone-sided, evolution--a progress towards perfect love on the side of theheart, and towards an illusive ideal on the side of the intellect. Knowledge, too, has its value, and he who lived to settle "_Hoti's_business, properly based _Oun_, " and who "gave us the doctrine of theenclitic _De_, " was, to the poet, "Still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying. 

 "Here's the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know-- Bury this man there? Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Grammarian's Funeral_. ]

No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift andevery effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process. Thesoul bears in it _all_ its conquests. 

 "There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, _so_ much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Abt Vogler_. ]

The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure, is "atriumph's evidence for the fulness of the days. " The doubts thatknowledge brings, instead of implying a defective intelligence doomed tospend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to progress towards the truth. He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe. "

 "Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. ]

Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain thepromise of further achievement. 

 "Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, their's--ours, for eternity. 

 "To-day's brief passion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect--how else? They shall never change: We are faulty--why not? We have time in store. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_. ]

Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a blight, and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus recognized thatgrowing knowledge was an essential condition of growing goodness. Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if therewere such a thing as _mere_ knowledge). 

 "Everywhere I see in the world the intellect of man, That sword, the energy his subtle spear, The knowledge which defends him like a shield-- Everywhere; but they make not up, I think, The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower She holds up to the softened gaze of God. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1013-1019. ]

But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had sustained forwant of knowledge. 

 "The saints must bear with me, impute the fault To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance, Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1515-1518. ]

Further on in the Pope's soliloquy, the poet shows that, at that time, he fully recognized the risk of entrusting the spiritual interests ofman to the enthusiasm of elevated feeling, or to the mere intuitions ofa noble heart. Such intuitions will sometimes guide a man happily, as inthe case of Caponsacchi:

 "Since ourselves allow He has danced, in gaiety of heart, i' the main The right step through the maze we bade him foot. "[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1915-1917. ]

But, on the other hand, such impulses, not instructed by knowledge ofthe truth, and made steadfast to the laws of the higher life by areasoned conviction, lead man rightly only by accident. In such a careerthere is no guarantee of constancy; other impulses might lead to otherways of life. 

 "But if his heart had prompted to break loose And mar the measure? Why, we must submit, And thank the chance that brought him safe so far. Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps. Can he teach others how to quit themselves, Show why this step was right while that were wrong? How should he? 'Ask your hearts as I asked mine, And get discreetly through the morrice too; If your hearts misdirect you, --quit the stage, And make amends, --be there amends to make. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1916-1927. ]

If the heart proved to Caponsacchi a guide to all that is good andglorious, "the Abate, second in the suite, " puts in the testimony ofanother experience: "His heart answered to another tune. "

 "I have my taste too, and tread no such step! You choose the glorious life, and may for me! I like the lowest of life's appetites, -- So you judge--but the very truth of joy To my own apprehension which decides. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid. _, 1932-1936. ]

Mere emotion is thus an insecure guide to conduct, for its authority canbe equally cited in support of every course of life. No one can say tohis neighbour, "Thou art wrong. " Every impulse is right to theindividual who has it, and so long as he has it. _De gustibus nondisputandum_. Without a universal criterion there is no praise or blame. 

 "Call me knave and you get yourself called fool! I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge; Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite, To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized The rational man, the type of common-sense. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid. _, 1937-1941. ]

This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth, marks thehigh tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as yet concernedwith the defence of any theory or the discussion of any abstractquestion, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where knowledge isdissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is a mere impulseof the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties of reflection, thepoet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes to him an offence, andto save his faith he plucked out his right eye and entered into thekingdom maimed. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ the ascent into another life istriumphant, like that of a conqueror bearing with him the spoils ofearth; but in the later poems he escapes with a bare belief, and theloss of all his rich possessions of knowledge, like a shipwreckedmariner whose goods have been thrown overboard. His philosophy was atreacherous ally to his faith. 

But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as artist, recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function than seems tobe possible according to the theory in his later works. In the earlypoems there is no hint of the doctrine that demonstrative knowledge ofthe good, and of the necessity of its law, would destroy freedom. On thecontrary, there are suggestions which point to the opposite doctrine, according to which knowledge is the condition of freedom. 

While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an impulse--eitherblind or bound to erring knowledge--and of the heart as made to love, inhis earlier ones he seems to treat man as free to work out his ownpurposes, and act out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself ableto maintain the dependence of man upon God without destroying morality. He regards man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling_within_ his rational nature, and constituting the forms of itsactivity. He recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in thesense of a tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and animpulse informed, that is, directed by reason. According to this view, it is reason which at once gives man the independence of foreignauthority, which is implied in morality, and constitutes that affinitybetween man and God, which is implied by religion. No doubt, the impulseto know, like the impulse to love, was put into man: his whole nature isa gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent uponGod--"God's all, man's nought. " But, on the other hand, it _is_ arational nature which has been put into him, and not an irrationalimpulse. Or, rather, the impulse that constitutes his life as man, isthe self-evolving activity of reason. 

 "Who speaks of man, then, must not sever Man's very elements from man. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_. ]

However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by emanationor creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all its risksand possibilities. It is of the very essence of reason that it shouldfind its law within itself. 

 "God's all, man's nought: But also, God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away As it were a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at Him from a place apart, And use his gifts of brain and heart, Given, indeed, but to keep for ever. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_. ]

Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the originalreceptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and every innerpower and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning does not forgetwhat these powers are. Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature, as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is toact freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He isrational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, asdead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life ofinnocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "thetable land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality. " He is aspirit, --responsible because he is free, and free because he isrational. 

 "Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock, And, looks to God who ordained divorce Of the rock from His boundless continent. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid. _]

The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in sofar as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of action. Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man to freehimself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate himself toan inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain to goodness. Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also is the principleof religion, for it implies the highest and fullest manifestation of theabsolute. 

Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its independence, which is, in turn, the first condition of morality, still this is onlythe first aspect. The rational being plants himself on his ownindividuality, stands aloof and alone in the rights of his freedom, _inorder that_ he may set out from thence to take possession, by means ofknowledge and action, of the world in which he is placed. Reason ispotentially absolute, capable of finding itself everywhere. So that init man is "honour-clothed and glory-crowned. "

 "This is the honour, --that no thing I know, Feel or conceive, but I can make my own Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. _]

Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of theworld without him, or rather, discovers that there is not hostility, butaffinity between it and himself. 

 "This is the glory, --that in all conceived, Or felt or known, I recognize a mind Not mine but like mine, --for the double joy, -- Making all things for me and me for Him. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_. ]

That which is finite is hemmed in by other things, as well as determinedby them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists for it no otherthing to limit or determine it. There is nothing finally alien orforeign to reason. Freedom and infinitude, self-determination andabsoluteness, imply each other. In so far as man is free, he is liftedabove the finite. It was God's plan to make man on His own image:--

 "To create man and then leave him Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, But able to glorify Him too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer, Made perfect as a thing of course. "[B]

[Footnote B: _Christmas-Eve_. ]

Man must find his law within himself, be the source of his own activity, not passive or receptive, but outgoing and effective. 

 "Rejoice we are allied To That which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. "[C]

[Footnote C: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. ]

This near affinity between the divine and human is just what Browningseems to repudiate in his later poems, when he speaks as if theabsolute, in order to maintain its own supremacy over man, had to stintits gifts and endow him only with a defective reason. In the earlierperiod of the poet there is far less timidity. He then saw that thegreater the gift, the greater the Giver; that only spirit can revealspirit; that "God is glorified in man, " and that love is at its fullestonly when it gives itself. 

In insisting on such identity of the human spirit with the divine, ourpoet does not at any time run the risk of forgetting that the identityis not absolute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which leaves Godlonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his morality. 

 "Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve, A Master to obey, a course to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become. "[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

Man, at best, only moves _towards_ his ideal: God is conceived as theever-existing ideal. God, in short, is the term which signifies for usthe Being who is eternally all in all, and who, therefore, is hiddenfrom us who are only moving _towards_ perfection, in the excess of thebrightness of His own glory. Nevertheless, as Browning recognizes, thegrandeur of God's perfection is just His outflowing love. And that loveis never complete in its manifestation, till it has given itself. Man'slife, as spirit, is thus one in nature with that of the absolute. Butthe unity is not complete, because man is only potentially perfect. Heis the process _of_ the ideal; his life is the divine activity withinhim. Still, it is also man's activity. For the process, being theprocess of spirit, is a _free_ process--one in which man himselfenergizes; so that, in doing God's will, he is doing his own highestwill, and, in obeying the law of his own deepest nature, he is obeyingGod. The unity of divine and human within the spiritual life of man is areal unity, just because man is free; the identity manifests itselfthrough the difference, and the difference is possible through theunity. 

Thus, in the light of an ideal which is moral, and therefore perfect--anideal gradually realizing itself in a process which is endless--the poetis able to maintain at once the community between man and God, which isnecessary to religion, and their independence, which is necessary tomorality. The conception of God as giving, which is the main doctrine ofChristianity, and of man as akin with God, is applied by him to thewhole spiritual nature of man, and not merely to his emotion. Theprocess of evolution is thus a process towards truth, as well asgoodness; in fact, goodness and truth are known as inseparable. Knowledge, too, is a Divine endowment. "What gift of man is not from Goddescended?" What gift of God can be deceptive?

 "Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed: Though He is so bright and we so dim, We are made in His image to witness Him. "[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_. ]

The Pope recognizes clearly the inadequacy of human knowledge; but healso recognizes that it has a Divine source. 

 "Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun; Thither I sent the great looks which compel Light from its fount: all that I do and am Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised, Remembered or divined, as mere man may. "[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1285-1289. ]

The last words indicate a suspicion of a certain defect in knowledge, which is not recognized in human love; nevertheless, in these earlierpoems, the poet does not analyze human nature into a finite andinfinite, or seek to dispose of his difficulties by the deceptivesolvent of a dualistic agnosticism. He treats spirit as a unity, andrefuses to set love and reason against each other. Man's _life_, for thepoet, and not merely man's love, begins with God, and returns back toGod in the rapt recognition of God's perfect being by reason, and in theidentification of man's purposes with His by means of will and love. 

 "What is left for us, save, in growth Of soul, to rise up, far past both, From the gift looking to the giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to infinity And from man's dust to God's divinity?"[C]

[Footnote C: _Christmas-Eve_. ]

It is this movement of the absolute in man, this aspiration towards thefull knowledge and perfect goodness which can never be completelyattained, that constitutes man. 

 "Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect He could not, what he knows now, know at first: What he considers that he knows to-day, Come but to-morrow, he will find mis-known; Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns Because he lives, which is to be a man, Set to instruct himself by his past self: First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law. God's gift was that man shall conceive of truth And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, As midway help till he reach fact indeed?"[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_. ]

"Progress, " the poet says, is "man's distinctive mark alone. " Theendlessness of the progress, the fact that every truth known to-dayseems misknown to-morrow, that every ideal once achieved only points toanother and becomes itself a stepping stone, does not, as in his laterdays, bring despair to him. For the consciousness of failure is possiblein knowledge, as in morality, only because there has come a fullerlight. Browning does not, as yet, dwell exclusively on the negativeelement in progress, or forget that it is possible only through a deeperpositive. He does not think that, because we turn our backs on what wehave gained, we are therefore not going forward; nay, he asserts thecontrary. Failure, even the failure of knowledge, is triumph's evidencein these earlier days; and complete failure, the unchecked rule of evilin any form, is therefore impossible. We deny

 "Recognized truths, obedient to some truth Unrecognized yet, but perceptible, -- Correct the portrait by the living face, Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1871-1874. ]

Thus the poet ever returns to the conception of God in the mind of man. God is the beginning and the end; and man is the self-conscious workerof God's will, the free process whereby the last which is first, returnsto itself. The process, the growth, is man's life and being; and itfalls within the ideal, which is eternal and all in all. The spirituallife of man, which is both intellectual and moral, is a dying into theeternal, not to cease to be in it, but to live in it more fully; forspirits necessarily commune. He dies to the temporal interests andnarrow ends of the exclusive self, and lives an ever-expanding life inthe life of others, manifesting more and more that spiritual principlewhich is the life of God, who lives and loves in all things. "God is abeing in whom we exist; with whom we are in principle one; with whom thehuman spirit is identical, in the sense that He _is_ all which the humanspirit is capable of becoming. "[B]

[Footnote B: Green's _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 198. ]

From this point of view, and in so far as Browning is loyal to theconception of the community of the divine and human, he is able tomaintain his faith in God, not in spite of knowledge, but through thevery movement of knowledge within him. He is not obliged, as in hislater works, to look for proofs, either in nature, or elsewhere; nor toargue from the emotion of love in man, to a cause of that emotion. Heneeds no syllogistic process to arrive at God; for the very activity ofhis own spirit as intelligence, as the reason which thinks and acts, isthe activity of God within him. Scepticism, is impossible, for the veryact of doubting is the activity of reason, and a profession of theknowledge of the truth. 

 "I Put no such dreadful question to myself, Within whose circle of experience burns The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness, --God: I must outlive a thing ere know it dead: When I outlive the faith there is a sun, When I lie, ashes to the very soul, -- Someone, not I, must wail above the heap, 'He died in dark whence never morn arose. '"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1631-1639. ]

And this view of God as immanent in man's experience also forecloses allpossibility of failure. Beneath the failure, the possibility of which isinvolved in a moral life, lies the divine element, working throughcontradiction to its own fulfilment. Failure is necessary for man, because he grows: but, for the same reason, the failure is not final. Thus, the poet, instead of denying the evidence of his intellect as tothe existence of evil, or casting doubt on the distinction between rightand wrong, or reducing the chequered course of human history into aphantasmagoria of mere mental appearances, can regard the conflictbetween good and evil as real and earnest. He can look evil in the face, recognize its stubborn resistance to the good, and still regard thevictory of the latter as sure and complete. He has not to reduce it intoa phantom, or mere appearance, in order to give it a place within thedivine order. He sees the night, but he also sees the day succeed it. Man falls into sin, but he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to hisnature, he cannot content himself with it, and he is driven through it. Mephistopheles promised more than he could perform, when he undertook tomake Faust declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom ofevil what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness, whose nature, however obscured, is God's gift of Himself. 

 "While I see day succeed the deepest night-- How can I speak but as I know?--my speech Must be, throughout the darkness. It will end: 'The light that did burn, will burn!' Clouds obscure-- But for which obscuration all were bright? Too hastily concluded! Sun--suffused, A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze, -- Better the very clarity of heaven: The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear. What but the weakness in a faith supplies The incentive to humanity, no strength Absolute, irresistible, comports? How can man love but what he yearns to help? And that which men think weakness within strength, But angels know for strength and stronger yet-- What were it else but the first things made new, But repetition of the miracle, The divine instance of self-sacrifice That never ends and aye begins for man? So, never I miss footing in the maze, No, --I have light nor fear the dark at all. "[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1640-1660. ]

[Illustration]