Browning and Dogma Part 17

You supposed that few or none had known and loved you in the world: May be! flower that's full-blown tempts the b.u.t.terfly, not flower that's furled.

But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand Bud to bell and out-spread flower-shape at the least warm touch of hand --Maybe, throb of heart, beneath which,--quickening farther than it knew,-- Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and unguessed hue.

Disembosomed, re-embosomed,--must one memory suffice, Prove I knew an Alpine-rose which all beside named Edelweiss?

(ll. 123-130.)

At the time of the chief intercourse between the two friends, Browning's health rendered it necessary for him to leave England during a part of each year, and for four successive summers Miss Egerton-Smith had been the companion of the brother and sister in their foreign sojourns, when that of 1877 was interrupted by her sudden death from heart disease on the night of September 14th. The villa "La Saisiaz" (in the Savoyard dialect "the Sun"), at which the party was staying, was situated above Geneva, and almost immediately beneath La Saleve, the summit of which was the destination of the expedition occupying Miss Egerton-Smith's thoughts at the time of her death. The shock to her friends was wholly unexpected, as she had been in better health than was usual to her during the days immediately preceding. To Browning it would appear to have been at first overwhelming. It was not long, however, before the emotional and intellectual faculties were sufficiently under control to render the arguments of _La Saisiaz_ a possibility. When he added the concluding lines in "London's mid-November," only six weeks had elapsed since that "summons" in the Swiss village which had meant for him temporary bereavement of affection and friendship.

_A._ The first 400 lines of the poem proper--exclusive of the prologue--const.i.tute a prelude to the formal debate conducted between Fancy and Reason, designed as a rational and logical course of argument by which the writer would a.s.sure himself of the immortality of the soul as a no less reasonable hypothesis than is the self-evident fact of the mortality of the body: that the a.s.sumption with which instinct forces him to start is also the goal to which reason ultimately draws him. The a.s.sumption--

That's Collonge, henceforth your dwelling. All the same, howe'er disjoints Past from present, no less certain you are here, not there. (ll. 24-25.)

The conclusion--that even though

O'er our heaven again cloud closes ...

Hope the arrowy, just as constant, comes to pierce its gloom.

(ll. 542-543.)

Line 44 may be not unfitly taken as significant of the whole course of thought

What will be the morning glory, when at dusk thus gleams the lake?

(i) The first part of the prelude (if we may so call it), occupying 139 lines, calls for little more comment than that already necessitated by the foregoing consideration of the circ.u.mstances giving rise to the poem. (ii) In taking the solitary walk to the summit of La Saleve five days after Miss Egerton-Smith's death, the poet recalls the circ.u.mstances of their last climb together; and as he stands looking down upon Collonge, that final resting-place of the body, the question recurs--

Here I stand: but you--where?

The heart has already a.s.sured itself that, in spite of the occupation of that dwelling-place at Collonge, the certainty remains, "you are here, not there." But this a.s.surance has proved transitory as the feeling which engendered it. No "mere surmise" will suffice concerning a matter "the truth of which must rest upon no legend, that is no man's experience but our own."[92] So to the author of _La Saisiaz_ the suggestion as to proofs of spiritual survival presents itself only to be rejected.

What though I nor see nor hear them? Others do, the proofs abound!

Such second-hand evidence is inadmissible.

My own experience--that is knowledge. (l. 264.)

Knowledge stands on my experience: all outside its narrow hem, Free surmise may sport and welcome! (ll. 272-273.)

Here, as with the uncompromising investigator of _Easter Day_, the fact that credence in a certain tenet is desirable, is advantageous, proves cause for rejection rather than acceptance. All evidence must be sifted with the utmost care. Thus the question is stated in line 144, the answer, or attempted answer to which, is to occupy the entire poem--

Does the soul survive the body?

The second part of the question is on a different platform--

Is there G.o.d's self, no or yes?

The existence of G.o.d is accepted at the outset of the enquiry as a premise on which the subsequent argument may be based: as is also the existence of the soul: it is the condition of immortality alone which is to be proved.

And the poet puts the question, determined to face the truth--whether it meets his "hopes or fears." It would be difficult to find a more characteristic a.s.sertion of Browning's usual att.i.tude than that of lines 149-150.

Weakness never need be falseness: truth is truth in each degree --Thunderpealed by G.o.d to Nature, whispered by my soul to me.

(iii) But the events of the preceding days have converted the abstract enquiry, "Does the soul survive the body?" into one of vital personal import.

Was ending ending once and always, when you died? (l. 172.)

Hence suggests itself the further question, a necessary sequel to the first. If death is not the ending of the soul's life, what is the _nature_ of that immortality, the actuality of which the speaker seeks to establish? We have already seen Cleon emphatically repudiating the theory of Protus as to the satisfaction afforded by a vicarious immortality, "what thou writest, paintest, stays: that does not die." Equally unsatisfactory to human nature is the suggestion in the present instance of a prolongation and renewal of life by influences transmitted to succeeding generations. And yet is the certainty of the thirteenth century possible to the nineteenth? "Phrase the solemn Tuscan fashioned."

I believe and I declare-- Certain am I--from this life I pa.s.s into a better, there Where that lady lives of whom enamoured was my soul.

With this a.s.surance all would be well.

(iv) Now, the mere possibility of propounding questions such as the foregoing, involves the existence of that which asks, and of that to which the enquiry is addressed with at least an antic.i.p.ation, however vague, of obtaining an answer. In other words, the existence of an intelligent being and an external source of intelligence to which its questionings are directed. These are the only facts on which the speaker would insist as a basis for subsequent argument: but of the certainty of these he is absolutely a.s.sured. That their existence is beyond proof he holds as testimony to their reality.

Call this--G.o.d, then, call that--soul, and both--the only facts for me.

Prove them facts? that they o'erpa.s.s my power of proving, proves them such: Fact it is I know I know not something which is fact as much.

(ll. 222-224.)

G.o.d and the soul. The primary fact of life and that which is dependent on the primary. That the soul knows not whence it came nor whither it goes is no argument against either its existence and immortality, or the existence and omnipotent and omniscient control of a divine Being. The relative positions of the rush and the stream lend themselves to the ill.u.s.tration of this a.s.sertion. Whatever the purpose of life, it is yet possible that man should exist without possessing a.s.sured knowledge concerning his future destiny. All that the rush may conjecture of the course of the stream is "mere surmise not knowledge": nevertheless, the existence of the stream is a fact as self-evident to the onlooker as is that of the rush.

Therefore--

Ask the rush if it suspects Whence and how the stream which floats it had a rise, and where and how Falls or flows on still! What answer makes the rush except that now Certainly it floats and is, and, no less certain than itself, _Is_ the everyway external stream that now through shoal and shelf Floats it onward, leaves it--may be--wrecked at last, or lands on sh.o.r.e There to root again and grow and flourish stable evermore.

--May be! mere surmise not knowledge: much conjecture styled belief, What the rush conceives the stream means through the voyage blind and brief. (ll. 226-234.)

Thus all man's conjecture as to his future existence is but conjecture: surmise based upon probabilities deduced from the present conditions of life and acc.u.mulated experience.

(v) And is then this fact of the present existence of the soul cause sufficient to demand belief in its immortality? The affirmative answer, "Because G.o.d seems good and wise," proves inadequate when the eyes of the enquirer are turned to a world in which evil is manifestly existent, and not only existent, but frequently predominant. The possibility of reconciling such conditions with the design of a beneficent omnipotence is only attained through the acceptance of belief in a future life which shall disentangle the complexities of the present; which shall render perfect that which is imperfect; complete that which is incomplete.

Without such a prospect of the ultimate solution of its problems life would be unintelligible, therefore impossible as the work of an intelligent being: hence the existence of G.o.d is denied by implication, and the premise originally accepted (l. 222) is rejected. This question is treated more fully later in the poem (ll. 335-348).

But, granted this possibility of a future, then

Just that hope, however scant, Makes the actual life worth leading.

With hope the poet would rest satisfied, since certainty is neither possible, nor, in view of the educative purpose which he claims for life, desirable. Upon this recognition of "life, time,--with all their chances,"

as "just probation-s.p.a.ce," rests one of the main dogmas of Browning's teaching--suggested or expressed in countless pa.s.sages throughout his works; embodied in most concise form perhaps in the concluding stanzas of _Abt Vogler_. This life being the prelude to another, failure becomes "but a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days," when for the evil of the present shall be "so much good more": when, indeed, all those unfulfilled hopes which had "promised joy" to the author of _La Saisiaz_, shall find soul-satisfying fulfilment. And all we have willed or dreamed of good shall exist. So long as Eternity may be held to "affirm the conception of an hour," all the seeming inconsistencies of life may admit of solution.

In this pa.s.sage of _La Saisiaz_ recurs also that suggestion so characteristic of Browning--introduced dramatically in _Easter Day_, to be met with again later in the expositions nominally ascribed to Ferishtah--the theory of the adaptation of the entire universe, as known to man, to the needs and development of the individual soul. As in _Easter Day_ is depicted by the Vision the work of

Absolute omnipotence, Able its judgments to dispense To the whole race, as every one Were its sole object; (_E. D._, ll. 662-665.)

so again in _A Camel-driver_ is emphasized the individual character of the final Judgment:

Thou and G.o.d exist-- So think!--for certain: think the ma.s.s--mankind-- Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone!

Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee,-- Thee and no other,--stand or fall by them!

That is the part for thee: _regard all else For what it may be--Time's illusion_.

Similarly here the entire scheme of life is to be regarded from the individual standpoint; all outside the "narrow hem" of personal experience can be but the result of surmise. Therefore

Solve the problem: "From thine apprehended scheme of things, deduce Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a n.i.g.g.ard or profuse In each good or evil issue! nor miscalculate alike Counting one the other in the final balance, which to strike, Soul was born and life allotted: ay, the show of things unfurled For thy summing-up and judgment,--thine, no other mortal's world!"

(ll. 287-292.)

With the acceptance, however, of the doctrine, "His own world for every mortal," recurs again the disturbing reflection inevitable to the contemplation of that world whether in its personal relation, or as a training-ground for "some other mortal." Were the extreme transitoriness and the preponderance of pain indispensable factors in the scheme of instruction?