Browning and Dogma Part 18

Can we love but on condition, that the thing we love must die?

Needs then groan a world in anguish just to teach us sympathy?

(ll. 311-312.)

Certainly personal experience has resulted in the conclusion:

Howsoever came my fate, Sorrow did and joy did nowise,--life well weighed,--preponderate!

(ll. 333-334.)

In the discussion which follows (ll. 335-348) the fact of the existence of these evils is employed to enforce the admission of the necessity of a future life. It is in fact the earlier argument (ll. 235, _et seq._) repeated and elaborated. How are the existing conditions of life to be reconciled with the belief in the over-ruling Providence of a G.o.d whose name is synonymous with goodness, wisdom, and power? Here each attribute is dealt with categorically--Was it proof of the divine Goodness that within the limits of the poet's personal experience

The good within [his] range Or had evil in admixture or grew evil's self by change? (ll. 337-338.)

Again could it be deemed a token of the divine Wisdom that

Becoming wise meant making slow and sure advance From a knowledge proved in error to acknowledged ignorance?

(ll. 339-340.)

Finally, seeing that Power must within itself include the force known as Will, could that indeed rank as omnipotence, which was incapable of securing for man even the enjoyment of life possessed by the worm which, on the hypothesis of the non-existence of a future world, becomes "man's fellow-creature," man too being thus but the creature of an hour? Since with the loss of his immortal destiny pa.s.ses also the reason (according to Browning's reiterated theory) of his imperfection as compared with the more complete physical perfection of the lower world of animal life. If, then, such a consummation is the sole outcome of the Creator's work the conclusion is inevitable, that the Goodness, Wisdom, and Power ascribed to Him must be limited in range and capacity. Thus again the premise originally accepted as a basis of argument has to be rejected--a G.o.d possessing merely human attributes is no G.o.d. But once more also, though in stronger terms, the conclusion of ll. 242-243:

Only grant a second life, I acquiesce In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst a.s.saults Triumph, not defeat, a.s.sured that loss so much the more exalts Gain about to be. (ll. 358-361.)

Thus all experience fairly considered goes to prove the necessity for a future life; and with the hope of such a future is closely interwoven the need also for reunion with those who have already tested the grounds of their belief:

Grant me (once again) a.s.surance we shall each meet each some day.

Worst were best, defeat were triumph utter loss were utmost gain.

(ll. 387-389.)

_B._ Nevertheless, the soul refuses even yet to accept, without that which it deems reasonable proof, the justice of its intuitions and of its hopes arising from experience. It will a.s.sume the position of arbitrator in the debate which it permits between the sometime opposing forces of Reason and Fancy, as to the results of an acceptance of that belief, for an a.s.surance of the truth of which it yearns.

_Fancy._ To the facts already admitted as the basis of argument Fancy may, therefore, add a third, "that after body dies soul lives again."

_Reason._ In accepting the challenge to employ these three facts--G.o.d, the soul, a future life--in a rational development of the present phase of existence, Reason would reply that deductions from experience suggest that the future life must necessarily prove an advance on the old. This being so, the most prudent course is obviously that which would take, without delay, the step leading from the lower to the higher; always allowing that there is no existent law restrictive of man's free will in this matter.

What shall then deter his dying out of darkness into light? (l. 441.)

_Fancy._ The deterrent is to be found in the suggestion by Fancy of the law rendering penal "voluntary pa.s.sage from this life to that."

He shall find--say, h.e.l.l to punish who in aught curtails the term.

(l. 463.)

_Reason._ And what influence upon life it must be asked will this new knowledge exert? Life, says Reason, would thus be reduced to a condition of stagnation. The absolute certainty involved in this exact knowledge of the future would stultify action in the present. A result similar to that which, according to Karshish, was attained in the case of Lazarus. The things of this world matter not in view of an ever-present realization of Eternity. The use of faith is at an end as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," since all is clear, definite and, further still, unalterable to the inward vision.

_Fancy._ Again Fancy interposes with the suggestion that this equal realization of future and present must be accompanied by an appreciation of the worth of life temporal and its opportunities, of the eternal import of the deeds wrought in the flesh. Thus the future life completely revealed would not, as Reason holds, supersede the uses of this, but would serve rather as an incentive to action in the present, on the a.s.sumption that the virtual reward of performance is reserved for the after-time.

_Reason._ The final position is then examined by Reason. To the original premises--the existence of the soul, an intelligent being, and of a G.o.d, the author of an intelligible universe in which man's lot is cast--has been added the certainty of a future world, but a world into which man may not pa.s.s until his allotted term has been fulfilled on earth. Further, that in this world to come are to be dealt out allotments of happiness or misery in exact relative proportion to the deeds accomplished during the period of mortal life. That by laws as unerring and relentless as those of Nature's code, pain will follow evil-doing, pleasure will succeed acts of self-devotion to that which is esteemed goodness and truth. Absolute certainty in all things spiritual being thus established, free will becomes but a name, and the probationary character of life is at an end.

Here again a reminiscence of the discussion contained in the early stanzas of _Easter Day_ when the Second Speaker suggests that faith may be

A touchstone for G.o.d's purposes, Even as ourselves conceive of them.

Could he acquit us or condemn For holding what no hand can loose, Rejecting when we can't but choose?

As well award the victor's wreath To whosoever should take breath Duly each minute while he lived-- Grant heaven, because a man contrived To see its sunlight every day He walked forth on the public way. (_E. D._, iv, ll. 59-70.)

So _La Saisiaz_

Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must.

Lay but down that law as stringent "wouldst thou live again, be just!"

As this other "wouldst thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!

For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in death--"

And (provided always, man, addressed this mode, be sound and sane) Prompt and absolute obedience, never doubt, will law obtain!

(ll. 497-502.)

The difference between the sanction attaching to laws moral and spiritual, and to those of Nature is not, Reason would hold, the result of defective power on the part of the legislator. Some definite purpose is existent in the scheme of the universe in accordance with which

Certain laws exist already which to hear means to obey; Therefore not without a purpose these man must, while those man may Keep and, for the keeping, haply gain approval and reward. (ll. 515-517.)

_C._ In short, the conclusion reached is that already propounded as the outcome of experience--that uncertainty is one of the essential attributes of life temporal. That in its probationary character lies its educative influence. That since "a.s.surance needs must change this life to [him]"

the author of _La Saisiaz_, no less than the soliloquist of _Easter Day_, would willingly continue in that state of probation which fosters growth and development; would cling to that uncertainty which allows of the existence of hope.

As employed by Reason, and generally throughout the poem, the word hope possesses more than the comparatively vague significance commonly attaching to it: it becomes practically synonymous with faith. In a similar sense the term occurs in the _Epistle to the Romans_,[93] when the writer a.s.serts that "we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope" (the argument which Browning is here using). "For what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." It is further noticeable that here, as elsewhere in Browning, is rejected the belief in a future which shall, in the words of Paracelsus, reduce the present world to the position of "a mere foil ... to some fine life to come."[94] The necessity for a future life is throughout the argument based upon the fact that immortality is needed to render intelligible the conditions attendant upon life temporal.

It is the _unintelligibility_ of life, if cut short by death, which demands its renewal beyond the grave.

The concluding lines of the poem proper (immediately preceding the supplementary stanza), although not directly essential to the argument, are especially interesting from the allusions contained in them and the resulting inferences which have met with some diversity of interpretation.

Thanks, thou pine-tree of Makistos, wide thy giant torch I wave.

(l. 579.)

is thus explained by Dr. Berdoe in his _Browning Cyclopaedia_.

"The reference to Makistos is from the _Agamemnon_ of aeschylus. The town of Makistos had a watch-tower on a neighbouring eminence, from which the beacon lights flashed the news of the fall of Troy to Greece. Clytemnestra says

Sending a bright blaze from Ide, _Beacon did beacon send_, Pa.s.s on--the pine-tree--to Makistos' watch-place."

This pine tree, as "the brand flamboyant," which should replenish the beacon-fire of Makistos, Browning takes as symbolic of fame. The Knowledge and Learning of Gibbon const.i.tute the trunk--

This the trunk, the central solid Knowledge ... rooted yonder at Lausanne [where Gibbon's History was finished].

But Learning is hardly permitted "its due effulgence," being "dulled by flake on flake of [the] Wit"--nourished at Ferney (sometime the home of Voltaire). To the Learning of Gibbon, the Wit of Voltaire is added in "the terebinth-tree's resin," the "all-explosive Eloquence" of Rousseau and of Diodati:[95] whilst in the heights, above all "deciduous trash," climbs the evergreen of the ivy, significant of the immortality of Byron's poetic fame. Having lifted "the coruscating marvel," the watcher on La Saleve would likewise stand as a beacon to those millions who

Have their portion, live their calm or troublous day, Find significance in fireworks.

That by his help they may

Confidently lay to heart ... this: "He there with the brand flamboyant, broad o'er night's forlorn abyss, Crowned by prose and verse; and wielding, with Wit's bauble, Learning's rod ...

Well? Why, he at least believed in Soul, was very sure of G.o.d."

Of these three concluding lines Dr. Berdoe writes: "Many writers have thought that ... the poet referred to himself. Of course, any such idea is preposterous; the reference was to Voltaire. Mr. Browning, apart from the question of the egotism involved, could not say of himself, 'he at least believed in soul.' There was no minimizing of religious faith in the poet.