Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 15

This way upward from the lowest stage through every other to the highest, that is, the way of development, so far from lowering us to the brute 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-Schw.a.n.gau._]

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_.]

G.o.d, however, "takes time." He makes man pa.s.s his apprenticeship in all the 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 from inanimate 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 pa.s.sages make it clear that the poet recognized that the idea of development "levels up," and that he makes an intelligent, and not a perverted and abstract use of this instrument of thought. He sees each higher stage carrying within it the lower, the present storing up the past; he recognizes that the process is a self-enriching one. He knows it to be no degradation of the higher that it has been in the lower; for he distinguishes between that life, which is continuous amidst the fleeting forms, and the temporary tenements, which it makes use of during 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-Schw.a.n.gau._]

When nature is thus looked upon from the point of view of its final attainment, in the light of the self-consciousness into which it ultimately breaks, a new dignity is added to every preceding phase. The lowest ceases to be lowest, except in the sense that its promise is not fulfilled and its potency not actualized; for, throughout the whole process, the activity streams from the highest. It is that which is about to be which guides the growing thing and gives it unity. The final cause is the efficient cause; the distant purpose is the ever-present energy; the last is always first.

Nor does the poet shrink from calling this highest, this last which is also first, by its highest name,--G.o.d.

"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 of nature in _Paracelsus_,

"And, man produced, all has its end thus far: But in completed man begins anew A tendency to G.o.d."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

There is nowhere a break in the continuity. G.o.d is at the beginning, His rapturous presence is seen in all the processes of nature, His power and knowledge and love work in the mind of man, and all history is His revelation of Himself.

The gap which yawns for ordinary thought between animate and inanimate, between nature and spirit, between man and G.o.d, does not baffle the poet. At the stage of human life, which is "the grand result" of nature's blind process,

"A supplementary reflux of light, Ill.u.s.trates 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 rays meet"; and "the dim fragments," the otherwise meaningless manifold, the dispersed activities of nature, are lifted into a kosmos by the activity of intelligence. In its light, the forces of nature are found to be, not blind 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 broader light 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, and turn the mixed ore of action into pure metal by the reflection which draws 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 of nature come to its meaning in man And old age,

"Still within this life Though lifted o'er its strife,"

is able to

"Discern, compare, p.r.o.nounce 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 of phenomena, and find in them law, and beauty, and goodness. The laws which he finds by thought are not his inventions, but his discoveries.

The harmonies are in the organ, if the artist only knows how to elicit them. Nay, the connection is still more intimate. It is in the thought of man that silent nature finds its voice; it blooms into "meaning,"

significance, thought, in him, as the plant shows its beauty in the flower. 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, do not bind unconnected phenomena; but they refute the hasty conclusion of sensuous thought, that the phenomena ever were unconnected. Men of science do not introduce order into chance and chaos, but show that there never was chance or chaos. The poet does not make the world beautiful, but finds the beauty that is dwelling there. Without him, indeed, the beauty would not be, any more than the life of the tree is beautiful until it has evolved its potencies into the outward form.

Nevertheless, he is the expression of what was before, and the beauty was there in potency, awaiting its expression. "Only let his thoughts be of 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 a.s.semble 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_.]