Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 16

Such is the trans.m.u.ting power of imagination, that there is "nothing but doth suffer change into something rich and strange"; and yet the imagination, when loyal to itself, only sees more deeply into the truth of things, and gets a closer and fuller hold of facts.

But, although the human mind thus heals the breach between nature and spirit, and discovers the latter in the former, still it is not in this way that Browning finally establishes his idealism. For him, the principle working in all things is not reason, but love. It is from love that all being first flowed; into it all returns through man; and in all "the wide compa.s.s which is fetched," through the infinite variety of forms of being, love is the permanent element and the true essence.

Nature is on its way back to G.o.d, gathering treasure as it goes. The static view is not true to facts; it is development that for the poet explains the nature of things; and development is the evolution of love.

Love is for Browning the highest, richest conception man can form. It is our idea of that which is perfect; we cannot even imagine anything better. And the idea of evolution necessarily explains the world as the return of the highest to itself. The universe is homeward bound.

Now, whether love is the highest principle or not, I shall not inquire at present. My task in this chapter has been to try to show that the idea of evolution drives us onward towards some highest conception, and then uses that conception as a principle to explain all things. If man is 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 whole kingdom of life a process towards man. "Man is no upstart in the creation. His limbs are only a more exquisite organization--say rather the finish--of the rudimental forms that have already been sweeping the sea and creeping in the mud." And the same way of thought applies to man as a spiritual agent. If spirit be higher than matter, and if love be spirit at its best, then the principle of evolution leaves no option to the scientific thinker, but to regard all things as potentially spirit, and all the phenomena of the world as manifestations of love. Evolution necessarily combines all the objects to which it is applied into a unity. It knits all the infinite forms of natural life into an organism of organisms, so that it is a universal life which really lives in all animate beings. "Each animal or vegetable form remembers the next inferior and predicts the next higher. There is one animal, one plant, one matter, and one force." In its still wider application by poetry and philosophy, the idea of evolution gathers all being into one self-centred totality, and makes all finite existence a movement within, and a movement of, that final perfection which, although last in order of time, is first in order of potency,--the _prius_ of all things, the active energy _in_ all things, and the _reality_ of all things. It is the doctrine of the immanence of G.o.d; and it reveals "the effort of G.o.d, of the supreme intellect, in the extreme frontier of His universe."

In p.r.o.nouncing, as Browning frequently does, that "after last comes first" and "what G.o.d once blessed cannot prove accursed"; in the boldness of the faith whereby he makes all the inferior grades of being into embodiments of the supreme good; in resolving the evils of human life, 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 all modern speculation rests. His conclusions may shock common-sense; and they may seem to stultify not only our observation of facts, but the testimony of our moral consciousness. But I do not know of any principle of speculation which, when elevated into a universal principle of thought, will not do the same; and this is why the greatest poets and philosophers seem to be touched with a divine madness. Still, if this be madness, there is a method in it. We cannot escape from its logic, except by denying the idea of evolution--the hypothesis by means of which modern thought aims, and in the main successfully aims, at reducing 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, to which even the ignorance of our own day has learnt to submit, in this mainly--it does not leave things on the level on which it finds them.

Both cause and evolution a.s.sert the unity of being, which, indeed, every one must a.s.sume--even sceptics and pessimists; but development represents that unity as self-enriching; so that its true nature is revealed, only in the highest form of existence which man can conceive.

The attempt of poets and philosophers to establish a universal synthesis by means of evolution, differs from the work which is done by men of science, 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 its real nature under the name of dualism or agnosticism, that is at war with the inner spirit of science. "Not only," we may say of Browning as it was said of Emerson by Professor Tyndall, "is his religious sense entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science; but all such discoveries he comprehends and a.s.similates. By him scientific conceptions are continually trans.m.u.ted into the finer forms and warmer hues of an ideal world." And this he does without any distortion of the truth. For natural science, to one who understands its main tendency, does not militate against philosophy, art, and religion; nor threaten to overturn a metaphysic whose principle is truth, or beauty, or goodness.

Rather, it is gradually eliminating the discord of fragmentary existence, and making the harmony of the world more and more audible to mankind. It is progressively proving that the unity, of which we are all obscurely conscious from the first, actually holds in the whole region of its survey. The idea of evolution is reconciling science with art and religion, 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 n.o.ble 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 that justify the attempt to interpret the world by a spiritual principle. The conception of development, which modern science and philosophy a.s.sume as a starting-point for their investigation, was shown to imply that the lowest forms of existence can be explained, only as stages in the self-realization of that which is highest. This idea "levels upwards,"

and points to self-consciousness as the ultimate truth of all things. In other words, it involves that all interpretation of the world is anthropomorphic, in the sense that what const.i.tutes thought const.i.tutes things, 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 more adequate hypothesis for the explanation of the nature of things, than any purely physical principle. Nay, science itself, in so far as it presupposes evolution, tends towards an idealism of this type. Whether love be the best expression for that highest principle, which is conceived as the truth of being, and whether Browning's treatment of it is consistent and valid, I do not as yet inquire. Before attempting that task, it must be seen to what extent, and in what way, he applies the hypothesis of universal love to the particular facts of life. For the present, I take it as admitted that the hypothesis is legitimate, as an hypothesis; it remains to ask, with what success, if any, we may hope, by its means, to solve the contradictions of life, and to gather its conflicting phenomena into the unity of an intelligible system. This task cannot be accomplished within our limits, except in a very partial manner. I can attempt to meet only a few of the more evident and pressing difficulties that present themselves, and I can do that only in a very general way.

The first of these difficulties, or, rather, the main difficulty from which all others spring, is that the hypothesis of universal love is incompatible with the existence of any kind of evil, whether natural or moral. Of this, Browning was well aware. He knew that he had brought upon himself the hard task of showing that pain, weakness, ignorance, failure, doubt, death, misery, and vice, in all their complex forms, can find their legitimate place in a scheme of love. And there is nothing more admirable in his att.i.tude, or more inspiring in his teaching, than the manly frankness with which he endeavours to confront the manifold miseries of human life, and to constrain them to yield, as their ultimate meaning and reality, some spark of good.

But, as we have seen, there is a portion of this task in the discharge of which Browning is drawn beyond the strict limits of art. Neither the magnificent boldness of his religious faith, nor the penetration of his artistic insight, although they enabled him to deal successfully with the worst samples of human evil, as in _The Ring and the Book_, could dissipate the gloom which reflection gathers around the general problem.

Art cannot answer the questions of philosophy. The difficulties that critical reason raises reason alone can lay. Nevertheless, the poet was forced by his reflective impulse, to meet that problem in the form in which it presents itself in the region of metaphysics. He was conscious of the presuppositions within which his art worked, and he sought to justify them. Into this region we must now follow him, so as to examine his theory of life, not merely as it is implied in the concrete creations of his art, but as it is expressed in those later poems, in which he attempts to deal directly with the speculative difficulties that crowd around the conception of evil.

To the critic of a philosophy, there is hardly more than one task of supreme importance. It is that of determining the precise point from which the theory he examines takes its departure; for, when the central conception is clearly grasped, it will be generally found that it rules all the rest. The superstructure of philosophic edifices is usually put together in a sufficiently solid manner--it is the foundation that gives way. Hence Hegel, who, whatever may be thought of his own theory, was certainly the most profound critic of philosophy since Aristotle, generally concentrates his attack on the preliminary hypothesis. He brings down the erroneous system by removing its foundation-stone. His criticism of Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, and Sch.e.l.ling may almost be said to be gathered into a single sentence.

Browning has made no secret of his central conception. It is the idea of an immanent or "immundate" love. And that love, we have shown, is conceived by him as the supreme moral motive, the ultimate essence and end of all self-conscious activity, the veritable nature of both man and G.o.d.

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

His philosophy of human life rests on the idea that it is the realization of a moral purpose, which is a loving purpose. To him there is no supreme good, except good character; and the foundation of that character by man and in man is the ultimate purpose, and, therefore, the true 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 t.i.tle clear-- What each soul for itself conquered from out things here: Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I a.s.sert."[A]

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

In this pa.s.sage, Browning gives expression to an idea which continually reappears in his pages--that human life, in its essence, is movement to moral goodness through opposition. His fundamental conception of the human spirit is that it is a process, and not a fixed fact. "Man," he says, "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 G.o.d nor beast, Made to know that he can know and not more: Lower than G.o.d 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 G.o.d's and not the beasts': G.o.d is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

It were easy to multiply pa.s.sages which show that his ultimate deliverance regarding man is, not that he is, nor that he is not, but that he is ever becoming. Man is ever at the point of contradiction between the actual and ideal, and moving from the latter to the former.

Strife const.i.tutes him. He is a war of elements; "hurled from change to change unceasingly." But rest is death; for it is the cessation of the spiritual activity, whose essence is acquirement, not mere possession, whether in knowledge or in goodness.

"Man must pa.s.s 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 and ideal reconciled, man would leave man's estate, and pa.s.s under "angel's law."

"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 human life from the point of view of development. And it is this point of view, consistently held, which enables him to throw a new light on the whole subject of ethics. For, if man be veritably a being in process of evolution, if he be a permanent that always changes from earliest childhood to old age, if he be a living thing, a potency in process of actualization, then no fixed distinctions made with reference to him can be true. If, for instance, it be asked whether man is rational or irrational, free or bound, good or evil, G.o.d or brute, the true answer, if he is veritably a being moving from ignorance to knowledge, from wickedness to virtue, from bondage to freedom, is, that he is at once neither of these alternatives and both. All hard terms of division, when applied to a subject which grows, are untrue. If the life of man is a self-enriching process, if he is _becoming_ good, and rational, and free, then at no point in the movement is it possible to pa.s.s fixed and definite judgments upon him. He must be estimated by his direction and momentum, by the whence and whither of his life. There is a sense in which man is from the first and always good, rational and free; for it is only by the exercise of reason and freedom that he exists as man. But there is also a sense in which he is none of these; for he is at the first only a potency not yet actualized. He is not rational, but becoming rational; not good, but becoming good; not free, but aspiring towards freedom. It is his prayer that "in His light, he may see light truly, and in His service find perfect freedom."

In this frank a.s.sumption of the point of view of development. Browning suggests the question whether the endless debate regarding freedom, and necessity, and other moral terms, may not spring from the fact, that both of the opposing schools of ethics are fundamentally unfaithful to the subject of their inquiry. They are treating a developing reality from an abstract point of view, and taking for granted,--what cannot be true of man, if he grows in intellectual power and moral goodness--that he is _either_ good or evil, _either_ rational or irrational, _either_ free or bond, at every moment in the process. They are treating man from a static, instead of from a kinetic point of view, and forgetting that it is his business to acquire the moral and intellectual freedom, which he 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 old disputations of ethics meaningless, it is certain that Browning viewed moral 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 and moral environment, is the meaning both of the self and of the world it works upon. "We are here to learn the good of peace through strife, of love 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 the ideal and actual in all life, and in every instant of its history, it remains for us to determine more fully what are the warring elements in human nature. What is the nature of this life of man, which, like all life, is self-evolving; and by conflict with what does the evolution take place? What is the ideal which condemns the actual, and yet realizes itself by means of it; and what is the actual which wars against the ideal, and yet contains it in potency, and reaches towards it? That human life is conceived by Browning as a moral life, and not a more refined and complex form of the natural life of plants and animals--a view which finds its exponents in Herbert Spencer, and other so-called evolutionists--it is scarcely necessary to a.s.sert. It is a life which determines itself, and determines itself according to an idea of goodness. That idea, moreover, because it is a _moral ideal_, must be regarded as the conception of perfect and absolute goodness. Through the moral end, man is ideally identified with G.o.d, who, indeed, is necessarily conceived as man's moral ideal regarded as already and eternally real. "G.o.d" and the "moral ideal" are, in truth, expressions of the same idea; they convey the conception of perfect goodness from different standpoints. And perfect goodness is, to Browning, limitless love. Pleasure, wisdom, power, and even the beauty which art discovers and reveals, together with every other inner quality and outer state of being, have only relative worth. "There is nothing either in the world or out of it which is unconditionally good, except a good will," said Kant; and a good will, according to Browning, is a will that wills lovingly. From love all other goodness is derived. There is earnest meaning, and not mere sentiment, in the poet's a.s.sertion 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]