Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 21

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 moral consciousness of man to the goodness of G.o.d. And he finds the ultimate proof of this goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism and despair, that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste in the world and the endless miseries of humanity. The source of this despair, namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the G.o.dhood in man.

There is no way of accounting for the fact that "Man hates what is and loves what should be," except by "blending the quality of man with the quality of G.o.d." And "the quality of G.o.d" is the fundamental fact in man's history. Love is the last reality the poet always reaches. Beneath the pessimism is love: without love of the good there were no recognition of evil, no condemnation of it, and no despair.

But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil, even though 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 G.o.d'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 moral goodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressive realization of an infinitely high ideal. The demand for a world purged of all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a sphere where

"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 of stagnation.

"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 symbol of 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 of the moral life, which is essentially progressive. They are the consequences 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 a natural good above a moral good, stagnation above progress. The demand for the absolute extinction of evil betrays ignorance of the nature of the highest good. For right and wrong are relative. "Type need ant.i.type." The fact that goodness is best, and that goodness is not a stagnant state but a progress, a gradual realization, though never complete, of an infinite ideal, of the perfection of G.o.d by a finite being, necessarily implies the consciousness of sin and evil. As a moral agent man must set what should be above what is. If he is to aspire and attain, the actual present must seem to him inadequate, imperfect, wrong, a state to be abolished in favour of a better. And therefore it follows 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 it must only be apparent. For if evil be regarded as veritably evil, it must remain so for all that man can do; he cannot annihilate any fact nor 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 need of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and therefore no aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's highest and best,--namely, a moral life which is a progress--would thus be impossible, and his existence would be bereft of all meaning and purpose. And if the highest is impossible then all is wrong, "the goal being a ruin, so is all the rest."

The hypothesis of the moral life as progressive is essential to Browning.

But if this hypothesis be granted, then all difficulties disappear. The conception of the endless acquirement of goodness at once postulates the consciousness of evil, and the consciousness of it as existing in order to be overcome. Hence the consciousness of it as illusion comes nearest to the truth. And such a conception is essentially implied by the idea of morality. To speculative reason, however, it is impossible, as the poet believes, that evil should thus be at the same time regarded as both real and unreal. Knowledge leads to despair on every side; for, whether it takes the evil in the world as seeming or actual, it stultifies effort, and proves that moral progress, which is best of all things, is impossible. But the moral consciousness derives its vitality from this contradiction. It is the meeting-point and conflict of actual and ideal; and its testimony is indisputable, however inconsistent it may be with that of knowledge. Acknowledging absolute ignorance of the outer world, the poet has still a retreat within himself, safe from all doubt. 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 the outside unknown is sufficient; it is "a point of vantage" whence he will not be moved by any contradictions that the intellect may conjure up against it. And this process of learning goodness, this gradual realization 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." The consciousness of evil is thus at once the effect and the condition of goodness. The unrealized, though ever-realizing good, which brings despair, 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 hochsten wurdig achten, von der Grosse und Macht seines Geistes kann er nicht gross genug denken; und mit diesem Glauben wird nichts so sprode und hart seyn, das sich ihm nicht eroffnete. Das zuerst verborgene und verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine Kraft, die dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten konnte: 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 in the last chapter, it may be well to give a brief summary of it.

The most interesting feature of Browning's proof of his optimistic faith is his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness. To show theoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view, both impossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the human intellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or of p.r.o.nouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the evanescence of evil would itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best thing in the world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow better, and the world exists in order to help him. But moral growth is possible only through conflict against evil, or what seems to be evil; hence, to disprove the existence of evil would be to take away the possibility of learning goodness, to stultify all human effort, and to deprive the world of its meaning.

But, if an optimistic doctrine cannot be reached by way of speculative thought, if the intellect of man cannot see the good in things evil, his moral consciousness guarantees that all is for the best, and that "the good is all in all." For, in distinguishing between good and evil, the moral consciousness sets up an ideal over against the actual. It conceives 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 so const.i.tuted that he cannot but regard the evil in the world as something to be annulled. If he had only the power, there would be no pain, no sorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death. Is man, then, better than the Power 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 product of that Power. The Power that made the world also made the moral consciousness which condemns the world; if it is the source of the evil in the world, it is also the source of that love in man, which, by self-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If the external world is merely an expression of a remorseless Power, whence comes the love which is the principle of the moral life in man? The same Power brings the antidote as well as the bane. And, further, the bane exists for the sake of the antidote, the wrong for the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is means to a higher good, and the only means possible; for it calls into activity the divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its realization in his character. It gives the necessary opportunity for the exercise of love.

Hence, evil cannot be regarded as ultimately real. It is real only as a stage in growth, as means to an end; and the means necessarily perishes, or is absorbed in, the attainment of the end. It has no significance except by reference to that end. From this point of view, evil is the resistance which makes progress possible, the negative which gives meaning to the positive, the darkness that makes day beautiful. This must not, however, be taken to mean that evil is nothing. It is resistance; it is negative; it does oppose the good; although its opposition 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 the moral life--on the one hand, that the evil of the world must be capable of being overcome and is there for the purpose of being overcome, and that 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 have any meaning,--cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each other. It is manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same time, regard evil as both real and unreal. It must a.s.sert the one and deny the other; or else we must regard its testimony as altogether untrustworthy. But the first alternative is destructive of the moral consciousness. Moral life is alike impossible whether we deny or a.s.sert the real existence of evil. The latter alternative stultifies knowledge, and leaves all the deeper concerns of life--the existence of good and evil, the reality of the distinction between them, the existence of G.o.d, the moral governance of the world, the destiny of man--in a state of absolute uncertainty. We must 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 and accepts as equally valid, beliefs which the intellect finds to be self-contradictory: holding that knowledge on such matters is impossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only because our thoughts are self-contradictory in themselves, but because the failure of a speculative solution of these problems is necessary to morality. Clear, convincing, demonstrative knowledge would destroy morality; and the fact that the power to attain such knowledge has been withheld from us is to be regarded rather as an indication of the beneficence of G.o.d, who has not held even ignorance to be too great a price for man to pay for goodness.

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

No final estimate of the value of this theory of morals and religion can be made, without examining its philosophical presuppositions. Nor is such an examination in any way unfair; for it is obvious that Browning explicitly offers us a philosophical doctrine. He appeals to argument and not to artistic intuition; he offers a definite theory to which he claims attention, not on account of any poetic beauty that may lie within it, but on the ground that it is a true exposition of the moral nature of man. Kant's _Metaphysic of Ethics_ is not more metaphysical in intention 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 _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, Browning definitely states, and endeavours to demonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory of the relation of knowledge to morality, and a theory of the nature of evil; and he discusses the arguments for the immortality of the soul. In these poems his artistic instinct avails him, not as in his earlier ones, for the discovery of truth by way of intuition, but for the adornment of doctrines already derived from a metaphysical repository. His art is no longer free, no longer its own end, but coerced into an alien service. It has become ill.u.s.trative and argumentative, and in being made to subserve speculative purposes, it has ceased to be creative. Browning has appealed to philosophy, and philosophy must try his cause.