Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 25

CONCLUSION.

"Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, Above and through his art--for it gives way; That arm is wrongly put--and there again-- A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, He means right--that, a child may understand."[A]

[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]

I have tried to show that Browning's theory of life, in so far as it is expressed in his philosophical poems, rests on agnosticism; and that such a theory is inconsistent with the moral and religious interests of man. The idea that truth is unattainable was represented by Browning as a bulwark of the faith, but it proved on examination to be treacherous.

His optimism was found to have no better foundation than personal conviction, which any one was free to deny, and which the poet could in no wise prove. The evidence of the heart, to which he appealed, was the evidence of an emotion severed from intelligence, and, therefore, without any content whatsoever. "The faith," which he professed, was not the faith that antic.i.p.ates and invites proof, but a faith which is incapable of proof. In casting doubt upon the validity of knowledge, he degraded the whole spiritual nature of man; for a love that is ignorant of its object is a blind impulse, and a moral consciousness that does not know the law is an impossible phantom--a self-contradiction.

But, although Browning's explicitly philosophical theory of life fails, there appears in his earlier poems, where his poetical freedom was not yet trammelled, nor his moral enthusiasm restrained by the stubborn difficulties of reflective thought, a far truer and richer view. In this period of pure poetry, his conception of man was less abstract than in his later works, and his inspiration was more direct and full. The poet's dialectical ingenuity increased with the growth of his reflective tendencies; but his relation to the great principles of spiritual life seemed to become less intimate, and his expression of them more halting.

What we find in his earlier works are vigorous ethical convictions, a glowing optimistic faith, achieving their fitting expression in impa.s.sioned poetry; what we find in his later works are arguments, which, however richly adorned with poetic metaphors, have lost the completeness and energy of life. His poetic fancies are like chaplets which crown the dead. Lovers of the poet, who seek in his poems for inspiring expressions of their hope and faith, will always do well in turning from his militant metaphysics to his art.

In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was far richer than the theory which professed to explain it. The task of lifting his moral convictions into the clear light of conscious philosophy was beyond his power. The theory of the failure of knowledge, which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the current doctrine of the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with his generous belief in the moral progress of man; and it maimed the expression of that belief. The result of his work as a philosopher is a confession of complete ignorance and the helpless a.s.severation of a purely dogmatic faith.

The fundamental error of the poet's philosophy lies, I believe, in that severance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which finds expression in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies_, _The Parleyings_, and _Asolando_. Such an absolute division is not to be found in _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _A Death in the Desert_, or in _The Ring and the Book_; nor even in _Fifine at the Fair_. In these works we are not perplexed by the strange combination of a nature whose principle is love, and which is capable of infinite progress, with an intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance.

Rather, the spirit of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations; and, therefore, as progressive on all sides of its activity. The widening of his knowledge, which is brought about by increasing experience, is parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral life. In all Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of _Paracelsus_, love is conceived as having a place and function of supreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine origin and destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as merely human, and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In _Easter-Day_ it is definitely contrasted with love, and shown to be incapable of satisfying the deepest wants of man. It is, at the best, only a means to the higher purposes of moral activity, and, except in the _Grammarian's Funeral_, it is nowhere regarded as in itself a worthy end.

"'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.

And thence I conclude that the real G.o.d-function Is to furnish a motive and injunction For practising what we know already."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_.]

Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than by knowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may say that in them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not as in any sense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives are rational motives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even const.i.tuted by his intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as by instinct and impulse.

"Why live, Except for love--how love, unless they know?"[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1327-1328.]

asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in spite of knowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the latter as illusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only fails to receive support from the defective intelligence, but maintains its own integrity only by repudiating the testimony of the reason. In the distinction between knowledge as means and love as end, it is easy, indeed, to detect a tendency to degrade the former into a mere temporary expedient, whereby moral ends may be served. The poet speaks of "such knowledge as is possible to man." The att.i.tude he a.s.sumes towards it is apologetic, and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of its utter inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the Pope---which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the poet's own maturest utterance on the great moral and religious questions raised by the tragedy of Pompilia's death--we find this view vividly expressed:--

"O Thou--as represented here to me In such conception as my soul allows,-- Under Thy measureless, my atom width!-- Man's mind, what is it but a convex gla.s.s Wherein are gathered all the scattered points Picked out of the immensity of sky, To reunite there, be our heaven for earth, Our known unknown, our G.o.d revealed to man?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1308-1315.]

G.o.d is "appreciable in His absolute immensity solely by Himself," while, "by the little mind of man, He is reduced to littleness that suits man's faculty." In these words, and others that might be quoted, the poet shows that he is profoundly impressed with the distinction between human knowledge, and that knowledge which is adequate to the whole nature and extent of being. And in _Christmas-Eve_ he repudiates with a touch of scorn, the absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether human reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for not making

"The important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one with the Creator."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]

Nowhere in Browning, unless we except _Paracelsus_, is there any sign of an inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same spirit as he deals with man's love--namely, as a direct emanation from the inmost nature of G.o.d, a divine element that completes and crowns man's life on earth. On the contrary, he shows a persistent tendency to treat love as a power higher in nature than reason, and to give to it a supreme place in the formation of character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows in strength. The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, and knowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution from principles, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlier works. Still, in the latter, these principles are only latent, and are far from holding undisputed sway. Browning was, at first, restrained from exclusive devotion to abstract views, by the suggestions which the artistic spirit receives through its immediate contact with the facts of life. That contact it is very difficult for philosophy to maintain as it pursues its effort after universal truth. Philosophy is obliged to a.n.a.lyze in order to define, and, in that process, it is apt to lose something of that completeness of representation, which belongs to art.

For art is always engaged in presenting the universal in the form of a particular object of beauty. Its product is a "known unknown," but the unknown is the unexhausted reality of a fact of intuition. Nor can a.n.a.lysis ever exhaust it; theory can never catch up art, or explain all that is in it. On similar grounds, it may be shown that it is impossible for reason to lay bare all the elements that enter into its first complex product, which we call faith. In religion, as in art, man is aware of more than he knows; his articulate logic cannot do justice to all the truths of the "heart." "The supplementary reflux of light" of philosophy cannot "ill.u.s.trate all the inferior grades" of knowledge. Man will never completely understand himself.

"I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed, Uncomprehended by our narrow thought, But somehow felt and known in every shift And change in the spirit,--nay, in every pore Of the body, even,)--what G.o.d is, what we are, What life is--how G.o.d tastes an infinite joy In infinite ways--one everlasting bliss, From whom all being emanates, all power Proceeds."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions of Browning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the elements of his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a truer philosophy of life than anything which the poet himself achieved.

Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to press the pa.s.sionate utterances of his religious rapture into the service of metaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of emotion as the expression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless, rather than set forth a new defence of the faith, which his agnosticism left exposed to the a.s.saults of doubt and denial, it is better to make Browning correct his own errors, and to appeal from the metaphysician to the poet, from the sobriety of the logical understanding to the inspiration of poetry.

I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective element in the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is in need of revision; and what he a.s.serts of human love, should be applied point by point to human reason. As man is ideally united with the absolute on the side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be pardoned), so he is ideally united with the absolute on the side of the intellect. As there is no difference of _nature_ between G.o.d's goodness and man's goodness, so there is no difference of nature between G.o.d's truth and man's truth.

There are not two kinds of righteousness or mercy; there are not two kinds of truth. Human nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the poet implies that it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element, ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate, of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be linked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love would be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and religion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war with his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being endowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human knowledge, the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the Christian faith which he professed--that G.o.d can and does manifest himself in man.

On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with G.o.d, of man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral side, an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor can we do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational activity in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is neither first, nor last; he is not the original author of his love, any more than of his reason; he is not the divine principle of the whole to which he belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with it. Both sides of his being are equally touched with imperfection--his love, no less than his reason. Perfect love would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom, perfect love. But absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever _on the way_ to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power of the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and acquirement.

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey Placid and perfect with my art: the worse."[A]

[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]

Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings than this, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although he occasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort.

"When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,-- When our faith in the same has stood the test-- Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labour are surely done, There remaineth a rest for the people of G.o.d, And I have had troubles enough, for one."[B]

[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]

It is the sense of endless onward movement, the outlook towards an immortal course, "the life after life in unlimited series," which is so inspiring in his early poetry. He conceives that we are here, on this lower earth, just to learn one form, the elementary lesson and alphabet of goodness, namely, "the uses of the flesh": in other lives, other achievements. The separation of the soul from its instrument has very little significance to the poet; for it does not arrest the course of moral development.

"No work begun shall ever pause for death."

The spirit pursues its lone way, on other "adventures brave and new,"

but ever towards a good which is complete.

"Delayed it may be for more lives yet, Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: Much is to learn, much to forget Ere the time be come for taking you."[A]

[Footnote A: _Evelyn Hope_.]

Still the time will come when the awakened need shall be satisfied; for the need was created in order to be satisfied.

"Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear Hungry for music, and direct thine eye To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument, Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?"[B]

[Footnote B: _Two Camels_.]

The movement onward is thus a movement in knowledge, as well as in every other form of good. The lover of Evelyn Hope, looking back in imagination on the course he has travelled on earth and after, exclaims--

"I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes."[C]

[Footnote C: _Evelyn Hope_.]

In these earlier poems, there is not, as in the later ones, a maimed, or one-sided, evolution--a progress towards perfect love on the side of the heart, and towards an illusive ideal on the side of the intellect.

Knowledge, too, has its value, and he who lived to settle "_Hoti's_ business, properly based _Oun_," and who "gave us the doctrine of the enc.l.i.tic _De_," was, to the poet,

"Still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.

"Here's the top-peak; the mult.i.tude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know-- Bury this man there?

Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Grammarian's Funeral_.]

No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process. The soul bears in it _all_ its conquests.