Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 26

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, _so_ much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."[B]

[Footnote B: _Abt Vogler_.]

The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure, is "a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." The doubts that knowledge brings, instead of implying a defective intelligence doomed to spend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to progress towards the truth.

He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe."

"Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."[A]

[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]

Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain the promise of further achievement.

"Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?

In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, their's--ours, for eternity.

"To-day's brief pa.s.sion limits their range; It seethes with the morrow for us and more.

They are perfect--how else? They shall never change: We are faulty--why not? We have time in store."[B]

[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]

Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a blight, and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus recognized that growing knowledge was an essential condition of growing goodness.

Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there were such a thing as _mere_ knowledge).

"Everywhere I see in the world the intellect of man, That sword, the energy his subtle spear, The knowledge which defends him like a shield-- Everywhere; but they make not up, I think, The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower She holds up to the softened gaze of G.o.d."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1013-1019.]

But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had sustained for want of knowledge.

"The saints must bear with me, impute the fault To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance, Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1515-1518.]

Further on in the Pope's soliloquy, the poet shows that, at that time, he fully recognized the risk of entrusting the spiritual interests of man to the enthusiasm of elevated feeling, or to the mere intuitions of a n.o.ble heart. Such intuitions will sometimes guide a man happily, as in the case of Caponsacchi:

"Since ourselves allow He has danced, in gaiety of heart, i' the main The right step through the maze we bade him foot."[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1915-1917.]

But, on the other hand, such impulses, not instructed by knowledge of the truth, and made steadfast to the laws of the higher life by a reasoned conviction, lead man rightly only by accident. In such a career there is no guarantee of constancy; other impulses might lead to other ways of life.

"But if his heart had prompted to break loose And mar the measure? Why, we must submit, And thank the chance that brought him safe so far.

Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.

Can he teach others how to quit themselves, Show why this step was right while that were wrong?

How should he? 'Ask your hearts as I asked mine, And get discreetly through the morrice too; If your hearts misdirect you,--quit the stage, And make amends,--be there amends to make.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1916-1927.]

If the heart proved to Caponsacchi a guide to all that is good and glorious, "the Abate, second in the suite," puts in the testimony of another experience: "His heart answered to another tune."

"I have my taste too, and tread no such step!

You choose the glorious life, and may for me!

I like the lowest of life's appet.i.tes,-- So you judge--but the very truth of joy To my own apprehension which decides."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1932-1936.]

Mere emotion is thus an insecure guide to conduct, for its authority can be equally cited in support of every course of life. No one can say to his neighbour, "Thou art wrong." Every impulse is right to the individual who has it, and so long as he has it. _De gustibus non disputandum_. Without a universal criterion there is no praise or blame.

"Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!

I live for greed, ambition, l.u.s.t, revenge; Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite, To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized The rational man, the type of common-sense."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid._, 1937-1941.]

This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth, marks the high tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as yet concerned with the defence of any theory or the discussion of any abstract question, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where knowledge is dissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is a mere impulse of the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties of reflection, the poet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes to him an offence, and to save his faith he plucked out his right eye and entered into the kingdom maimed. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ the ascent into another life is triumphant, like that of a conqueror bearing with him the spoils of earth; but in the later poems he escapes with a bare belief, and the loss of all his rich possessions of knowledge, like a shipwrecked mariner whose goods have been thrown overboard. His philosophy was a treacherous ally to his faith.

But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as artist, recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function than seems to be possible according to the theory in his later works. In the early poems there is no hint of the doctrine that demonstrative knowledge of the good, and of the necessity of its law, would destroy freedom. On the contrary, there are suggestions which point to the opposite doctrine, according to which knowledge is the condition of freedom.

While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an impulse--either blind or bound to erring knowledge--and of the heart as made to love, in his earlier ones he seems to treat man as free to work out his own purposes, and act out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself able to maintain the dependence of man upon G.o.d without destroying morality.

He regards man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling _within_ his rational nature, and const.i.tuting the forms of its activity. He recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in the sense of a tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and an impulse informed, that is, directed by reason. According to this view, it is reason which at once gives man the independence of foreign authority, which is implied in morality, and const.i.tutes that affinity between man and G.o.d, which is implied by religion. No doubt, the impulse to know, like the impulse to love, was put into man: his whole nature is a gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent upon G.o.d--"G.o.d's all, man's nought." But, on the other hand, it _is_ a rational nature which has been put into him, and not an irrational impulse. Or, rather, the impulse that const.i.tutes his life as man, is the self-evolving activity of reason.

"Who speaks of man, then, must not sever Man's very elements from man."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]

However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by emanation or creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all its risks and possibilities. It is of the very essence of reason that it should find its law within itself.

"G.o.d's all, man's nought: But also, G.o.d, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away As it were a hand-breadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at Him from a place apart, And use his gifts of brain and heart, Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]

Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of G.o.d, and the original receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and every inner power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning does not forget what these powers are. Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature, as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is to act freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He is rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a spirit,--responsible because he is free, and free because he is rational.

"Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock, And, looks to G.o.d who ordained divorce Of the rock from His boundless continent."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid._]

The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in so far as man, by means of reason, const.i.tutes his own ends of action.

Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man to free himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate himself to an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain to goodness.

Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also is the principle of religion, for it implies the highest and fullest manifestation of the absolute.

Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its independence, which is, in turn, the first condition of morality, still this is only the first aspect. The rational being plants himself on his own individuality, stands aloof and alone in the rights of his freedom, _in order that_ he may set out from thence to take possession, by means of knowledge and action, of the world in which he is placed. Reason is potentially absolute, capable of finding itself everywhere. So that in it man is "honour-clothed and glory-crowned."

"This is the honour,--that no thing I know, Feel or conceive, but I can make my own Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart."[A]

[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau._]

Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of the world without him, or rather, discovers that there is not hostility, but affinity between it and himself.