CHAPTER VIII.

A: Professor Caird,The Critical Philosophy of Kant, p. 35.

That the idea of evolution, even when applied in this consistent way, has difficulties of its own, it is scarcely necessary to say. But there is nothing in it which imperils the ethical and religious interests of humanity, or tends to reduce man into a natural phenomenon. Instead of degrading man, it lifts nature into a manifestation of spirit. If it wereestablished, if every link of the endless chain were discovered and the continuity of existence were irrefragably proved, science would not overthrow idealism, but it would rather vindicate it. It would justifyin detailthe attempt of poetry and religion and philosophy, to interpret all being as the "transparent vesture" of reason, or love, or whatever other power in the world is regarded as highest.

I have now arrived at the conclusion that was sought. I have tried to show, not only that the attempt to interpret nature in terms of man is not a superstitious anthropomorphism, but that such an interpretation is implied in all rational thought. In other words, self-consciousness is the key to all the problems of nature. Science, in its progress, is gradually substituting one category for the other, and every one of these categories is at once a law of thought and a law of things as known. Each category, successively adopted, lifts nature more to the level of man; and the last category of modern thought, namely, development, constrains us so to modify our views of nature, as to regard it as finally explicable only in the terms of spirit. Thus, the movement of science is towards idealism. Instead of lowering man, it elevates nature into a potency of that which is highest and best in man. It represents the life of man, in the language of philosophy, as the return of the highest to itself; or in the language of our poet, and of religion, as a manifestation of infinite love. The explanation of nature from the principle of love, if it errs, errs"because it is not anthropomorphic enough," not because it is too anthropomorphic; it is not too high and concrete a principle, but too low and abstract.

It now remains to show that the poet, in employing the idea of evolution, was aware of its upward direction. I have already quoted a few passages which indicate that he had detected the false use of it. I shall now quote a few others in which he shows a consciousness of its true meaning:

"'Will you have why and wherefore, and the factMade plain as pike-staff?' modern Science asks.'That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lumpOnce on a time; he kept an after courseThrough fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,Till he attained to be an ape at last,Or last but one. And if this doctrine shockIn aught the natural pride.'"A

"'Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact

Made plain as pike-staff?' modern Science asks.

'That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump

Once on a time; he kept an after course

Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,

Till he attained to be an ape at last,

Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock

In aught the natural pride.'"A

A:Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.

"Not at all," the poet interrupts the man of science: "Friend, banish fear!"

"I like the thought He should have lodged me onceI' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement,The mansion and the palace; made me learnThe feel o' the first, before I found myselfLoftier i' the last."B

"I like the thought He should have lodged me once

I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement,

The mansion and the palace; made me learn

The feel o' the first, before I found myself

Loftier i' the last."B

B:Ibid.

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 managementAnd 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 tastesLife to who sweeps the doorway."A

"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

A:Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.

But then, unfortunately, we have no time to make our kings in this way,

"You cut probation short,And, being half-instructed, on the stageYou shuffle through your part as best you can."B

"You cut probation short,

And, being half-instructed, on the stage

You shuffle through your part as best you can."B

B:Ibid.

God, however, "takes time." He makes man pass his apprenticeship in all the forms of being. Nor does the poet

"Refuse to follow farther yetI' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-placeBefore I gained enlargement, grew mollusc."C

"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

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 thrillOf kinship, I confess to, with the powersCalled Nature: animate, inanimate,In parts or in the whole, there's something thereMan-like that somehow meets the man in me."D

"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

D:Ibid.

These passages make it clear that the poet recognized that the idea of development "levels up," and that he makes an intelligent, and not a pervertedand 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

"From first to last of lodging, I was I,

And not at all the place that harboured me."A

A:Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.

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,—God.

"He dwells in all,From, life's minute beginnings, up at lastTo man—the consummation of this schemeOf being, the completion of this sphereOf life."A

"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

A:Paracelsus.

"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole process of nature inParacelsus,

"And, man produced, all has its end thus far:But in completed man begins anewA tendency to God."B

"And, man produced, all has its end thus far:

But in completed man begins anew

A tendency to God."B

B:Ibid.

There is nowhere a break in the continuity. God 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 God, 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,Illustrates all the inferior grades, explainsEach back step in the circle."C

"A supplementary reflux of light,

Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains

Each back step in the circle."C

C:Ibid.

Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.

"Man, once descried, imprints for everHis presence on all lifeless things."D

"Man, once descried, imprints for ever

His presence on all lifeless things."D

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 akosmos 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 aboutThe 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

"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

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 tryMy 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

"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

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 lifeThough lifted o'er its strife,"

"Still within this life

Though lifted o'er its strife,"

is able to

"Discern, compare, pronounce at last,This rage was right i' the main,That acquiescence vain";C

"Discern, compare, pronounce at last,

This rage was right i' the main,

That acquiescence vain";C

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 findsitself.

"Striving to be man, the wormMounts through all the spires of form."A

"Striving to be man, the worm

Mounts through all the spires of form."A

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 windsAre 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 assemble to discussWhen the sun drops behind their trunks."The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droopsWith evening, triumph takes the sunset hour,Voluptuous transport ripens with the cornBeneath a warm moon like a happy face."A

"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 assemble 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

A:Paracelsus.

Such is the transmuting 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 compass 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 God, 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 forBrowning 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,mustseek 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 isa 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,—thepriusof all things, the active energyinall things, and therealityof all things. It is the doctrine of the immanence of God; and it reveals "the effort of God, of the supreme intellect, in the extreme frontier of His universe."

In pronouncing, as Browning frequently does, that "after last comes first" and "what God 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 seemto 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 assert the unity of being, which, indeed, every one must assume—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 assimilates. By him scientific conceptionsare continually transmuted 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.

"Let him, therefore, who would arrive at knowledge of nature, train his moral sense, let him act and conceive in accordance with the noble 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

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 assume 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 constitutes thought constitutes things, and, therefore, that the key to nature is man.

In propounding this theory of love, and establishingan 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 attitude, 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 inThe 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 morethan 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 Schelling 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 God.

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

"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 seeWhat purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it triesConclusions with, unless the fruit of victoriesStay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its ownFor ever, by some mode whereby shall be made knownThe gain of every life. Death reads the title clear—What each soul for itself conquered from out things here:Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert."A

"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 title clear—

What each soul for itself conquered from out things here:

Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert."A

A:Fifine at the Fair, lv.

In this passage, 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 learnsBecause he lives, which is to be a man,Set to instruct himself by his past self."B

"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

B:A Death in the Desert.

"By such confession straight he fallsInto man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,Made to know that he can know and not more:Lower than God who knows all and can all,Higher than beasts which know and can so farAs 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 airInto a solid he may grasp and use,Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,Not God's and not the beasts': God is, they are,Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."C

"By such confession straight he falls

Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,

Made to know that he can know and not more:

Lower than God 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 God's and not the beasts': God is, they are,

Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."C

C:Ibid.

It were easy to multiply passages which showthat 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 constitutes 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 pass from old to new,From vain to real, from mistake to fact,From what once seemed good, to what now proves best."A

"Man must pass from old to new,

From vain to real, from mistake to fact,

From what once seemed good, to what now proves best."A

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 pass under "angel's law."

"Indulging every instinct of the soulThere, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."B

"Indulging every instinct of the soul

There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."B

B:Ibid.

But as long as he is man, he has

"Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."

InParacelsus,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 processof 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, God 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 isbecominggood, and rational, and free, then at no point in the movement is it possible to pass 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 assumption 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 springfrom 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 iseithergood or evil,eitherrational or irrational,eitherfree 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 expressHeart's satisfaction that the Past indeedIs past, gives way before Life's best and last,The all-including Future!"A

"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

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 lifeDid soul stand still therein, forego her strifeThrough the ambiguous Present to the goalOf some all-reconciling Future?"B

"What were life

Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife

Through the ambiguous Present to the goal

Of some all-reconciling Future?"B

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 assert. It is a life which determines itself, and determines itself according to an idea of goodness. That idea, moreover, because it is amoral ideal, must be regarded as the conception of perfect and absolute goodness. Through the moral end, man is ideally identified with God, who, indeed, is necessarily conceived as man's moral ideal regarded as already and eternally real. "God" 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 discoversand 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 assertion 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

"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

A:In a Balcony.

"Let man's life be true," he adds, "and love's the truth of mine." To attain this truth, that is, to constitute love into the inmost law of his being, and permanent source of all his activities, is the task of man. And Browning defines that love as

"Yearning to dispense,Each one its own amount of gain thro' its own modeOf practising with life."

"Yearning to dispense,

Each one its own amount of gain thro' its own mode

Of practising with life."

There is no need of illustrating further the doctrine, so evident in Browning, that "love" is the ideal which in man's life makes through conflict for its own fulfilment. From what has been already said, it is abundantly plain that love is to him a divine element, which is at war with all that is lower in man and around him, and which by reactionagainst circumstance converts its own mere promise into fruition and fact. Through love man's nature reaches down to the permanent essence, amid the fleeting phenomena of the world, and is at one with what is first and last. As loving he ranks with God. No words are too strong to represent the intimacy of the relation. For, however limited in range and tainted with alien qualities human love may be, it is still "a pin-point rock of His boundless continent." It is not a semblance of the divine nature, an analogon, or verisimilitude, but the love of God himself in man: so that man is in this sense an incarnation of the divine. The Godhood in him constitutes him, so that he cannot become himself, or attain his own ideal or true nature, except by becoming perfect as God is perfect.

But the emphasis thus laid on the divine worth and dignity of human love is balanced by the stress which the poet places on the frailty and finitude of every other human attribute. Having elevated the ideal, he degrades the actual. Knowledge and the intellectual energy which produces it; art and the love of beauty from which it springs: every power and every gift, physical and spiritual, other than love, has in it the fatal flaw of being merely human. All these are so tainted with creatureship, so limited and conditioned, that it is hardly too much to say that they are, at their best, deceptive endowments. Thus, the life of man regarded as a whole is, in its last essence, a combination of utterly disparate elements. The distinction of theold moralists between divinity and dust; the absolute dualism of the old ascetics between flesh and spirit, sense and reason, find their accurate parallel in Browning's teachings. But he is himself no ascetic, and the line of distinction he draws does not, like theirs, pass between the flesh and the spirit. It rather cleaves man's spiritual nature into two portions, which are absolutely different from each other. A chasm divides the head from the heart, the intellect from the emotions, the moral and practical from the perceptive and reflective faculties. And it is this absolute cleavage that gives to Browning's teaching, both on ethics and religion, one of its most peculiar characteristics. By keeping it constantly in sight, we may hope to render intelligible to ourselves the solution he offers of the problem of evil, and of other fundamental difficulties of the life of man. For, while Browning's optimism has its original source in his conception of the unity of God and man, through the Godlike quality of love—even "the poorest love that was ever offered"—he finds himself unable to maintain it, except at the expense of degrading man's knowledge. Thus, his optimism and faith in God is finally based upon ignorance. If, on the side of love, he insists, almost in the spirit of a Spinozist, on God's communication of His own substance to man; on the side of knowledge he may be called an agnostic, in spite of stray expressions which break through his deliberate theory. While "love gains God at first leap,"

"Knowledge meansEver-renewed assurance by defeatThat victory is somehow still to reach."A

"Knowledge means

Ever-renewed assurance by defeat

That victory is somehow still to reach."A

A:A Pillar at Sebzevar.

A radical flaw runs through our knowing faculty. Human knowledge is not only incomplete—no one can be so foolish as to deny that—but it is, as regarded by Browning, essentially inadequate to the nature of fact, and we must "distrust it, even when it seems demonstrable." No professed agnostic can condemn the human intellect more utterly than he does. He pushes the limitedness of human knowledge into a disqualification of it to reach truth at all; and makes the conditions according to which we know, or seem to know, into a deceiving necessity, which makes us know wrongly.

"To know of, think about,—Is all man's sum of faculty effectsWhen exercised on earth's least atom, Son!What was, what is, what may such atom be?No answer!"B

"To know of, think about,—

Is all man's sum of faculty effects

When exercised on earth's least atom, Son!

What was, what is, what may such atom be?

No answer!"B

B:A Bean-Stripe.

Thought plays around facts, but never reaches them. Mind intervenes between itself and its objects, and throws its own shadow upon them; nor can it penetrate through that shadow, but deals with it as if it were reality, though it knows all the time that it is not.

This theory of knowledge, or rather of nescience or no-knowledge, he gives inLa Saisiaz,Ferishtah's Fancies,The Parleyings, andAsolando—in all his later and more reflective poems, in fact. It must, Ithink, be held to be his deliberate and final view—and all the more so, because, by a peculiar process, he gets from it his defence of his ethical and religious faith.

In the first of these poems, Browning, while discussing the problem of immortality in a purely speculative spirit, and without stipulating, "Provided answer suits my hopes, not fears," gives a tolerably full account of that which must be regarded as the principles of his theory of knowledge. Its importance to his ethical doctrine justifies a somewhat exhaustive examination of it.

He finds himself to be "a midway point, between a cause before and an effect behind—both blanks." Within that narrow space, of the self hemmed in by two unknowns, all experience is crammed. Out of that experience crowds all that he knows, and all that he misknows. There issues from experience—

"Conjecture manifold,But, as knowledge, this comes only—things may be as I behold,Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are;I myself am what I know not—ignorance which proves no barTo the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognizeWhat to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest—surmise.If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what pain,—Mere surmise: my own experience—that is knowledge once again."A

"Conjecture manifold,

But, as knowledge, this comes only—things may be as I behold,

Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are;

I myself am what I know not—ignorance which proves no bar

To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize

What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest—surmise.

If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what pain,—

Mere surmise: my own experience—that is knowledge once again."A

A:La Saisiaz.

Experience, then, within which he (and every one else) acknowledges that all his knowledge is confined, yields him as certain facts—the consciousnessthat he is, but not what he is: the consciousness that he is pleased or pained by things about him, whose real nature is entirely hidden from him: and, as he tells us just before, the assurance that God is the thing the self perceives outside itself,

"A forceActual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course,Unaffected by its end."A

"A force

Actual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course,

Unaffected by its end."A

A:La Saisiaz.

But, even this knowledge, limited as it is to the bare existence of unknown entities, has the further defect of being merely subjective. The "experience" from which he draws his conclusions, is his own in an exclusive sense. His "thinking thing" has, apparently, no elements in common with the "thinking things" of other selves. He ignores the fact that there may be general laws of thought, according to which his mind must act in order to be a mind. Intelligence seems to have no nature, and may be anything. All questions regarding "those apparent other mortals" are consequently unanswerable to the poet. "Knowledge stands on my experience"; and this "my" is totally unrelated to all other Mes.

"All outside its narrow hem,Free surmise may sport and welcome! Pleasures, pains affect mankindJust as they affect myself? Why, here's my neighbour colour-blind,Eyes like mine to all appearance: 'green as grass' do I affirm?'Red as grass' he contradicts me: which employs the proper term?"B

"All outside its narrow hem,

Free surmise may sport and welcome! Pleasures, pains affect mankind

Just as they affect myself? Why, here's my neighbour colour-blind,

Eyes like mine to all appearance: 'green as grass' do I affirm?

'Red as grass' he contradicts me: which employs the proper term?"B

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