Chapter 5

"Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,—I use up my last strength to strike once moreOld Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,To trample underfoot the whine and wileOf beast Violante,—and I grow one gorgeTo loathingly reject Pompilia's palePoison my hasty hunger took for food."A

"Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,—

I use up my last strength to strike once more

Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,

To trample underfoot the whine and wile

Of beast Violante,—and I grow one gorge

To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale

Poison my hasty hunger took for food."A

A:The Ring and the Book—Guido, 2400-2406.

If there be any concrete form of evil with which the poet's optimism is not able to cope, any irretrievable black "beyond white's power to disintensify," it is the refusal to take a definite stand and resolute for either virtue or vice; the hesitancy and compromise of a life that is loyal to nothing, not even to its own selfishness. The cool self-love of the old English moralists, which "reduced the game of life to principles," and weighed good and evil in the scales of prudence, is to our poet the deepest damnation.

"Saint Eldobert—I much approve his mode;With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize;But histrionic Sganarelle, who promptsWhile pulling back, refuses yet concedes,—"Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"

"Saint Eldobert—I much approve his mode;

With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize;

But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts

While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,—

"Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"

In him, even

"thickheads ought to recognizeThe Devil, that old stager, at his trickOf general utility, who leadsDownward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!"A

"thickheads ought to recognize

The Devil, that old stager, at his trick

Of general utility, who leads

Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!"A

A:Red Cotton Nightcap Country.

For the bold sinner, who chooses and sustains his part to the end, the poet has hope. Indeed, the resolute choice is itself the beginning of hope; for, let a man only givehimselfto anything, wreakhimselfon the world in the intensity of his hate, set all sail before the gusts of passion and "range from Helen to Elvire, frenetic to be free," let him rise into a decisive self-assertion against the stable order of the moral world, and he cannot fail to discover the nature of the task he has undertaken, and the meaning of the power without, against which he has set himself. If there be sufficient strength in a man to vent himself in action, and "try conclusions with the world," he will then learn that it has another destiny than to be the instrument of evil. Self-assertion taken by itself is good; indeed, it is the very law of every life, human and other.

"Each lieRedounded to the praise of man, was victoryMan's nature had both right to get and might to gain."B

"Each lie

Redounded to the praise of man, was victory

Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain."B

B:Fifine at the Fair, cxxviii.

But it leads to the revelation of a higher law than that of selfishness. The very assertion of the self which leads into evil, ultimately leaves the self assertion futile. There is the disappointmentof utter failure; the sinner is thrown back upon himself empty-handed. He finds himself subjected, even when sinning,

"To the reignOf other quite as real a nature, that saw fitTo have its way with man, not man his way with it."A

"To the reign

Of other quite as real a nature, that saw fit

To have its way with man, not man his way with it."A

A:Fifine at the Fair, cxxviii.

"Poor pabulum for pride when the first love is foundLast also! and, so far from realizing gain,Each step aside just proves divergency in vain.The wanderer brings home no profit from his questBeyond the sad surmise that keeping house were bestCould life begin anew."B

"Poor pabulum for pride when the first love is found

Last also! and, so far from realizing gain,

Each step aside just proves divergency in vain.

The wanderer brings home no profit from his quest

Beyond the sad surmise that keeping house were best

Could life begin anew."B

B:Ibid. cxxix.

The impossibility of living a divided life, of enjoying at once the sweets of the flesh on the "Turf," and the security of the "Towers," is the text ofRed Cotton Nightcap Country. The sordid hero of the poem is gradually driven to choose between the alternatives. The best of his luck, the poet thinks, was the

"Rough but wholesome shock,An accident which comes to kill or cure,A jerk which mends a dislocated joint!"C

"Rough but wholesome shock,

An accident which comes to kill or cure,

A jerk which mends a dislocated joint!"C

C:Red Cotton Nightcap Country.

The continuance of disguise and subterfuge, and the retention of "the first falsehood," are ultimately made impossible to Léonce Miranda:

"Thus by a rude in seeming—rightlier judgedBeneficent surprise, publicityStopped further fear and trembling, and what taleCowardice thinks a covert: one bold splashInto the mid-shame, and the shiver ends,Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps."D

"Thus by a rude in seeming—rightlier judged

Beneficent surprise, publicity

Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale

Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash

Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends,

Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps."D

D:Ibid.

In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deed possible forhim.

"'Mad!' 'No! sane, I say.Such being the conditions of his life,Such end of life was not irrational.Hold a belief, you only half-believe,With all-momentous issues either way,—And I advise you imitate this leap,Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once!'"A

"'Mad!' 'No! sane, I say.

Such being the conditions of his life,

Such end of life was not irrational.

Hold a belief, you only half-believe,

With all-momentous issues either way,—

And I advise you imitate this leap,

Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once!'"A

A:Red Cotton Nightcap Country.

Thus it is the decisive deed that gains the poet's approval. He finds the universe a great plot against a pied morality. Even Guido claims some kind of regard from him, since "hate," as Pompilia said, "was the truth of him." In that very hate we find, beneath his endless subterfuges, something real, at last. And since, through his hate, he is frankly measuring his powers against the good at work in the world, there cannot remain any doubt of the issue. To bring the rival forces face to face is just what is wanted.

"I felt quite sure that God had setHimself to Satan; who would spendA minute's mistrust on the end?"B

"I felt quite sure that God had set

Himself to Satan; who would spend

A minute's mistrust on the end?"B

B:Count Gismond.

It is the same respect for strenuous action and dislike of compromise, that inspired the pathetic lines in which he condemns the Lost Leader, who broke "From the van and the free-men, and sunk to the rear and the slaves." For the good pursues its work without him.

"We shall march prospering,—not thro' his presence;Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre;Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence,Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!"A

"We shall march prospering,—not thro' his presence;

Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre;

Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence,

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:

Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,

One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!"A

A:The List Leader.

Everywhere Browning's ethical teaching has this characteristic feature of vigorous decisiveness. As Dr. Westcott has said, "No room is left for indifference or neutrality. There is no surrender to an idle optimism. A part must be taken and maintained. The spirit in which Luther said 'Pecca fortiter' finds in him powerful expression." Browning is emphatically the poet-militant, and the prophet of struggling manhood. His words are like trumpet-calls sounded in the van of man's struggle, wafted back by the winds, and heard through all the din of conflict by his meaner brethren, who are obscurely fighting for the good in the throng and crush of life. We catch the tones of this heart-strengthening music in the earliest poems he sung: nor did his courage fail, or vigour wane, as the shades of night gathered round him. In the latest of all his poems, he still speaks of

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,Never doubted clouds would break,Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,Sleep to wake."

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break,

Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake."

"No, at noon-day in the bustle of man's work-timeGreet the unseen with a cheer!Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,'Strive and thrive'! cry 'Speed!—fight on, fare everThere as here.'"A

"No, at noon-day in the bustle of man's work-time

Greet the unseen with a cheer!

Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,

'Strive and thrive'! cry 'Speed!—fight on, fare ever

There as here.'"A

A: Epilogue toAsolande.

These are fit words to close such a life. His last act is a kind of re-enlistment in the service of the good; the joyous venturing forth on a new war under new conditions and in lands unknown, by a heroic man who is sure of himself and sure of his cause.

But now comes the great difficulty. How can the poet combine such earnestness in the moral struggle with so deep a conviction of the ultimate nothingness of evil, and of the complete victory of the good? Again and again we have found him pronounce such victory to be absolutely necessary and inevitable. His belief in God, his trust in His love and might, will brook no limit anywhere. His conviction is that the power of the good subjects evil itself to its authority.

"My own hope is, a sun will pierceThe thickest cloud earth ever stretched;That, after Last, returns the First,Though a wide compass round be fetched;That what began best, can't end worst.Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."B

"My own hope is, a sun will pierce

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;

That, after Last, returns the First,

Though a wide compass round be fetched;

That what began best, can't end worst.

Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."B

B:Apparent Failure.

It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete ofFifinethat speaks:—

"Partake my confidence! No creature's made so meanBut that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate,Its supreme worth: fulfils, by ordinance of fate,Its momentary task, gets glory all its own,Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone.""As firm is my belief, quick sense perceives the sameSelf-vindicating flash illustrate every manAnd woman of our mass, and prove, throughout the plan,No detail but, in place allotted it, was primeAnd perfect."A

"Partake my confidence! No creature's made so mean

But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate,

Its supreme worth: fulfils, by ordinance of fate,

Its momentary task, gets glory all its own,

Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone."

"As firm is my belief, quick sense perceives the same

Self-vindicating flash illustrate every man

And woman of our mass, and prove, throughout the plan,

No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime

And perfect."A

A:Fifine at the Fair, xxix.

But if so,—if Helen, Fifine, Guido, find themselves within the plan, fulfilling, after all, the task allotted to them in the universal scheme, how can we condemn them? Must we not plainly either modify our optimism and keep our faith in God within bounds, or, on the other hand, make every failure "apparent" only, sin a phantom, and the distinction between right and wrong a helpful illusion that stings man to effort—but an illusion all the same?

"What but the weakness in a Faith suppliesThe incentive to humanity, no strengthAbsolute, irresistible comforts.How can man love but what he yearns to help?"B

"What but the weakness in a Faith supplies

The incentive to humanity, no strength

Absolute, irresistible comforts.

How can man love but what he yearns to help?"B

B:The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 1649-1652.

Where is the need, nay, the possibility, of self-sacrifice, except where there is misery? How can good, the good which is highest, find itself, and give utterance and actuality to the power that slumbers within it, except as resisting evil? Are not good and evil relative? Is not every criminal, when really known, working out in his own way the salvation of himself and the world? Why cannot he, then, take his stand on his right to move towards the good by any path that best pleases himself: since move he must. Itis easy for the religious conscience to admit with Pippa that

"All service ranks the same with God—With God, whose puppets, best and worst,Are we: there is no last or first."A

"All service ranks the same with God—

With God, whose puppets, best and worst,

Are we: there is no last or first."A

A:Pippa Passes.

But, if so, why do we admire her sweet pre-eminence in moral beauty, and in what is she really better than Ottima? The doctrine that

"God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!"B

"God's in His heaven—

All's right with the world!"B

B:Ibid.

finds its echo in every devout spirit from the beginning of the world: it is of the very essence of religion. But what of its moral consequences? Religion, when thoroughly consistent, is the triumphant reconciliation of all contradictions. It is optimism, the justification of things as the process of evolving the good; and its peace and joy are just the outcome of the conviction, won by faith, that the ideal is actual, and that every detail of life is, in its own place, illumined with divine goodness. But morality is the condemnation of things as they are, by reference to a conception of a good which ought to be. The absolute identification of the actual and ideal extinguishes morality, either in something lower or something higher. But the moral ideal, when reached, turns at once into a stepping-stone, a dead self; and the good formulates itself anew as an ideal in the future. So that morality is the sphere of discrepancy, and the moral life a progressive realizationof a good that can never be complete. It would thus seem to be irreconcilably different from religion, which must, in some way or other, find the good to be present, actual, absolute, without shadow of change, or hint of limit or imperfection.

How, then, does the poet deal with the apparently fundamental discrepancy between religion, which postulates the absolute and universal supremacy of God, and morality, which postulates the absolute supremacy of man within the sphere of his own action, in so far as it is called right or wrong?

This difficulty, in one or other of its forms, is, perhaps, the most pressing in modern philosophy. It is the problem of the possibility of rising above the "Either, Or" of discrepant conceptions, to a position which grasps the alternatives together in a higher idea. It is at bottom the question, whether we can have a philosophy at all; or whether we must fall back once more into compromise, and the scepticism and despair which it always brings with it.

It is just because Browning does not compromise between the contending truths that he is instructive. The value of his solution of the problem corresponds accurately to the degree in which he holds both the absoluteness of God's presence in history, and the complete independence of the moral consciousness. He refused to degrade either God or man. In the name of religion, he refuses to say that "a purpose of reason is visible in the social and legal structures of mankind"—only"onthe whole "; and in the name of morality, he refuses to "assert the perfection of the actual world" as it is, and by implication to stultify all human endeavour. He knew the vice of compromising, and strove to hold both the truths in their fulness.

That he did not compromise God's love or power, and make it dominant merely "on the whole," leaving within His realm, which is universal, a limbo for the "lost," is evident to the most casual reader.

"This doctrine, which one healthy view of things,One sane sight of the general ordinance—Nature,—and its particular object,—man,—Which one mere eyecast at the characterOf Who made these and gave man sense to boot,Had dissipated once and evermore,—This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal.Why? Because none believed it."A

"This doctrine, which one healthy view of things,

One sane sight of the general ordinance—

Nature,—and its particular object,—man,—

Which one mere eyecast at the character

Of Who made these and gave man sense to boot,

Had dissipated once and evermore,—

This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal.

Why? Because none believed it."A

A:The Inn Album.

"O'er-punished wrong grows right," Browning says. Hell is, for him, the consciousness of opportunities neglected, arrested growth; and even that, in turn, is the beginning of a better life.

"However near I stand in His regard,So much the nearer had I stood by stepsOffered the feet which rashly spurned their help.That I call Hell; why further punishment?"B

"However near I stand in His regard,

So much the nearer had I stood by steps

Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.

That I call Hell; why further punishment?"B

B:A Camel-Driver.

Another ordinary view, according to which evil is self-destructive, and ends with the annihilation of its servant, he does not so decisively reject. At least, in a passage of wonderful poetic and philosophic power, which he puts into the mouth of Caponsacchi, he describes Guido as gradually lapsing towardsthe chaos, which is lower then created existence. He observes him

"Not to die so much as slide out of life,Pushed by the general horror and common hateLow, lower,—left o' the very ledge of things,I seem to see him catch convulsively,One by one at all honest forms of life,At reason, order, decency and use,To cramp him and get foothold by at least;And still they disengage them fromhisclutch."And thus I see him slowly and surely edgedOff all the table-land whence life upspringsAspiring to be immortality."

"Not to die so much as slide out of life,

Pushed by the general horror and common hate

Low, lower,—left o' the very ledge of things,

I seem to see him catch convulsively,

One by one at all honest forms of life,

At reason, order, decency and use,

To cramp him and get foothold by at least;

And still they disengage them fromhisclutch.

"And thus I see him slowly and surely edged

Off all the table-land whence life upsprings

Aspiring to be immortality."

There he loses him in the loneliness, silence and dusk—

"At the horizontal line, creation's verge.From what just is to absolute nothingness."A

"At the horizontal line, creation's verge.

From what just is to absolute nothingness."A

A:The Ring and the Book—Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 1911-1931.

But the matchless moral insight of the Pope leads to a different conclusion, and the poet again retrieves his faith. The Pope puts his first trust "in the suddenness of Guido's fate," and hopes that the truth may "be flashed out by the blow of death, and Guido see one instant and be saved." Nor is his trust vain. "The end comes," said Dr. Westcott. "The ministers of death claim him. In his agony he summons every helper whom he has known or heard of—

"'Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God—'

"and then the light breaks through the blackest gloom:

"'Pompilia! will you let them murder me?'

"In this supreme moment he has known what love is, and, knowing it, has begun to feel it. The cry, like the intercession of the rich man in Hades, is a promise of a far-off deliverance."

But even beyond this hope, which is the last for most men, the Pope had still another.

"Else I avert my face, nor follow himInto that sad obscure sequestered stateWhere God unmakes but to remake the soulHe else made first in vain:which must not be."A

"Else I avert my face, nor follow him

Into that sad obscure sequestered state

Where God unmakes but to remake the soul

He else made first in vain:which must not be."A

A:The Ring and the Book—The Pope, 2129-2132.

This phrase, "which must not be," seems to me to carry in it the irrefragable conviction of the poet himself. The same faith in the future appears in the words in which Pompilia addresses her priest.

"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,No work begun shall ever pause for death!Love will be helpful to me more and moreI' the coming course, the new path I must tread,My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"B

"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,

No work begun shall ever pause for death!

Love will be helpful to me more and more

I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,

My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"B

B:The Ring and the Seek—Pompilia, 1786-1790.

For the poet, the death of man brings no change in the purpose of God; nor does it, or aught else, fix a limit to His power, or stultify by failure the end implied in all God's work, nature no less than man himself—to wit, that every soul shall learn the lesson of goodness, and reflect the devine life in desire, intelligence, and will.

Equally emphatic, on some sides at least, is Browning's rejection of those compromises, with which the one-sided religious consciousness threatens the existenceof the moral life. At times, indeed, he seems to teach, as man's best and highest, a passive acquiescence in the divine benevolence; and he uses the dangerous metaphor of the clay and potter's wheel.Rabbi Ben Ezrabids us feel

"Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay";

and his prayer is,

"So, take and use Thy work:Amend what flaws may lurk,What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!My times be in Thy hand!Perfect the cup as planned!Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"A

"So, take and use Thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"A

A:Rabbi Ben Ezra.

But this attitude of quiescent trust, which is so characteristic of religion, is known by the poet to be only a phase of man's best life. It is a temporary resting-place for the pilgrim: "the country of Beulah, whose air is very sweet and pleasant, where he may solace himself for a season." But, "the way lies directly through it," and the pilgrim, "being a little strengthened and better able to bear his sickness," has to go forward on his journey. Browning's characteristic doctrine on this matter is not acquiescence and resignation. "Leave God the way" has, in his view, its counterpart and condition—"Have you the will!"

"For a worm must turnIf it would have its wrong observed by God."B

"For a worm must turn

If it would have its wrong observed by God."B

B:The Ring and the Book—Pompilia,1592-1593.

The root of Browning's joy is in the need of progress towards an infinitely high goal. He rejoices

"that man is hurledFrom change to change unceasingly,His soul's wings never furled."

"that man is hurled

From change to change unceasingly,

His soul's wings never furled."

The bliss of endeavour, the infinite worth of the consciousness of failure, with its evidence of coming triumph, "the spark which disturbs our clod," these are the essence of his optimistic interpretation of human life, and also of his robust ethical doctrine.

"Then, welcome each rebuffThat turns earth's smoothness rough,Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!Be our joys three-parts pain!Strive, and hold cheap the strain;Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!"A

"Then, welcome each rebuff

That turns earth's smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

Be our joys three-parts pain!

Strive, and hold cheap the strain;

Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!"A

A:Rabbi Ben Ezra.

And he prolongs the battle beyond time, for the battle is the moral life and man's best, and therefore God's best in man. The struggle upward from the brute, may, indeed end with death. But this only means that man "has learned the uses of the flesh," and there are in him other potencies to evolve:

"Other heights in other lives, God willing."

Death is the summing up of this life's meaning, stored strength for new adventure.

"The future I may face now I have proved the past;" and, in view of it, Browning is

"Fearless and unperplexedWhen I wage battle next,What weapons to select, what armour to indue."

"Fearless and unperplexed

When I wage battle next,

What weapons to select, what armour to indue."

He is sure that it will be a battle, and a winning one. There is no limiting here of man's possibility, or confining of man's endeavour after goodness.

"Strive and Thrive! cry 'Speed,' fight on, fare everThere as here,"

"Strive and Thrive! cry 'Speed,' fight on, fare ever

There as here,"

are the last words which came from his pen.

Now, it may fairly be argued that these allusions to what death may mean, and what may lie beyond death, valuable as they may be as poetry, cannot help in philosophy. They do not solve the problem of the relation between morality and religion, but merely continue the antagonism between them into a life beyond, of which we have no experience. If the problem is to be solved, it must be solved as it is stated for us in the present world.

This objection is valid, so far as it goes. But Browning's treatment is valuable all the same, in so far as it indicates his unwillingness to limit or compromise the conflicting truths. He, by implication, rejects the view, ordinarily held without being examined, that the moral life is preliminary to the joy and rest of religion; a brief struggle, to be followed by a sudden lift out of it into some serene sphere, where man will lead an angel's life, which knows no imperfection and therefore no growth. He refuses to make morality an accident in man's history and "to put man in the place of God," by identifying the process with the ideal; he also refuses to make man's struggle, and God's achievementwithin man, mutually exclusive alternatives. As I shall show in the sequel, movement towards an ideal, actualizing but never actualized, is for the poet the very nature of man. And to speak about either God or man (or even the absolute philosopher) as "the last term of a development" has no meaning to him. We are not first moral and then religious, first struggling with evil and then conscious of overcoming it. God is with us in the battle, and the victory is in every blow.

But there lies a deeper difficulty than this in the way of reconciling morality and religion, or the presence of both God and man in human action. Morality, in so far as it is achievement, might conceivably be immediately identified with the process of an absolute good; but morality is always a consciousness of failure as well. Its very essence and verve is the conviction that the ideal is not actual. And the higher a man's spiritual attainment, the more impressive is his view of the evil of the world, and of the greatness of the work pressing to be done. "Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold I say unto you, 'Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.'" It looks like blasphemy against morality to say "that God lives in eternity and has, therefore, plenty of time." Morality destroys one's contentment with the world; and its language seems to be, "God is not here, but there; the kingdom is still to come."

Nor does it rest with condemning the world. It also finds flaws in its own highest achievement; so that we seem ever "To mock ourselves in all that's best of us." The beginning of the spiritual life seems just to consist in a consciousness of complete failure, and that consciousness ever grows deeper.

This is well illustrated in Browning's account of Caponsacchi; from the time when Pompilia's smile first "glowed" upon him, and set him—

"Thinking how my lifeHad shaken under me—broken short indeedAnd showed the gap 'twixt what is, what should be—And into what abysm the soul may slip"—A

"Thinking how my life

Had shaken under me—broken short indeed

And showed the gap 'twixt what is, what should be—

And into what abysm the soul may slip"—A

A:The Ring and the Book—Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 485-488.

up to the time when his pure love for her revealed to him something of the grandeur of goodness, and led him to define his ideal and also to express his despair.

"To have to do with nothing but the true,The good, the eternal—and these, not aloneIn the main current of the general life,But small experiences of every day,Concerns of the particular hearth and home:To learn not only by a comet's rushBut a rose's birth—not by the grandeur, God,But the comfort, Christ.All thishowfar away/Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"B

"To have to do with nothing but the true,

The good, the eternal—and these, not alone

In the main current of the general life,

But small experiences of every day,

Concerns of the particular hearth and home:

To learn not only by a comet's rush

But a rose's birth—not by the grandeur, God,

But the comfort, Christ.All thishowfar away/

Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"B

B:Ibid.2089-2097.

So illimitably beyond his strength is such a life, that he finds himself like the drudging student who

"Trims his lamp,Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the placeOf Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'—Then smilingly, contentedly, awakesTo the old solitary nothingness."A

"Trims his lamp,

Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place

Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,

Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!'—

Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes

To the old solitary nothingness."A

A:The Ring and the Book—Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 2098-2103.

The moral world with its illimitable horizon had Opened out around him, the voice of the new commandment bidding him "be perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect" had destroyed his peace, and made imperative a well nigh hopeless struggle; and, as he compares himself at his best with the new ideal, he breaks out into the cry,

"O great, just, good God! Miserable Me!"

This humility and contrition, this discontent verging on hopelessness, constituted, as we have seen, the characteristic attitude of Carlyle; and it represents a true and, in fact, an indispensable element of man's moral life.

But this self-condemnation in the face of the moral law is nothing more than an element, and must not be taken either for the whole truth or for the most fundamental one. It is because it is taken as fundamental and final that the discrepancy between morality and religion is held to be absolute, and the consciousness of evil is turned against faith in the Good. It is an abstract way of thinking that makes us deduce, from the transcendent height of the moral ideal, the impossibility of attaining goodness, and the failure of God's purpose in man. And this is what Carlyle did. He stopped shortat the consciousness of imperfection, and he made no attempt to account for it. He took it as a complete fact, and therefore drew a sharp line of distinction between the human and the divine. And, so far, he was right; for, if we look no further than this negative side, it is emphatically absurd to identify man, be he "philosopher" or not, with the Absolute. "Why callest thou Me good? there is none good save One, that is God." The "ought"muststand aboveallhuman attainment, and declare that "whatever is, is wrong." But whence comes the ought itself, the ideal which condemns us? Is it not also immanent in the fact it condemns?

"Who is not acute enough," asks Hegel, "to see a great deal in his surroundings which is really far from being what it ought to be?" And who also, we may add, has not enough of the generalizing faculty, often mistaken for a philosophical one, to extend this condemnation over the whole of "this best of all possible worlds"? But what is this "ought-to-be," which has such potency in it that all things confronted with it lose their worth?

The first answer is, that it is an idea which men, and particularly good men, carry with them. But a little consideration will show that it cannot be a mere idea. It must be something more valid than a capricious product of the individual imagination. For we cannot wisely condemn things because they do not happen to answer to any casual conception which we may choose to elevate into a criterion. A criterion must have objective validity.It must be an ideaofsomething and not an empty notion; and that something must, at the worst, be possible. Nay, when we consider all that is involved in it, it becomes obvious that a true ideal—an ideal which is a valid criterion—must be not only possible but real, and, indeed, more real than that which is condemned by reference to it. Absolute pessimism has in it the same contradiction as absolute scepticism has,—in fact, it is only its practical counterpart; for both scepticism and pessimism involve the assumption that it is possible to reach a position outside the realm of being, from which it may be condemned as a whole. But the rift between actual and ideal must fall within the real or intelligible world, do what the pessimists will; and a condemnation of man which is not based on a principle realized by humanity, is a fiction of abstract thought, which lays stress on the actuality of the imperfect and treats the perfect as if it were as good as nothing, which it cannot be. In other words, this way of regarding human life isolates the passing phenomenon, and does not look to that which reveals itself in it and causes it to pass away. Confining ourselves, however, for the present, to the ideal in morality, we can easily see that, in that sphere at least, the actual and ideal change places; and that the latter contrasts with the former as the real with the phenomenal. For, in the first place, the moral ideal is something more than a mere idea not yet realized. It is more even than atrueidea; for no mere knowledge, however true,has such intimate relation to the self-consciousness of man as his moral ideal. A mathematical axiom, and the statement of a physical law, express what is true; but they do not occupy the same place in our mind as a moral principle. Such a principle is an ideal, as well as an idea. It is an idea which has causative potency in it. It supplies motives, it is an incentive to action, and, though in one sense a thing of the future, it is also the actual spring and source of present activity. In so far as the agent acts, as Kant put it, not according to laws, but according to anideaof law (and a responsible agent always acts in this manner), the ideal is as truly actualized in him as the physical law is actualized in the physical fact, or the vegetable life in the plant. In fact, the ideal of a moral being is his life. All his actions are its manifestations. And, just as the physical fact is not seen as it really is, nor its reality proved, till science has penetrated through the husk of the sensuous phenomenon, and grasped it in thought as an instance of a law; so an individual's actions are not understood, and can have no moral meaning whatsoever, except in the light of the purpose which gave them being. We know the man only when we know his creed. His reality is what he believes in; that is, it is his ideal.

It is the consciousness that the ideal is the real which explains the fact of contrition. To become morally awakened is to become conscious of the vanity and nothingness of the past life, as confronted with the new ideal implied in it. The past life issomething to be cast aside as false show, just because the self that experienced it was not realized in it. It is for this reason that the moral agent sets himself against it, and desires to annihilate all its claims upon him by undergoing its punishment, and drinking to the dregs its cup of bitterness. Thus his true life lies in the realization of his ideal, and his advance towards it is his coming to himself. Only in attaining to it does he attain reality, and the only realization possible for him in the present is just the consciousness of the potency of the ideal. To him to live is to realize his ideal. It is a power that irks, till it finds expression in moral habits that accord with its nature,i.e., till the spirit has, out of its environment, created a body adequate to itself.

The condemnation of self which characterizes all moral life and is the condition of moral progress, must not, therefore, be regarded as a complete truth. For the very condemnation implies the actual presence of something better. Both of the terms—both the criterion and the fact which is condemned by it—fall within the same individual life. Man cannot, therefore, without injustice, condemn himself in all that he is; for the condemnation is itself a witness to the activity of that good of which he despairs. Hence, the threatening majesty of the moral imperative is nothing but the shadow of man's own dignity; and moral contrition, and even the complete despair of the pessimistic theory, when rightly understood, are recognized asunwilling witnesses to the authority and the actuality of the highest good. And, on the other hand, the highest good cannot be regarded as a mere phantom, without nullifying all our condemnation of the self and the world.

The legitimate deduction from the height of man's moral ideal is thus found to be, not, as Carlyle thought, the weakness and worthlessness of human nature, but its promise and native dignity: and in a healthy moral consciousness it produces, not despair, but faith and joy. For, as has been already suggested in a previous chapter, the authority of the moral law over man is rooted in man's endowment. Its imperative is nothing but the voice of the future self, bidding the present self aspire, while its reproof is only the expression of a moral aspiration which has misunderstood itself. Contrition is not a bad moral state which should bring despair, but a good state, full of promise of one that is still better. It is, in fact, just the first step which the ideal takes in its process of self-realization: "the sting that bids nor sit, nor stand, but go!"

The moral ideal thus, like every other ideal, even that which we regard as present in natural life, contains a certain guarantee of its own fulfilment. It is essentially an active thing, an energy, a movement upwards. It may, indeed, be urged that the guarantee is imperfect. Ideals tend to self-realization, but the tendency may remain unfulfilled. Men have some ideals which they never reach, and others which, at first sight at least, it were betterfor them not to reach. The goal may never be attained, or it may prove "a ruin like the rest." And, as long as man is moral, the ideal is not, and cannot be, fully reached. Morality necessarily implies a rift within human nature, a contradiction between what is and what ought to be; although neither the rift nor the contradiction is absolute. There might seem for this reason to be no way of bringing optimism and ethics together, of reconciling what is and what ought to be.

My answer to these difficulties must at this stage be very brief and incomplete. That the moral good, if attained, should itself prove vain is a plain self-contradiction. For moral good has no meaning except in so far as it is conceived as the highest good. The question. "Why should I be moral," has no answer, because it is self-contradictory. The moral ideal contains its justification in itself, and requires to lean on nothing else.

But it is not easy to prove that it is attainable. In one sense it is not attainable, at least under the conditions of human life which fall within our experience, from which alone we have a right to speak. For, as I shall strive to show in a succeeding chapter, the essence of man's life as spiritual, that is as intelligent and moral, is its self-realizing activity. Intellectual and moral life is progress, although it is the progress of an ideal which is real and complete, the return of the infinite to itself through the finite. The cessation of the progress of the ideal in man, whereby man interprets theworld in terms of himself and makes it the instrument of his purposes, is intellectual and moral death. From one point of view, therefore, this spiritual life, or moral and intellectual activity, is inspired at every step by the consciousness of a "beyond" not possessed, of an unsolved contradiction between the self and the not-self, of a good that ought to be and is not. The last word, or rather the last wordbut one, regarding man is "failure."

But failure is the last word but one, as the poet well knew. "What's come to perfection perishes," he tells us. From this point of view the fact that perfection is not reached, merely means that the process is not ended. "It seethes with the morrow for us and more." The recognition of failure implies more effort and higher progress, and contains a suggestion of an absolute good, and even a proof of its active presence. "The beyond," for knowledge and morality, is the Land of Promise. And the promise is not a false one; for the "land" is possessed. The recognition of the fact to be known, the statement of the problem, is the first step in its solution; and the consciousness of the moral ideal not attained is the first step in its self-actualizing progress. Had man not come so far, he would not have known the further difficulty, or recognized the higher good. To say that the moral ideal is never attained, is thus only a half-truth. We must add to it the fact that it is always being attained; nay, that it is always present as an active reality, attaining itself, evolving its own content. Or, toreturn to the previous metaphor, the land of promise is possessed, although the possession always reveals a still better beyond, which is again a land of promise.

While, therefore, it must always remain true that knowledge does not reach absolute reality, nor morality absolute goodness, this cannot be used as an argument against optimism, except on the presupposition that mental and moral activity are a disease. And this is a contradiction in terms. If the ideal is in itself good, the process whereby it is attained is good; if the process in itself is evil, the ideal it seeks is evil, and therefore the condemnation of the actual by reference to it is absurd. And, on the other hand, to postulate as best the identity of ideal and actual, so that no process is necessary, is to assume a point of view where both optimism and pessimism are meaningless, for there is no criterion. As Aristotle teaches us, we have no right either to praise or to blame the highest. A process, such as morality is, which is not the self-manifestation of an actual idea, and an ideal which does not reveal its potencies in its passing forms, are both fictions of one-sided thought. The process is not the ideal, but its manifestation; and the ideal is not the process, but the principle which is its source and guide.

But if the process cannot be thus immediately identified with the ideal, or "man take the place of God," or "human self-consciousness be confused with the absolute self-consciousness," far less can they be separated. The infinitely high ideal ofperfect knowledge and perfect goodness, implied in the Christian command, "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," is an ideal, just because the unity of what is and what ought to be is deeper than their difference. The recognition of the limit of our knowledge, or the imperfection of our moral character, is a direct witness to the fact that there is more to be known and a better to be achieved. The negative implies the affirmative, and is its effect. Man's confession of the limitation of his knowledge is made on the supposition that the universe of facts, in all its infinitely rich complexity, is meant to be known; and his confession of moral imperfection is made by reference to a good which is absolute, and which yet may be and ought to be his. The good in morality is necessarily supreme and perfect. A good that is "merely human," "relative to man's nature," in the sense of not being true goodness, is a phantom of confused thinking. Morality demands "thegood," and not a simulacrum or make-shift. The distinction between right and wrong, and with it all moral aspiration, contrition, and repentance, would otherwise become meaningless. What can a seeming good avail to a moral agent? There is no better or worse among merely apparent excellencies, and of phantoms it matters not which is chosen. And, in a similar way, the distinction between true and false in knowledge, and the common condemnation of human knowledge as merely of phenomena, implies the absolute unity of thought and being, and the knowledge of thatunity as a fact. There is no true or false amongst merely apparent facts.

But, if the ideal of man as a spiritual being is conceived as perfect, then it follows not only that its attainment is possible, but that it is necessary. The guarantee of its own fulfilment which an ideal carries with it as an ideal, that is, as a potency in process of fulfilment, becomes complete when that ideal is absolute. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" The absolute good, in the language of Emerson, is "too good not to be true." If such an ideal be latent in the nature of man, it brings the order of the universe over to his side. For it implies a kinship between him, as a spiritual being, and the whole of existence. The stars in their courses fight for him. In other words, the moral ideal means nothing, if it does not imply a law which is universal. It is a law which exists already, whether man recognizes it or not; it is the might in things, a law of which "no jot or tittle can in any wise pass away." The individual does not institute the moral law; he finds it to be written both within and without him. His part is to recognize, not to create it; to make it valid in his own life and so to identify himself with it, that his service of it may be perfect freedom.

We thus conclude that morality, and even the self-condemnation, contrition, and consciousness of failure which it brings with it as phases of its growth, are witnesses of the presence, and the actual product of an absolute good in man.Morality, in other words, rests upon, and is the self-evolution of the religious principle in man.

A similar line of proof would show that religion implies morality. An absolute good is not conceivable, except in relation to the process whereby it manifests itself. In the language of theology, we may say that God must create and redeem the world in order to be God; or that creation and redemption,—the outflow of the universe from God as its source, and its return to Him through the salvation of mankind,—reveal to us the nature of God. Apart from this outgoing of the infinite to the finite and its return to itself through it, the name God would be an empty word, signifying a something unintelligible dwelling in the void beyond the realm of being. But religion, as we have seen, is the recognition not of an unknown but of the absolute good as real; the joyous consciousness of the presence of God in all things. And morality, in that it is the realization of an ideal which is perfect, is the process whereby the absolute good actualizes itself in man. It is true that the ideal cannot be identified with the process; for it is the principle of the process, and therefore more than it. Man does not reach "the last term of development," for there is no last term to a being whose essence is progressive activity. He does not therefore take the place of God, and his self-consciousness is never the absolute self-consciousness. But still, in so far as his life is a progress towards the true and good, it is the process of truth and goodness withinhim. It is the activity of the ideal. It is God lifting man up to Himself, or, in the language of philosophy, "returning to Himself in history." And yet it is at the same time man's effort after goodness. Man is not a mere "vessel of divine grace," or a passive recipient of the highest bounty. All man's goodness is necessarily man's achievement. And the realization by the ideal of itself is man's achievement of it. For it is his ideal. The law without is also the law within. It is the law within because it is recognized as the law without. Thus, the moral consciousness passes into the religious consciousness. The performance of duty is the willing service of the absolute good; and, as such, it involves also the recognition of a purpose that cannot fail. It is both activity and faith, both a struggle and a consciousness of victory, both morality and religion. We cannot, therefore, treat these as alternative phases of man's life. There is not first the pain of the moral struggle, and then the joy and rest of religion. The meat and drink is "to do the will of Him that sent Me, to finish His work." Heaven is the service of the good. "There is nothing in the world or out of it that can be called unconditionally good, except the good will." The process of willing—the moral activity—is its own reward; "the only jewel that shines in its own light."

It may seem to some to be presumptuous thus to identify the divine and the human; but to separate them makes both morality and religionimpossible. It robs morality of its ideal, and makes God a mere name for the "unknown." Those who think that this identification degrades the divine, misapprehend the nature of spirit; and forget that it is of its essence to communicate itself. And goodness and truth do not become less when shared; they grow greater. Spiritual possessions imply community wherein there is no exclusion; and to the Christian the glory of God is His communication of Himself. Hence the so-called religious humility, which makes God different in nature from His work, really degrades the object of its worship. It puts mere power above the gifts of spirit, and it indicates that the worshipper has not been emancipated from the slavishness, which makes a fetish of its God. Such a religion is not free, and the development of man destroys it.

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