Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 12

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lv.]

"Let her but love you, All else you disregard! what else can be?

You know how love is incompatible With falsehood--purifies, a.s.similates All other pa.s.sions to itself."[B]

[Footnote B: _Colombe's Birthday._]

"Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world And say, love can go unrequited here!

You will have blessed him to his whole life's end-- Low pa.s.sions hindered, baser cares kept back, All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

But, while love is always a power lifting a man upwards to the level of its own origin from whatever depths of degradation, its greatest potency can reveal itself only in characters intrinsically pure, such as Pompilia and Caponsacchi. Like mercy and every other spiritual gift, it is mightiest in the mighty. In the good and great of the earth love is veritably seen to be G.o.d's own energy;

"Who never is dishonoured in the spark He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark."[A]

[Footnote A: _Any Wife to Any Husband_, III.]

It were almost an endless task to recount the ways in which Browning exhibits the moralizing power of love: how it is for him the quintessence of all goodness; the motive, and inspiring cause, of every act in the world that is completely right; and how, on that account, it is the actual working in the man of the ideal of all perfection. This doctrine of love is, in my opinion, the richest vein of pure ore in Browning's poetry.

But it remains to follow briefly our poet's treatment of love in another direction--as a principle present, not only in G.o.d as creative and redeeming Power, and in man as the highest motive and energy of the moral life, but also in the outer world, in the "material" universe. In the view of the poet, the whole creation is nothing but love incarnate, a pulsation from the divine heart. Love is the source of all law and of all beauty. "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night speaketh knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard." And our poet speaks as if he had caught the meaning of the language, and believes that all things speak of love--the love of G.o.d.

"I think," says the heroine of the _Inn Alb.u.m_,

"Womanliness means only motherhood; All love begins and ends there,--roams enough, But, having run the circle, rests at home."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Inn Alb.u.m_.]

And Browning detects something of this motherhood everywhere. He finds it as

"Some cause Such as is put into a tree, which turns Away from the north wind with what nest it holds."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Canon Caponsacchi_, 1374-1376.]

The Pope--who, if any one, speaks for Browning--declares that

"Brute and bird, reptile and the fly, Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant And flower o' the field, are all in a common pact To worthily defend the trust of trusts, Life from the Ever Living."[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1076-1081.]

"Because of motherhood," said the minor pope in _Ivan Ivanovitch_,

"each male Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale: His strength owned weakness, wit--folly, and courage--fear, Beside the female proved males's mistress--only here The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire Who dares a.s.sault her whelp."

The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled sin," which scares the world and shames G.o.d.

"I hold that, failing human sense, The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace."[A]

[Footnote A: _Ivan Ivanovitch_.]

This instinct of love, which binds brute-parent to brute-offspring, is a kind of spiritual law in the natural world: it, like all law, guarantees the continuity and unity of the world, and it is scarcely akin to merely physical attraction. No doubt its basis is physical; it has an organism of flesh and blood for its vehicle and instrument: but mathematical physics cannot explain it, nor can it be detected by chemical tests.

Rather, with the poet, we are to regard brute affection as a kind of rude outline of human love; as a law in nature, which, when understood by man and adopted as his rule of conduct, becomes the essence and potency of his moral life.

Thus Browning regards love as an omnipresent good. There is nothing, he tells us in _Fifine_, which cannot reflect it; even moral putridity becomes phosph.o.r.escent, "and sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coa.r.s.est covertures."

"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."[B]

[Footnote B: _In a balcony_.]

There is no fact which, if seen to the heart, will not prove itself to have love for its purpose, and, therefore, for its substance. And it is on this account that everything finds its place in a kosmos and that there is

"No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime And perfect."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_. x.x.xi.]

Every event in the history of the world and of man is explicable, as the bursting into new form of this elemental, all-pervading power. The permanence in change of nature, the unity in variety, the strength which clothes itself in beauty, are all manifestations of love. Nature is not merely natural; matter and life's minute beginnings, are more than they seem. Paracelsus said that he knew and felt

"What G.o.d is, what we are, What life is--how G.o.d tastes an infinite joy In finite ways--one everlasting bliss, From whom all being emanates, all power Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore, Yet whom existence in its lowest form Includes."[B]

[Footnote B: _Paracelsus_.]

The scheme of love does not begin with man, he is rather its consummation.

"Whose attributes had here and there Been scattered o'er the visible world before, Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant To be united in some wondrous whole, Imperfect qualities throughout creation, Suggesting some one creature yet to make, Some point where all those scattered rays should meet Convergent in the faculties of man.

"Hints and previsions of which faculties, Are strewn confusedly everywhere about The inferior natures, and all lead up higher, All shape out divinely the superior race, The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, And man appears at last."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

Power, knowledge, love, all these are found in the world, in which

"All tended to mankind, And, man produced, all has its end thus far: But, in completed man begins anew A tendency to G.o.d."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went before,

"Ill.u.s.trates all the inferior grades, explains Each back step in the circle."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. 189.]

He gives voice to the mute significance of Nature, and lets in the light on its blind groping.

"Man, once descried, imprints for ever His presence on all lifeless things."

And how is this interpretation achieved? By penetrating behind force, power, mechanism, and even intelligence, thinks the poet, to a purpose which is benevolent, a reason which is all embracing and rooted in love.