Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 4

When mine fail me I'll complain.

Must in death your daylight finish?

My sun sets to rise again.

"I find earth not grey but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue.

Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.

Do I stand and stare? All's blue."[A]

[Footnote A: _At the Mermaid_.]

Browning was no doubt least of all men inclined to pout at his "plain bun"; on the contrary, he was awake to the grandeur of his inheritance, and valued most highly "his life-rent of G.o.d's universe with the tasks it offered and the tools to do them with." But his optimism sent its roots deeper than any "disposition"; it penetrated beyond mere health of body and mind, as it did beyond a mere sentiment of G.o.d's goodness.

Optimisms resting on these bases are always weak; for the former leaves man naked and sensitive to the evils that crowd round him when the powers of body and mind decay, and the latter is, at best, useful only for the individual who possesses it, and it breaks down under the stress of criticism and doubt. Browning's optimism is a great element in English literature, because it opposes with such strength the shocks that come from both these quarters. His joyousness is the reflection _in feeling_ of a conviction as to the nature of things, which he had verified in the darkest details of human life, and established for himself in the face of the gravest objections that his intellect was able to call forth. In fact, its value lies, above all, in this,--that it comes after criticism, after the condemnation which Byron and Carlyle had pa.s.sed, each from his own point of view, on the world and on man.

The need of an optimism is one of the penalties which reflection brings.

Natural life takes the goodness of things for granted; but reflection disturbs the placid contentment and sets man at variance with his world.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge always reveals his nakedness to man; he is turned out of the paradise of unconsciousness and doomed to force Nature, now conceived as a step-dame, to satisfy needs which are now first felt. Optimism is the expression of man's new reconciliation with his world; as the opposite doctrine of pessimism is the consciousness of an unresolved contradiction. Both are a judgment pa.s.sed upon the world, from the point of view of its adequacy or inadequacy to meet demands, arising from needs which the individual has discovered in himself.

Now, as I have tried to show, one of the main characteristics of the opening years of the present era was its deeper intuition of the significance of human life, and, therefore, by implication, of its wants and claims. The spiritual nature of man, lost sight of during the preceding age, was re-discovered; and the first and immediate consequence was that man, as man, attained infinite worth. "Man was born free," cried Rousseau, with a conviction which swept all before it; "he has original, inalienable, and supreme rights against all things which can set themselves against him." And Rousseau's countrymen believed him.

There was not a _Sans-culotte_ amongst them all but held his head high, being creation's lord; and history can scarcely show a parallel to their great burst of joy and hope, as they ran riot in their new-found inheritance, from which they had so long been excluded. They flung themselves upon the world, as if they would "glut their sense" upon it.

"Expend Eternity upon its shows, Flung them as freely as one rose Out of a summer's opulence."[A]

[Footnote A:_Easter Day_.]

But the very discovery that man is spirit, which is the source of all his rights, is also an implicit discovery that he has outgrown the resources of the natural world. The infinite hunger of a soul cannot be satisfied with the things of sense. The natural world is too limited even for Carlyle's shoe-black; nor is it surprising that Byron should find it a waste, and dolefully proclaim his disappointment to much-admiring mankind. Now, both Carlyle and Browning apprehended the cause of the discontent, and both endured the Byronic utterance of it with considerable impatience. "Art thou nothing other than a vulture, then," asks the former, "that fliest through the universe seeking after somewhat _to eat,_ and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron, open thy Goethe."

"Huntsman Common Sense Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense Quiet i' the kennel: taught that ocean might be blue, And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too, Its touch of G.o.d's own flame, which He may so expand 'Who measured the waters i' the hollow of His hand'

That ocean's self shall dry, turn dew-drop in respect Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect Once fairly matched."[A]

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

But Carlyle was always more able to detect the disease than to suggest the remedy. He had, indeed, "a glimpse of it." "There is in man a Higher than love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessedness." But the glimpse was misleading, for it penetrated no further than the first negative step. The "Everlasting Yea" was, after all, only a deeper "No!" only _Entsagung_, renunciation: "the fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator." Blessed alone is he that expecteth nothing. The holy of holies, where man hears whispered the mystery of life, is "the sanctuary of sorrow." "What Act of Legislature was there that _thou_ shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to _be_ at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy? Nay, is not 'life itself a disease, knowledge the symptom of derangement'? Have not the poets sung 'Hymns to the Night' as if Night were n.o.bler than Day; as if Day were but a small motley-coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did but deform and hide from us its pure transparent eternal deeps." "We, the whole species of Mankind, and our whole existence and history, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the All ... borne this way and that way by its deep-swelling tides, and grand ocean currents, of which what faintest chance is there that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascertain the goings and comings? A region of Doubt, therefore, hovers for ever in the back-ground.... Only on a canvas of Darkness, such is man's way of being, could the many-coloured picture of our Life paint itself and s.h.i.+ne."

In such pa.s.sages as these, there is far deeper pessimism than in anything which Byron could experience or express. Scepticism is directed by Carlyle, not against the natural elements of life--the mere sensuous outworks, but against the citadel of thought itself. Self-consciousness, or the reflecting interpretation by man of himself and his world, the very activity that lifts him above animal existence and makes him man, instead of being a divine endowment, is declared to be a disease, a poisonous subjectivity destructive of all good. The discovery that man is spirit and no vulture, which was due to Carlyle himself more than to any other English writer of his age, seemed, after all, to be a great calamity; for it led to the renunciation of happiness, and filled man with yearnings after a better than happiness, but left him nothing wherewith they might be satisfied, except "the duty next to hand." And the duty next to hand, as interpreted by Carlyle, is a means of suppressing by action, not idle speech only, but thought itself. But, if this be true, the highest in man is set against itself. And what kind of action remains possible to a "speck on the illimitable ocean, borne this way and that way by its deep-swelling tides"? "Here on earth we are soldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the plan of the campaign, and have no need to understand it, seeing what is at our hand to be done." But there is one element of still deeper gloom in this blind fighting; it is fought for a foreign cause. It is G.o.d's cause and not ours, or ours only in so far as it has been despotically imposed upon us; and it is hard to discover from Carlyle what interest we can have in the victory. Duty is to him a menace--like the duty of a slave, were that possible. It lacks the element which alone can make it imperative to a free being, namely, that it be recognized as _his_ good, and that the outer law become his inner motive. The moral law is rarely looked at by Carlyle as a beneficent revelation, and still more rarely as the condition which, if fulfilled, will reconcile man with nature and with G.o.d. And consequently, he can draw little strength from religion; for it is only love that can cast out fear.

To sum up all in a word, Carlyle regarded evil as having penetrated into the inmost recesses of man's being. Thought was disease; morality was blind obedience to a foreign authority; religion was awe of an Unknowable, with whom man can claim no kins.h.i.+p. Man's nature was discovered to be spiritual, only on the side of its Wants. It was an endowment of a hunger which nothing could satisfy--not the infinite, because it is too great, not the finite, because it is too little; not G.o.d, because He is too far above man, not nature, because it is too far beneath him. We are unable to satisfy ourselves with the things of sense, and are also "shut out of the heaven of spirit." What have been called, "the three great terms of thought"--the World, Self, and G.o.d--have fallen asunder in his teaching. It is the difficulty of reconciling these which brings despair, while optimism is evidently the consciousness of their harmony.

Now, these evils which reflection has revealed, and which are so much deeper than those of mere sensuous disappointment, can only be removed by deeper reflection. The harmony of the world of man's experience, which has been broken by "the comprehensive curse of sceptical despair,"

can, as Goethe teaches us, be restored only by thought--

"In thine own soul, build it up again."

The complete refutation of Carlyle's pessimistic view can only come, by reinterpreting each of the contradicting terms in the light of a higher conception. We must have a deeper grasp and a new view of the Self, the World, and G.o.d. And such a view can be given adequately only by philosophy. Reason alone can justify the faith that has been disturbed by reflection, and re-establish its authority.

How, then, it may be asked, can a poet be expected to turn back the forces of a scepticism, which have been thus armed with the weapons of dialectic? Can anything avail in this region except explicit demonstration? A poet never demonstrates, but perceives; art is not a process, but a result; truth for it is immediate, and it neither admits nor demands any logical connection of ideas. The standard-bearers and the trumpeters may be necessary to kindle the courage of the army and to lead it on to victory, but the fight must be won by the thrust of sword and pike. Man needs more than the intuitions of the great poets, if he is to maintain solid possession of the truth.

Now, I am prepared to admit the force of this objection, and I shall endeavour in the sequel to prove that, in order to establish optimism, more is needed than Browning can give, even when interpreted in the most sympathetic way. His doctrine is offered in terms of art, and it cannot have any demonstrative force without violating the limits of art. In some of his poems, however,--for instance, in _La Saisiaz, Ferishtatis Fancies_ and the _Parleyings_, Browning sought to advance definite proofs of the theories which he held. He appears before us at times armed _cap-a-pie,_ like a philosopher. Still, it is not when he argues that Browning proves: it is when he sees, as a poet sees. It is not by means of logical demonstrations that he helps us to meet the despair of Carlyle, or contributes to the establishment of a better faith.

Browning's proofs are least convincing when he was most aware of his philosophical presuppositions; and a philosophical critic could well afford to agree with the critic of art, in relegating the demonstrating portions of his poems to the chaotic limbo lying between philosophy and poetry.

When, however, he forgets his philosophy, and speaks as poet and religious man, when he is dominated by that sovereign thought which gave unity to his life-work, and which, therefore, seemed to lie deeper in him than the necessities of his art and to determine his poetic function, his utterances have a far higher significance. For he so lifts the artistic object into the region of pure thought, and makes sense and reason so to interpenetrate, that the old metaphors of "the n.o.ble lie"

and "the truth beneath the veil" seem no longer to help. He seems to show us the truth so vividly and simply, that we are less willing to make art and philosophy mutually exclusive, although their methods differ. Like some of the greatest philosophers, and notably Plato and Hegel, he constrains us to doubt, whether the distinction penetrates low beneath the surface; for philosophy, too, when at its best, is a thinking of things together. In their light we begin to ask, whether it is not possible that the interpretation of the world in terms of spirit, which is the common feature of both Hegel's philosophy and Browning's poetry, does not necessarily bring with it a settlement of the ancient feud between these two modes of thought.

But, in any case, Browning's utterances, especially those which he makes when he is most poet and least philosopher, have something of the convincing impressiveness of a reasoned system of optimism. And this comes, as already suggested, from his loyalty to a single idea, which gives unity to all his work. That idea we may, in the end, be obliged to treat not only as a hypothesis--for all principles of reconciliation, even those of the sciences, as long as knowledge is incomplete, must be regarded as hypotheses--but also as a hypothesis which he had no right to a.s.sume. It may be that in the end we shall be obliged to say of him, as of so many others--

"See the sage, with the hunger for the truth, And see his system that's all true, except The one weak place, that's stanchioned by a lie!"[A]

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

It may be that the religious form, through which he generally reaches his convictions, is not freed from a dogmatic element, which so penetrates his thought as to vitiate it as a philosophy. Nevertheless, it answered for the poet all the uses of a philosophy, and it may do the same for many who are distrustful of the systems of the schools, and who are "neither able to find a faith nor to do without one." It contains far-reaching hints of a reconciliation of the elements of discord in our lives, and a suggestion of a way in which it may be demonstrated, that an optimistic theory is truer to facts than any scepticism or agnosticism, with the despair that they necessarily bring.

For Browning not only advanced a principle, whereby, as he conceived, man might again be reconciled to the world and G.o.d, and all things be viewed as the manifestation of a power that is benevolent; he also sought to apply his principle to the facts of life. He ill.u.s.trates his fundamental hypothesis by means of these facts; and he tests its validity with the persistence and impressive candour of a scientific investigator. His optimism is not that of an eclectic, who can ignore inconvenient difficulties. It is not an attempt to justify the whole by neglecting details, or to make wrong seem right by reference to a far-off result, in which the steps of the process are forgotten. He stakes the value of his view of life on its power to meet _all_ facts; one fact, ultimately irreconcilable with his hypothesis, will, he knows, destroy it.

"All the same, Of absolute and irretrievable black,--black's soul of black Beyond white's power to disintensify,-- Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck My life and ruin my philosophy Tomorrow, doubtless."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean Stripe_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]

He knew that, to justify G.o.d, he had to justify _all_ His ways to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and that a single exception would confute his optimism.

"So, gazing up, in my youth, at love As seen through power, ever above All modes which make it manifest, My soul brought all to a single test-- That He, the Eternal First and Last, Who, in His power, had so surpa.s.sed All man conceives of what is might,-- Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, --Would prove as infinitely good; Would never, (my soul understood,) With power to work all love desires, Bestow e'en less than man requires."[B]

[Footnote B: _Christmas Eve_.]

"No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.

And I shall behold Thee, face to face, O G.o.d, and in Thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

We can scarcely miss the emphasis of the poet's own conviction in these pa.s.sages, or in the a.s.sertion that,--

"The acknowledgment of G.o.d in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]

Consequently, there is a defiant and aggressive element in his att.i.tude.

Strengthened with an unfaltering faith in the supreme Good, this knight of the Holy Spirit goes forth over all the world seeking out wrongs. "He has," said Dr. Westcott, "dared to look on the darkest and meanest forms of action and pa.s.sion, from which we commonly and rightly turn our eyes, and he has brought back for us from this universal survey a conviction of hope." I believe, further, that it was in order to justify this conviction that he set out on his quest. His interest in vice--in malice, cruelty, ignorance, brutishness, meanness, the irrational perversity of a corrupt disposition, and the subtleties of philosophic and aesthetic falsehood--was no morbid curiosity. Browning was no "painter of dirt"; no artist can portray filth for filth's sake, and remain an artist. He crowds his pages with criminals, because he sees deeper than their crimes. He describes evil without "palliation or reserve," and allows it to put forth all its might, in order that he may, in the end, show it to be subjected to G.o.d's purposes. He confronts evil in order to force it to give up the good, which is all the reality that is in it. He conceives it as his mission to prove that evil is "stuff for trans.m.u.ting," and that there is nought in the world.

"But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongue Of elemental flame--no matter whence flame sprung, From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."

All we want is--

"The power to make them burn, express What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind, Howe'er the chance."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_.]

He had Pompilia's faith.